Sunday, March 11, 2007
A False Widow?
Took the patio table and chairs out of the garage yesterday. As I was setting them up L noticed an unusual looking spider making a web on one of the chairs. Its head + abdomen length was about 7mm, and it was shiny and dark with brown splodges and a creamy band at the front of the abdomen. My first thought was that it was a Black Widow(!), so we carefully put it in a glass, and looked it up on t'internet.
It looked quite like a False Widow (steatoda nobilis), though I've seen other pictures of this spider that look less like the one we found. The False Widow is not dangerous to humans (generally), though its bite is apparently very painful, and can leave the recipient feeling ill for longer than a day. The spider is native to the Canaries, but was introduced to Britain in the nineteenth century. We thought that our find might be significant, because we couldn't find any record of this spider further north than Gloucestershire, so ours could be the furthest north it's been found.
We phoned Linton Zoo to ask what we should do, and they suggested that we bring it in, so we drove over with it. Unfortunately the spider woman wasn't available when we got there, so we left it with them, and we're still waiting to hear.
It looked quite like a False Widow (steatoda nobilis), though I've seen other pictures of this spider that look less like the one we found. The False Widow is not dangerous to humans (generally), though its bite is apparently very painful, and can leave the recipient feeling ill for longer than a day. The spider is native to the Canaries, but was introduced to Britain in the nineteenth century. We thought that our find might be significant, because we couldn't find any record of this spider further north than Gloucestershire, so ours could be the furthest north it's been found.
We phoned Linton Zoo to ask what we should do, and they suggested that we bring it in, so we drove over with it. Unfortunately the spider woman wasn't available when we got there, so we left it with them, and we're still waiting to hear.
