Subject: RE: Spiders - those big brown ones...
Date: Sep 5 17:43:22 1997
From: Paul Talbert - paul at muller.fhcrc.org




On Thu, 4 Sep 1997, Dave Stiles wrote:

> Is Tegenaria highly toxic, mildly toxic, non-toxic? One of my kids was =
> poking at one with his finger. I let out a yell as any good arachnophobe =
> would.

According to what I remember hearing from Rod Crawford, resident
arachnomaniac at the Burke museum, there are three species of Tegenaria
commonly found in our houses. I can't recall the species names, but we can
call them small, medium, and large (the latter is presumably gigantea and
one of the others is probably domestica). The medium ones are toxic enough
to inflict notable pain on humans. I don't believe they can ever be
life-threatening, but this is always a bigger risk with children than with
adults. My impression is that they are "moderately toxic" while the large
and small species are "insignificantly toxic" (if you're a human;
insects should watch out). Call Rod at the Burke museum for more details.
Of course, they are only toxic if they bite, which rarely happens.
In 14 years of living in Seattle houses with these guys, I've only had one
or two bites that I suspected were spider bites because they hurt more and
lasted longer than mosquito bites (or flea bites); I have no particular
reason to think the unseen biters were tegenaria.
My policy is to escort all three species out of the house so that my
wife doesn't kill them. Given that I think they are all introduced,
perhaps this is unnecessarily kind.

I was saddened to hear about Peggy's jumping spider bite; I used
to have a pet jumping spider (not the same species) and thought they were
wonderful animals. I fed it crickets, which it pounced upon with apparent
glee. The other crickets would come munch on the remains of their fallen
comrade. (I assumed this was the cricket equivalent of hitting a fast food
joint, but perhaps this is a way of honoring the dead among crickets.) The
spider lived for over a year in a large jar, but died shortly after I
moved to Seattle.

Paul Talbert
paul at sparky.fhcrc.org