Big Big Spiders.. Merged

FranknFurter

We found one of the biggest house spiders I have ever seen in our bath under a tee-shirt that was awaiting washing.
I have never seen anything like it, it was HUGE, with a HUGE body, (it was'nt all legs).
Fast fecker too, easilly as fast as any rodent.

B

artieanna

hairyfairy00 wrote:

I used to work in Dunnes and one day this massive brown hairy spider came out of a box of bananas from the fruit and veg section. The bugger was huge, he went under a shelf and when we tried to get him out the fecker jumped out at us, that was enough for me and i ran away like the little girl i was. Eventually the security guy walked it out the front door, who knows what happened to it and really i don't care.

I've had a scary thought:eek: :eek: I wonder is it possible that, with imports and travelling are we bringing back bugs that could possibly survive or breed new bugs here!!


ooo spiders give me the creeps:eek:

glucosamine

yes and they will interbreed with the local population and predude new species of spiders immune to disease, pest control and the yellow pages and will soon take our jobs and our woman and have their own edition of the herald.

The Bollox

artieanna wrote:

I've had a scary thought:eek: :eek: I wonder is it possible that, with imports and travelling are we bringing back bugs that could possibly survive or breed new bugs here!!


ooo spiders give me the creeps:eek:

someone has been watching Arachnophobia

bug

my house is crawling with these dudes.
See pics with eggs in mouth.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~ednieuw/Spiders/Pholcidae/Pholcidae.htm

that one!

At this stage Im getting used to them.
They are called cellar spiders.

I had six in my room at one stage, they started waging war on one another and then the hoover came out. I dont mind them once they stay away from me, but when they fight, they fall...on me.

I have the ultimate respect for spiders especially this one, image having nothing that can kill you except a hoover.

glucosamine

where are you from that they're not referred to as daddy long legs?

bug

daddy long leg spiders.

daddy long legs are those things with wings that they are related to.

That, or I was grossly misinformed when I was six and still am

scargill

roll on the good frosty nights of december and january thats all i say - kill off some of these monsters !! Its the mild weather that encourges them

glucosamine

Jesus Christ somebody shoot me.

What I call daddy long legs are Crane Flys. Insects with 6 legs belonging to the diptera family and have 1 set of wings.

The creatures referred to as Harvestman are Arachnids like spiders but not actually spiders but close relatives belonging in the class Opiliones.

The picture you showed is a definitely a real spider and I know nothing of it so I'm going to shut up now.

FranknFurter

Thanks for that link!
The ones we are seeing look like huge versions of this one.
I dont know if its normal for them to get this size or if its an enviromental change causing it, tonights was (again) the span of the average mug! and the body was about the size of a Bic biro pen cap! (without the long spike).

He just ran out from under a pile of sweeping brushes and dust pans we have in a corner.

Scared the hell out of me, didnt bother our brave kitty though, she was more than ready for him!

B

EGAR

Me thinks, I need to swap my dogs for a cat . They just opened one eye to see what all the fuss was about and went back to sleep!

Our man in Havana

Ok so from a bbc programe by David Attenborough the big black ones are male house spiders - the skinny brown ones (both spider photos have been seen in this thread) are house spiders aka daddy long legs but these are the females - I think its coming up to mating season for the house spider thats why there are so many of them around.

They freak me out but my lovely hubby picks them up & releases them out side for me

Saruman

bug wrote:

daddy long leg spiders.

daddy long legs are those things with wings that they are related to.

That, or I was grossly misinformed when I was six and still am

As you said.. you were mis informed like most people in Ireland.
Daddy longlegs are spiders...
What you are talking about is a crane fly or in the US... a Mosquito Hawk.

For some people we Irish call them daddy longlegs but in fact we are wrong. Who cares though.

Anyway recently i noticed in my garden a LOAD of crane flies!!! So i stopped to count them one morning.. and i got to like 5 on the wall near my front door when i got to 6 i noticed not only was it too big but it was not a crane fly... it was a huge spider up in the corner (outside). Seriously i was about 6 inches long.. maybe a 2 or 3 inch body.... huge.. thought it might be dead but a few days later it was gone.. maybe hiding in the big mass of web right in the corner.

Nothingcompares

Saruman wrote:

As you said.. you were mis informed like most people in Ireland.
Daddy longlegs are spiders...
What you are talking about is a crane fly or in the US... a Mosquito Hawk.

For some people we Irish call them daddy longlegs but in fact we are wrong. Who cares though.

Anyway recently i noticed in my garden a LOAD of crane flies!!! So i stopped to count them one morning.. and i got to like 5 on the wall near my front door when i got to 6 i noticed not only was it too big but it was not a crane fly... it was a huge spider up in the corner (outside). Seriously i was about 6 inches long.. maybe a 2 or 3 inch body.... huge.. thought it might be dead but a few days later it was gone.. maybe hiding in the big mass of web right in the corner.

Only the latin names are reliable (even though they change from time to time). What we call a Robin in the uk and ireland is not the same species of bird in the united states.

Rb

I've caught some massive ones around the house lately, usually just pick them up in a glass bowl (or the odd time I'll just grab them) and put them out down the back. Haven't gotten to take any pictures of them though. They don't bother me at all really..

Though, one time I came home from a holiday to find what seemed to be a nest had hatched in my bedroom, thousands of these little spiders all over my ceiling, in my bed, on my desk, in the carpet. Took the vacuum to them, slept on the couch that night and went up the next morning to find the room covered in webs again...that bothered me

steve-o

This beauty is living outside my kitchen window right now.

Lindaloo

A friend of mine was watching 'How Clean is your House?' and told me about citronella to prevent the 'tarantulas' invading your house, I just googled and got this


"Despite having tried spraying the window with Raid, neat bleach, and leaving mothballs on the sill, it seems that nothing deterred these guys - they just kept on coming.

I did a bit of research on the internet, and here's what I came up with:

Hedge apples {not crab apples or any other kind} seem to be the No. 1 deterrent. Cut in half and placed on tinfoil - as they leave stains on materials - they seemingly keep all sorts of creepy crawlies at bay.

Only problem is, I couldn't find them in Sainsbury's, in our hedge, or on eBay - they're also known as Osage Orange, and are maybe only indigenous to the USA.

Anyway, the other thing I discovered was aromatherapy oils - six drops of citronella and six drops of patchouli oil mixed in 500 ml of water and applied using a "vapour"-type spray bottle would supposedly repel spiders without harming them.

The good news - it worked. She made a single application of the spray around the window area, and she hasn't seen a single spider since.

The bad news - it doesn't seem to work in Scotland! I tried exactly the same thing here, and yet the big guy who dominates our dining room window just seems to shrug it off. Not that I really mind him since he's outside, but I was curious to see if it would work.

More bad news - the patchouli oil smells like cannabis! Great if you want to confuse police sniffer dogs, but otherwise a bit overpowering, and very "seventies".

I've read that 80% of our population are scared of spiders {and 100% of spiders are afraid of people..........}, so any other tips would be gratefully appreciated.

Is this really a big problem in the UK, perhaps related to the warm, humid weather we've had lately?
"

mukki

steve-o wrote:

This beauty is living outside my kitchen window right now.

yeah i got a few of them


i used to live by a river and got the odd huge spider

i am living out the sticks now, and get normal ones,but in the thousands:mad:

i read online the best way to get rid of spiders is to hoover them up, they get smashed agains't the sides of the pipe and it cleans up the web too. because all windows are left open for the summer i go around once a week and hoover about 20-50 from every room

looksee

We get lots of enormous spiders in our utility/garage area but they don't come into the house very often. Don't kill them, they do a great job getting rid of flies - did anyone else notice there were a lot of flies this summer but not many wasps? Going back to the spiders, keep a wide necked jar and something like a bit of thin timber or a table mat so that you can put the jar over the spider then slide in the mat and take it all outside. You can do the same trick with a large matchbox but I always suspect that the spider will squeeze out before I get outside. We lived abroad years ago and on one occasion caught a spider in a jar about the same size as a large coffee jar and its legs stretched from the lid to the base of the jar (it had thick hairy legs with white knees - reminds me of someone).:)

The Hill Billy

Those big buggers that you've been seeing are most likely Tegenaria Gigantia (Giant House Spider). We've been inundated with them for the past couple of years. Had one last week that had a leg-span larger than a cigarette packet!

As for the previous poster who said that these guys don't bite - I beg to differ! The North-Western American Tegenaria Gigantia can actually infect humans with a death-threatening lymphatic disease. Trying to catch them can be a challenge as they can run at up to one foot per second.

Apparently, they migrate indoors once the weather starts to cool around this time of year, however, they are less evident once the heating is turned on & the damp places that they hide out in start to dry up. Be sure to hoover well in any nooks & crannies sround the house to remove any eggs left behind.

Best advice is to turn on the central heating & sleep with the lights on!

ciscokidder

I have these, so these are the females of the species then ?

alig

Does anyone know of a good chemical insecticide that can be bought in Ireland that will deter spiders?

We live in Lucan, suburban Dublin, and we are invested with spiders. The house is spotless and web free but every night at least one big bugger runs across the floor in front of us. Some nights we might have as many as three and they are not small, 3-4 inchs in diameter. My girlfriend is petrified by them and it's making her life a misery. We've no idea where they are coming from as the house is newish and all possible entry points have been sealed off.

I've just spent a couple of hours on the web looking for something to deter the little feckers getting into the house but there doesn't seem to be much on the market. I just wonder is there anyone out there who has come across something that works? Cypermethrin seems to be the raw ingredient in most of the American products but is only used in cattle products here. I wonder would it work?

Any help would be great. We lived in Oz for a while and it was a brezze compared to Lucan!!!

tallus

Photographed this beauty in my front garden three days back. For scale, the bluebottle is normal size for a bluebottle.

condra

Great picture tallus.

I like spiders, thought not as much as ants.
I nick flies from their webs and feed them to my ants [Lasius Niger]. Saves me from buying crickets, saves me from feeling like a bastard and killing crickets too.

Ive noticed much bigger spiders in the last few years. I had to evict a huge one from my x girlfriends bathroom the other night. Its body was about the size of a marble. I suspect she might have been preggars.

Is it possible that any new species have been introduced?

tallus

I thought the spider was a beauty, I know nothing about our native species tho, I must do some research because there are loads of those around my house. The back garden is literally overrun with small black terrestrial spiders near the pond, I must get a photo, I'm sure the frogs feed on them.

Our man in Havana

OK this site shows the females & a female with a male that she has killed after mating. http://www.xs4all.nl/~ednieuw/Spiders/Pholcidae/Pholcidae.htm

Gillie

holmsey wrote:

I've had 5 exactly like this one in my apartment, one every night the last 5 nights I've been home. The first one I put out the window, then the second night I thought it must be the same guy after getting back in so I flattened him, and I've been doing the same every night since. It's the same run every night (and around the same time), they go from somewhere behind the couch (I've looked and I can't figure out where, and the thought that there may be s*** loads of them inside the couch freaks me out!!!!) off across the floor and over towards the TV stand.
I have images of a bunch of them lined up under the couch and every night one of them draws the short straw and has to try and change the channel without getting caught!!!!

I have the same situation. Not as many though.
One or two every few days.
I don't kill them though as much as my missus would like me to!:rolleyes:

abetarrush

I hate them, seriously, they're ginormous


it must be global warmin

ScumLord

I don't mind spiders so much because I hate flys, I even go as far as to feed the spiders to make sure they stick around. But I have notice that they've been getting huge over the past 5 years or so and agressive too! I saw one climbing up the wall not so long ago he wasn't particularly big but kinda cunky so I went over for a closer inspection and the ****er jumped right at my face! He scarpered under the skirting board before I could mush him.

Fridge

We've been getting thr 4inch diameter ones in our bathroom a lot. Everytime I walk into the bathroom there's another one. There were 5 in it last week. I'm having baths upstairs instead now. I hate having the window cos spiders crawl in, but I want fresh air too!
I know they're not out to eat me, but they move so ****ing fast, I just get so frightened.