My salary.

Alright, I tracked down the original source (no links provided in the news article …) and it seems they do mean the noble false widow when they say “common house spider”. Which I guess is technically correct, because it’s a common spider to find in your home (in the UK, Ireland and California, that is).

Anyway, the actual article is quite interesting and above my paygrade as an amateur enthusiast. The first thing that stood out to me was that they said “In addition to their medically significant venom”, refering to Steatoda nobilis. That is not what is widley accepted amonst arachnologists.

So I forwarded it to a friend who is a proper, published arachnologist. He immedietly replied with “Oh, yeah, the Dunbar study”. It seems to be kind of a one-off study so far (there are very few properly documented bites to begin with). The professional called the study “valuable” but also said that he was “sceptical of the interpretation”.

I would add that bites from Steatoda (and Theridiidae in generall, which includes black widows) are very rare and quite easy to avoid. They are very stationay spiders and can stay their entire live in a single web (the females. Males will wander around during mating season, but even amongst the black widows, only the mature females are considered medically significant).

I’ll still happily have Steatoda spiders in my flat with no worries. I know them, they’re cool.

Uff … this article. Talking about a common house spider, showing a picture of a noble false widow but labeling it a black widow … I’m gonna disect that in a minute, wait for my next reply.

I didn’t harm them but it’s a sad memory for me bcs the smol town (or the whole valley?) I grew up in basically doesn’t have them anymore. Bcs we hate flowers/biodiversity, but love grass & pesticides I guess.

Wasp spider actually primarily live in tall grass. Big, unmown fields of grass are a great place to look for them. But I guess pesticides don’t help.

I know giant house spiders aren’t dangerous to humans, but plenty of other big spiders around the world are and I don’t think it’s wise to try desensitise human children to this

There is actually not a lot of them, really just a handful of species per continent (out of 53.000). It’s much easier to learn about the few medical significant spiders in your area and be cool to the rest of the spiderbros.

Email a buddy to lend me $20 and leave it somewhere where I can pick it up.

Stupid school holidays … now the trams only come every 7 minutes instead of 3.5.

Just move your hand slowly and don’t touch the wasps.

It’s also not a literally jalapeño pastry, it’s just “spicey” because of all the wasps on it.

Opening the terrarium was fine, lifting the little log hut thingy and messing up the web was a gamble.

Mine just loved to extend their web to include the door.

Feeding those took some real preperation. We first had to seal the room (closing an gaps at the doors/windows) as well as blocking all corners and cranies where they could potentially hide.

Then we stripped. Not kidding.

The first time feeding them one of them ran up my brothers arm and straight into his shirt. It was an absolute pain to get it out of there (and he totally got bitten in the process). From then on we’d take off all loose clothing when opening their enclosures. So yeah, just socks and tight fitting boxer briefs.

I just hope they they only adding it to netflix and not moving the existing streams on youtube.

Pretty sure only one of these has his picture on posters and t-shirts owned by teenagers all over the world. But maybe Luigi will get there some day.

One of the first phones I ever saw was my cousins nokia 3110 … and I just thought it was the prettiest thing ever. But by the time I got to have my own phone it was already pretty outdated so I never got one.

I think it’s most obvious when you’re trying to handle a spider (letting it walk on people, which I generally don’t recommend anymore, but we we’re young).

We had several Brachypelma hamorii, which are generally quite docil but one of them was especially chill. You could just gently push her around and she’d walk whereever you’d guide her.

I knew I should have looked it up.

Never encountered one.

Some genera/species are naturally docile but you can sometimes have an individual that doesn’t conform to that. Or you can have a notoriously defensive kind, but one individual is just really chill.

And no, I don’t think you can train them or force those “personalities”. It just happens by chance. Or by some mechanism to complex for me to understand.

I don’t know what you mean :)

I love Bill Bailey. I guess Insect Nation? I have to revisit the lyrics.

edit: not the guy you’re replying to, but yes, that must be the reference!

I have kept a bunch of invertebrates (spiders) from the same species and yes, they do have “personality” in the sense that indivduals do react differently to the same or at least a very similar situation. Consistently.