Content Warning: Spiders!

[arthwollipot]

What makes spiders give me the creeps is how fast they crawl.

Here's a fun fact: huntsmans are among the speediest of all spiders.

 

[novaphile]

What makes spiders give me the creeps is how fast they crawl.

Yes, and perhaps the 'all terrain' nature of how they crawl.

(i.e. They're rarely defeated by obstacles.)

Except bathtubs, I'm glad I removed my bathtub, bathtub spider recovery used to be a regular ritual.

 

[wasapi]

Oh dude.

Our spiders definitely have faces.

Some of them have quite cute little faces.

No. Just no. You are wrong. Or warped.

When I was a kid I had a spider bite on my knee. We didn't know what kind. But the bite was infected, red, swollen, and had to be drained.

I don't care if the spider that bit me had a "cute face". I hope he died a painful, prolonged death.

 

[arthwollipot]

I mean come on. Look at this little guy!

 

[novaphile]

I mean come on. Look at this little guy!

[qimg]https://i.imgur.com/JJtPTyzm.jpg[/qimg]

OMG! Yes! I love the little green jumping spiders.

 

[alfaniner]

Oh dude.

Our spiders definitely have faces.

Some of them have quite cute little faces.

Fans of The Outer Limits may remember this guy -- he wasn't the "main" character but was the only one available in the shop.

 

[novaphile]

Going outside at night, while wearing a head torch was quite instructive for me.

The whole yard was filled with reflective eyes, but there were two main groups:

1. Spiders; and,
2. Geckos that were hunting them.

Fascinating to think how different our responses are when we see spiders:

We say: "Ewwwww".
Geckos say: "Dinner!"

NB. The geckos are amazingly active hunters, they seem to catch and eat anything that moves. I was used to thinking that they mainly lived on walls and ceilings outside, but they were present in quite large numbers in the vegetation outside, including the trees.

 

[Orphia Nay]

Cool, novaphile!

 

[novaphile]

Cool, novaphile!

I keep forgetting to go outside with a UV light to see if the little critter I found was actually a scorpion.

(Scorpions fluoresce under UV light, which makes them very easy to find at night.)

In a nutshell, there are two classes of things that look like scorpions (scorpions and pseudoscorpions), and the little guy that I found while weeding, was apparently much too small to be a scorpion.

But... It had the scorpion tail with a sting, which the other class of things doesn't have.

So, I'm kinda keen to see if I've found something new.

https://australian.museum/learn/spe...-an-expert/what-do-pseudoscorpions-look-like/

Of course, I wasn't smart enough to keep the one that I found while I was working in the yard.

At the time, my first and second thoughts were: "Don't sting me, don't sting me." (Even though it was only a few millimetres long.) It was prowling around on me, with its tail in the air.

So... I need to remember, and get out there with a UV light.



It's also possible that the thing that I saw was a juvenile scorpion, but that would be interesting in itself, because I've never seen any adult scorpion in the Adelaide region.

(Woomera yes, Flinders Ranges yes, but nothing locally)

 

[catsmate]

Fans of The Outer Limits may remember this guy -- he wasn't the "main" character but was the only one available in the shop.
[qimg]https://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/17165b725770b7d6.jpg[/qimg]

Ab, the Zanti.

 

[Orphia Nay]

It would be cool to find a species in a new area for it.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a scorpion, except I thought I saw a glimpse of a scorpion near a pool in Spain years ago. Could have been.

 

[arthwollipot]

I saw a few tiny scorpions back when I lived on a property. I had to turn over rocks to see them, but they were there.

 

[Manopolus]

Hmm... don't know much about spiders and don't want to, but we've got our big 'uns around here, too, specifically tarantulas. Those don't tend to cause many problems, though. Usually when someone in these parts has a nasty spider bite, it's a common brown spider, and I have plenty of those around my house. Haven't bitten me, personally, yet. But those bites can get quite nasty. We've also got Black Widows, but those are much less common.

 

[novaphile]

Well, I noticed that the buildings in my back yard were looking pretty nasty, lots of webs etc. so I went around with the surface spray.

Ugh. The number of large, black, bitey looking spiders that resulted.

 

[Jim_MDP]

Did someone say Spiders? [emoji16]
I'll just leave this here...

https://youtu.be/LAZVCmZrGE0?si=dH3GEKZRP9UCrSd-

 

[arthwollipot]

I've been following the story of Pantdora since before it began.

 

[Jim_MDP]

I managed to watch the entire episode... though I thought more than once we should nuke the site from orbit!
But I did look at his list of vids and AIUI he's only just completed the thing in the last few months, shifting from his years long work with ant species.
I will at some point have to watch the next episode, his latest ATM, as it continues the tale of mama DeathStrike and her brood of 400 little huntsmans. [emoji1]
I swear, I wouldn't have opened the damn doors even BEFORE he released the little ones. [emoji54]

 

[novaphile]

Arachnophobes probably should avoid the Netflix movie 'Spaceman'.

Just sayin'.

 

[Darat]

Arachnophobes probably should avoid the Netflix movie 'Spaceman'.

Just sayin'.

Jinx. Watched some of it last night and was going to post a warning today. Problem of course is the warning won't get to the right people being posted in this thread.

 

[welshdean]

Arachnophobes probably should avoid the Netflix movie 'Spaceman'.

Just sayin'.

Jinx. Watched some of it last night and was going to post a warning today. Problem of course is the warning won't get to the right people being posted in this thread.

The real 'warning' you should have given was that Adam Sandler is in it.