/pony/ - Pony

I just finished watching a film about frogs. Spiders came up often as a group of species with a complex relationship to them. I took a photograph of my TV screen when a funny moment happened.

>Frog: "Dude! Whoa!"
>Guy: "Dude! Whoa!"
>*they gaze at each other in wonderment*
{Basically, that happened.}

>>1186347
> Spiders came up often as a group of species with a complex relationship to them.
Was it the tarantulas keeping small frogs as pets?

>>1186348
I believe there was a little segment about frogs and tarantulas, yes.

>>1186352
How are you dealing with spiders around your house?

Did you ever notice how many different kinds there are?

Today's discovery:
The tiny house(/fleecy) jumping spider

The funny thing is that these crawlies aren't rare, but you can find tons once you start differentiating them.

Honestly I don't think this is that NSFW but I'm gonna NSFW it just in case.

And there we go, first house spider (Eratigena Atrica) of the year.

Ironically, caught right after I fought a giant spider boss in my videogames.

I once had a horrific fear of spiders.

While I was mowing the lawn (I was about 10 years old), I walked right through a huge web with like 30 banana spiders on it.

<Behold the creature

This trauma stayed with me for a while, until I lived in Brazil for 2 years, during which time I got very used to spiders. They would just live everywhere, including the corners of the shower, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Discovering that the overwhelming majority of spiders in North America aren't venomous has definitely helped wth my fears.

Now I think spiders are pretty cool, and some are really cute (jumping spiders are friggin' adorable).

I like spiders now.

>>1186793
> Discovering that the overwhelming majority of spiders in North America aren't venomous has definitely helped wth my fears.

Almost all spider are venomous, except a few in the Oecobius family.

But few spiders are medically significant (which means that you need to get urgent medical care for a bite). But even then, there has been very few deaths coming from spider bites in the US.

Unfortunately, the violin spider (brown recluse) is pretty prevalent in Southern parts of the US, as well as a few black widow species.
But in general, people dying from a spider bite doesn't happen much at all.

>>1186793
I don't think we have banana spiders here in the northern regions. They do look intimidating.

I did see a whole bunch of wasp spiders (sorta related) along the railroad one year, but they didn't appear to return in the last couple of years. Perhaps if we have another hot summer this year...

Spider haul today, at my ex in laws house they have plans webbed all over. Seems to be mostly pholcids.
I did catch a Scytodes trekking across their living room floor, though.
Here at home I found another sac spider (Clubiona) out hunting this evening.

>>1186857
>Almost all spider are venomous, except a few in the Oecobius family. But few spiders are medically significant (which means that you need to get urgent medical care for a bite).
Ah, yeah. Not meaningfully venomous to humans is what I meant.

And yeah, brown recluse and black widows exist, but even those bites are easily taken care of.

Snakes and bats are the ones you actually gotta watch out for.

Heck, ticks with Lyme or Alpha-gal are worse than most spiders.

>>1186858
Nice! Wasp spiders look dang cool~

I don't know much about specific species of spiders. I just know the basics. Enough to see the common ones and know if they're friends or spicy friends.

Today's finding:
A Nigma Walckenaeri again inside my house, so rufus.

Then I think I found Parateatoda (American house spider), a small one

I did squash a false widow on accident, that was sad.

>>1186793  In north Florida, it seems like every dead tree near any body of water will be covered in spiders.  These spiders stretch their legs to the front and back in a stick-like manner, keep a very low profile, and rather than spinning webs between the branches, they just loosely coat the branches themselves.  When dead trees fall in the water but haven't yet lost their branches, every branch out of the water will be coated in spiders.

I frequently encountered these "spider trees" back when I used to go kayaking.  On narrow rivers, a fallen tree can easily span the entire river, leaving you with a choice to either portage around it (hugely impractical), or possibly go under, over, or through it.  And by through I mean that what used to be the canopy is now at water level, so you can force your boat through the gaps, or by pushing/pulling branches out of your way.  I always took a pair of tree loppers with me for the sake of convenience, widening the gaps and cutting a clear path through the canopies.

Going through tended to be the fastest route, and when you're going upriver, carefully pruning a path isn't all that difficult.  But when you're coming back downriver, with the added speed of the current, it tends to try to send you crossways relative to the path you've previously cut.  And so you get carried across your line and crash sideways into the canopy of the spider tree.  When that happens, you will be completely covered in spiders.  And if you do have a fear of spiders, you will get over it very quickly.

Just found a small wolfspider that goes by the scientific name "Pirata Piraticus".

>>1187650
I wonder what those would be.
Longjawed orbweavers tend to hang around water and have a typical stretched out appearance when at rest. they do tend to reside in webs, though.

Dolomedes fishing spiders are a lot girthier / bigger and also reside along the side of water as well.