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Spider Question Received From J.R., West Houston, on 11-11-08 J.R. WRITES: I live in SE Texas in a suburb of Houston on the west side, and I have been finding brown spiders in my house. The first brown spider that I found came out late at night, was very skittish, and when I tried to squish it an explosion of little spiders came off. I have had these sorts of spiders come out on at least 3 other nights - but none of the others had little ones on their backs. They looked like pictures I've seen of crevice or brown recluse spiders." COMMENT: The vast majority of spiders found running around on Texas floors are brown, and the vast majority of these are NOT brown recluse, or otherwise dangerous in any way, no matter where you might live (an exception might be a rare residence in, say, the Dallas/Fort Worth area that is infested with brown recluse spiders, but we don't often see that kind of thing in DFW or in most other parts of Texas), so the classification "brown spider" is not very informative by itself. But read on... (1) The info I found on the Internet said that only wolf spiders carry their young - is that true? TRUE. The wolf spider female pulls her egg sac, which is attached to her spinnerets, behind her until the eggs hatch. Then the hatchlings hitch a ride on her dorsal abdomen , at least until the first molt when their clelicerae become capable of envenomating prey. Then the spiderlings strike out on their own. No other hunting spider, not even the brown recluse, does this. NEXT PAGE * TERMITE ENCOUNTERS * SNAKE ENCOUNTERS * SNAKE BITE FIRST AID * SNAKE EXCLUSION * SPIDER ENCOUNTERS FOR 2008 * SPIDER ENCOUNTERS FOR 2007 * SPIDER BITE FIRST AID * SPIDER EXTERMINATION * PUSS CATERPILLAR ENCOUNTERS * PUSS CATERPILLAR FIRST AID * PUSS CATERPILLAR EXTERMINATION * Assembled & Edited by Jerry Cates. Questions? Corrections? Comments? BUG ME RIGHT NOW! ---- Ph: 512-331-1111 ---- E-Mail ---- Privacy ----BugsInTheNews * --0a0s-- |