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Big Big Spiders.. Merged

Trotter · 2006-08-25 23:02:44

Over the past few weeks I've seen a good few big brown spiders in the garden. Im talking.. 2 or 2.5 inches in size. Finally tonight, one of them made the mistake of getting into the living room. To avoid a seizure from my sleeping girlfriend, I quickly despatched him to spider heaven (sorry insect lovers, but she hates the…

26-08-2006 12:02am

#1

Trotter

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Over the past few weeks I've seen a good few big brown spiders in the garden. Im talking.. 2 or 2.5 inches in size. Finally tonight, one of them made the mistake of getting into the living room. To avoid a seizure from my sleeping girlfriend, I quickly despatched him to spider heaven (sorry insect lovers, but she hates the tiny ones.. this lad would have her selling the house).

I got a photo with my phone but it isnt too clear. I know they're following the warmth inside but I can honestly say Ive never seen them this big. Global warming?

What are these species called? I presume they're native to Ireland.. Ive seen them before, just not with muscles.

3

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#2 26-08-2006 12:12am

Huggles

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This thing got into my brothers house on Thursday. He said he noticed something running out the corner of his eye and thought it was a mouse. Obviously it wasn't but he said it was so big he froze! See attached.

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#3 26-08-2006 12:52am

Trotter

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Here's the lad now.. just before he got a puck of hello magazine.

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#4 26-08-2006 12:55am

Budo.Judo.Kev

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looks like Dolomendes fimbriatus to me but the photo is ****.

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#5 26-08-2006 1:07am

Trotter

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Budo.Judo.Kev wrote:

looks like Dolomendes fimbriatus to me but the photo is ****.

Yep.. he just refused to stay and pose while I went for the Canon EOS. Option 2 was the camera phone beside me.

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#6 26-08-2006 1:00pm

FranknFurter

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LOL :0)

Yep, the last few years I'm noticing the amazing sized spiders that are becomming the norm for this country.

There has to be SOME reason, probably climate change, because some of the monsters Iv seen in the last 10 years have scared the hell out of me.

Im a bit weird in that I dont mind large tarantula's at all, but a large "wild" domestic spider scared me sh1tless! I spose its coz I have no idea of species.

b

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#7 26-08-2006 1:19pm

abetarrush

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Holy bejaysis, datd scare the ****e outta me

My gaff's d same, packed with crawlers

Still can't believe im so scared of somethin I can jus squish

But yeah, dat is one ginormous fvcker, for Ireland

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#8 26-08-2006 1:31pm

coward

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here's a close-up of one i found. it's not in spider heaven.
but it's hopefully far away from the house

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#9 26-08-2006 1:52pm

dazberry

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I was in the shower on Thursday morning and spotted a shadow moving up the outside of the shower curtain. Next thing I see a two inch (fat) leg appearing over the top - never moved so quickly in my life...

Got some kitchen roll, grabbed it (could still feel it thru two sheets of kitchen paper) and left it out the back - it seemed about 3 inches long... definitely the biggest spider I've seen around the place. Horrible.

D.

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#10 26-08-2006 7:04pm

Our man in Havana

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Think the common name or the name we called these spiders in the uk was the harvest spider - casue you see lots of them at this time of the year - I have had 3 huge ones in my bedroom this week - mating time I think. will post up some of the cool pics I got of the ones in my room - thank god the hubby is not afraid of them & rescues me.

Becareful when you pick them up as few years ago my brother picked one up & it turned around & bit him! a nasty bite it was too!

When we first moved to Ireland we rented a old farmhouse in the kitchen was a web with a BIRD in it! I did not want to meet that SPIDER!

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#11 26-08-2006 7:13pm

Exit

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Holy crap, they'd scare the **** out of me if I saw them anywhere in my house!

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#12 26-08-2006 8:05pm

abetarrush

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coward wrote:

here's a close-up of one i found. it's not in spider heaven.
but it's hopefully far away from the house

the fangs on dat fvcker!

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#13 27-08-2006 1:19am

crazy_dude6662

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we have millions of those in our house (reason why i vacated my room and now sleep in my mums art room, i was lying in bed, scratched my leg, which was itchy, took my hand away and a massive spider was on my hand, i hurled it across the room, then looked down to see another sitting on the bed)

we are getting a back extension and they are coming in there, that and the back door is open all day, and the attic isnt too well sealed from the outside.

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#14 27-08-2006 9:04pm

FlutterinBantam

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Shower of wusses... the don't bite.. in fact they clean up the place ..get of flies and other peskys... don't squish... escort them to the door in your hand.

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#15 27-08-2006 9:12pm

tck

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Interesting fact, The venom in a common household spider is more poisonous than a Black Widow's or a Brown Recluse, but they cannot bite humans because their jaws won't open wide enough.

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#16 27-08-2006 9:44pm

Trotter

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Does anyone know the exact species of the ones in the photos??

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#17 28-08-2006 12:08am

Dave!

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Spidercus Big-and-'orribleus

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#18 29-08-2006 3:02pm

BarneyMac

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It looks like a Long Jawed Orb Weaver...there are no spiders in Ireland which are capable of biting humans...except for one called the Woodlouse spider...and even then it's not venomous.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/livingworld/florafauna/spiders.shtml#longjaw

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#19 30-08-2006 9:43am

delly

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This is my pic from last year from this thread.

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#20 30-08-2006 2:39pm

The Saint

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It is in fact a House spider that everyone has been seeing. I had one crawl into my bag while I was packing. I nearly shat myself when I saw it. I'm not scared of spiders usually but these guys are bloody fast. i had to take out my bag to the garden, unpack all of my clothes and shake them all out. Of course when everything was unpacked there he was sitting in the bottom of the bag smiling up at me. Little Bastard. I sent him on his merry way to go about his business.

tck wrote:

Interesting fact, The venom in a common household spider is more poisonous than a Black Widow's or a Brown Recluse, but they cannot bite humans because their jaws won't open wide enough.

This is not true:
"The Domestic house spider (sometimes called the Lesser house spider) (Tegenaria domestica) is closely related to the venomous Hobo spider, but although its bite is somewhat unpleasant, it is not a danger to humans."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_house_spider

Heres some other site with info on this spider:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/wildfacts/factfiles/348.shtml
http://www.arkive.org/species/ARK/invertebrates_terrestrial_and_freshwater/Tegenaria_domestica/more_info.html

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#21 30-08-2006 3:43pm

Dave!

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delly wrote:

This is my pic from last year from this thread.

Jesus H Christ! :eek:

I think the most important question is....... how did that spider get from Australia to Ireland?!

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#22 30-08-2006 4:03pm

delly

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DaveMcG wrote:

Jesus H Christ! :eek:

I think the most important question is....... how did that spider get from Australia to Ireland?!

Don't know how it got here, but it left via the Golden Pages

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#23 31-08-2006 12:41am

EGAR

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I found this guy in my house two days back and I am still shook up :eek: . I left him alone as it would've meant re-painting my house had I squashed him. Any idea what he/she might be? Apart from a spider and HUGE?

What kind of spider is it??

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#24 31-08-2006 12:52am

tabatha

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ok for a start there is no need to be putting HUGE BLOODY PHOTOS of these ****es up!!! reading these posts has scared the life out of me because of them! i just had a big one run across my sitting room floor! is there anything you can do to get rid of them? i feel sick :eek:

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#25 31-08-2006 1:46am

Flukey

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I always have a respect for spiders. I'll try and catch any big ones and release them outside the house. When you catch them in a jar or glass or something like that, they are always worth having a closer look at before releasing.

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#26 31-08-2006 1:57am

The Bollox

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The Saint wrote:

"The Domestic house spider (sometimes called the Lesser house spider) (Tegenaria domestica) is closely related to the venomous Hobo spider, but although its bite is somewhat unpleasant, it is not a danger to humans."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_house_spider

Heres some other site with info on this spider:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/wildfacts/factfiles/348.shtml
http://www.arkive.org/species/ARK/invertebrates_terrestrial_and_freshwater/Tegenaria_domestica/more_info.html

there is NO ****ING WAY Ireland hosts spiders that big!

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#27 31-08-2006 10:05am

The Saint

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EGAR wrote:

I found this guy in my house two days back and I am still shook up :eek: . I left him alone as it would've meant re-painting my house had I squashed him. Any idea what he/she might be? Apart from a spider and HUGE?

What kind of spider is it??

I'd say it's probably the same species but maybe a female. Apparantly they have a larger abdomen and shorter legs than the males. It looks like most of the pictures posted are of males. They are more active as the actively seek females for mating whereas the females stay put. Sounds familiar eh.

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#28 31-08-2006 12:51pm

tabatha

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Marts wrote:

there is NO ****ING WAY Ireland hosts spiders that big!

yes there is!!!

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#29 31-08-2006 8:13pm

hairyfairy00

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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.

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#30 05-09-2006 6:42pm

eldanny

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i work late and sleep late quite often but up until a few weeks ago every morning a fly or two would come in and ruin my slumber you should see the size of the spider i pretend to chuck out the door every time my girlfreind sees it. im happy as i get my sleep shes happy cuz theres no spiders in the bedroom and hes happy cuz he has a little collection of meals under the windowsill wich makes me even more happy cuz flying bugs are so much more anoying than spiders who prefare to keep to themselves.
viva el spider

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#31 05-09-2006 9:17pm

holmsey

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Trotter wrote:

Here's the lad now.. just before he got a puck of hello magazine.

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!!!!

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#32 05-09-2006 9:41pm

FranknFurter

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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

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#33 06-09-2006 12:22am

artieanna

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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:

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#34 06-09-2006 12:26am

glucosamine

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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.

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#35 06-09-2006 12:37am

The Bollox

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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

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#36 06-09-2006 12:41am

bug

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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.

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#37 06-09-2006 12:44am

glucosamine

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

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#38 06-09-2006 12:47am

bug

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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

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#39 06-09-2006 12:53am

scargill

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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

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#40 06-09-2006 12:56am

glucosamine

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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.

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#41 06-09-2006 1:15am

FranknFurter

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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

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#42 06-09-2006 1:23am

EGAR

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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!

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#43 09-09-2006 2:05pm

Our man in Havana

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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

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#44 09-09-2006 9:05pm

Saruman

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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.

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#45 09-09-2006 11:17pm

Nothingcompares

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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.

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#46 10-09-2006 11:49am

Rb

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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

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#47 11-09-2006 12:05am

steve-o

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This beauty is living outside my kitchen window right now.

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#48 12-09-2006 8:43am

Lindaloo

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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?
"

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#49 12-09-2006 9:01am

mukki

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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

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#50 13-09-2006 10:31pm

looksee

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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).:)

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#51 14-09-2006 4:12pm

The Hill Billy

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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!

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