GSJ: Spiders – 8 Legs Endless Fascination!

Okay. Hello everyone. I think we’re going to get started.

How are you all doing tonight? Good. I’m excited for spiders.

All right, great. Uh, so I’m Patrick Ryan. I’m with Science for Georgia. Um

we are a science communication nonprofit trying to get science out of the lab and into the community. So we try to do

events like this and other fun things. Um we are trying to um get community

members and trying trying to build that trust in science again teaching everybody that scientists are people and

they’re all people trying to make things better. They’re not trying to do anything conspiratorial as some groups

might be saying. Amy, can you move the

Hold on.

Okay, great. Great. Um, one of the ways we do that is we do uh we have a data for Georgia program

where we are doing data mapping on RGis and we’re doing data stories that the

public can see and use in their own advocacy work. So we have these publicly

available where you can see things like uh South Folton’s um story that a group

called Sage has been using going door to door talking about air and water air and water quality um in their neighborhoods

um or uh this is Augusta. So we have one on the tail of two August um trying to

show the differences in different areas with that red lining and things of that sort from historical damage. Um

and We have uh are also doing work on data centers. So if you are interested in that after the talk, please speak

with Amy. She is our resident expert in data centers in Georgia at this point.

At least that’s what all of the uh reporters keep telling us.

One of the big things that we’re trying to push right now is explaining and getting public to understand what we’re

losing with all these federal cuts and the rifts and things of that sort. um losses at the CDC, but also losses of

data sets, um things that people use for their jobs, people that people rely on

for their water quality and things of that sort. Um we did lose some of the uh

USGS water quality monitoring for a bit of time. It is now back up and available

on a different site, so it’s a little harder to find, but it is back up and and running. And there are people

looking at that data, not collecting.

And then uh lastly, but surely, we are a 501c3 nonprofit. So, if you would like

to be um come out and work with us, volunteering or giving talks like this,

please let us know. We um do a lot of science communication outreach where we are teaching uh graduate students or

faculty members how to communicate science to the public in ways that is understandable. um and even going out to

the legislature and talking to your elected representatives and trying to hit signs a seat at the table for the

Georgia assembly. I will once again throw Amy under the bus. She is generally at the Georgia General

Assembly when it’s in session three days a week if not more giving talks and providing white papers. Um so please let

us know if that’s something you might be interested in or you want to make those connections. Um and now uh we’ll have our

Um Dr. Aaron Ricketts is a medical officer working on global tuberculosis.

Um from 2021 to 2023 she served as the epidemic ep epidemic intelligence

service as a field officer in North Carolina where she played a role in the state’s legion alla subject matter

expert working on the state national outbreaks infectious disease including monkey pox covid uh aven influenza

pediatric hepatitis and vericella. She’s also worked on babies and ticks uh

with the Pum Pawsum virus. Almost

um she got her doctor of medicine degree in 2018 at Tlane University and her

residency was in internal medicine at UC Riverside, my alma mo. So that was great. Uh in 2021 um and now Erin in her

free time is an entomology hobbyist. um and helps operate the national spider support group on Facebook and moderates

our spider bites and our brown recluse fights on Reddit. Uh she no longer keeps hundreds of venomous spiders for

nebulous research projects, but has been known to have a captured leopard um led

species at home on occasion. And now here she is.

Hey everybody, I’m so sorry I got litis this week. So if I sound really

softspoken, it’s not because I’m not extremely excited to be here. This is an absolute childhood dream of mine. Um I

know some of the questions that came in when you all registered included, how on earth did you get into this? Um I was

about 12 years old. I came outside of my door one morning and found my little brother’s stroller with a very large orb

web. top of it. And I said, “My god, this spider will kill my little brother.” So, I went on a rampage and

tried to kill every spider for about a three block radius of my house. Not possible, if you’re curious.

In the process of doing this, I discovered a newly invasive venomous spider to the region, which I was very

upset about and did a lot of very early childhood 12-year-olds googling about and found some very scary news articles

and which I brought to my parents and they said, “Don’t catch spiders and you won’t have to worry about this.” Um,

that wasn’t enough for me. I kept trying to spread awareness of the fact that this new spider was in my area, which

unfortunately uh led to uh some mild mad science at that point um which was just

that I discovered a researcher at the University of Riverside who was collecting the spiders in the area to

try to determine how far they had spread where they were. So I started hatching them, put them in water bottles which

was a safe place for me to store them. And um then I got caught when I asked my mom for money to send them to the UC

Riverside researcher and she said, “You may not send venomous spiders through the mail.”

fair, very reasonable adult choice here. Uh, now the second adult choice would probably have been making sure I got rid

of the spiders at that point. Um, unfortunately, I was moderately unsupervised in this period, if you

could guess. Uh, I kept the spiders because I felt bad about catching them. I couldn’t release them. They were

invasive. So then I just had jars upon jars of venomous spiders in my house.

Um, actually they didn’t come inside. That was not allowed. They were outside of my house. Um,

This led to a very very long process that included um at my very very worst

mad science period in college. Um and if anybody says if anybody uh hears this,

this is hypothetical by the way. Um if you’re from Twain, my my alma mo for undergrad. Um I discovered that there

was an empty greenhouse behind the architecture studio that wasn’t wasn’t in use because it had

a broken AC system. I fixed the AC system and then I had my own greenhouse

until that was discovered. I also had access to quite a few empty

uh microbiology tubes that were usually used for uh usually used for uh growing

cell cultures but have a fantastic advantage of having a filter cap which allows air to come in and out uh but

does not allow for example spiders to go in and out. Um they had been expired. they were going to be thrown out. I took

them to my new greenhouse lab. I raised hundreds of venomous spiders. Then I said, “Great. I’ve got a spider lab set

up. I should do something useful with this.” That old uh UC Riverside researcher of mine was doing an LD50

study. That’s a lethal dose study to see how much uh venom does it take to kill a

mouse. Actually, to kill half the mice you give it to, technically it’s LD50 study. And

he was collecting spiders, venomous spiders from around the US to do these studies. And I thought, “Ah, maybe I can

send him some venom.” So, I looked up some protocols. I electrocuted a few hundred spiders.

Uh, I collected extremely impure venom because you’re apparently not supposed to feed them for some time before you

electrocute them to collect the venom. Didn’t realize that. Wasn’t very helpful.

Science. I’m better now. I only have one spider

that I keep for a pet. The rest of these are just for show for you all. Almost

all of them made it out alive. There are a few here that I have. Uh they’re all dead. Don’t worry. Uh there’s nothing

alive here on this table anymore. Um we fixed that this afternoon. Um but I will

be passing them around as we go. Without further ado, spiders. Going to

start strong. I know everybody has a couple of questions in their what do I need to worry about and uh tell me about

the Joro spider and how I can get rid of this horrible menace from my society. I will answer these I promise. There are

only threeish venomous spiders in Georgia. We’ve got the black widow,

we’ve got the brown widow, and we’ve got the brown recluse. I did put an asterisk there because technically there are two

different species of black widow that are found here. The northern and southern black widow are pretty interchangeably found in this area. You

think we’re in the south, it’ll be southern. It’s not. I’m sorry. It’s both.

The good news is that means that every other spider that you see is going to be not a spider that appreciatively

benefits to us. And I’m so sorry I see some shivers already. This is going to be about a thousand photos and videos of

spiders. That’s why I start with these slides so that you know there are only three that

you got to shiver about. And the rest of these are going to be totally harmless,

fun, loving, beautiful spiders. I’ll tell you about some of their their exciting attributes that you can put

upon them as you think of them in reality. Um, these are all some of the ones that we’re going to be talking

about today. I’m going to give you a quick and dirty. How do you tell if this spider is dangerous? How how do I know

if I need to worry about this? Some of the really, really easy things you can do to say, “This is a safe

spider. I don’t have to worry about this. Does it have an orbshaped web? That’s going to be those big circular

webs. These are the ones that you walk into and you feel clean all day.” You know what I’m talking about. You’re

like, “Did it get on me?” Probably not. They try to escape pretty fast every time somebody walks into them. I know because I try to catch them while

they’re in the web. They don’t like that. Um, anyone any spider in these big orbshaped web in the United States,

absolutely harmless. Will not hurt you. It takes a lot to get them to bite you. You got to really You got to really push

them to it. I don’t anticipate any of you doing that. Please don’t do that. But those are all fine. You don’t have

to worry about them. Is it a really hairy spider? Here in the US, we don’t have any really dangerous hairy spiders.

If you see a tarantula like this around, unless it’s your friend who collects concerning venomous spiders from other

parts of the world, that’s going to be pretty harmless for you. If you come across a tarantula out in the world, again, don’t try to get a bite from it.

It won’t feel good. It It hurts to get bitten by anything, but it will not be

appreciably venomous. It It will not hurt you uh significantly. Did the spider jump on you? Everybody seen those

little jumping spiders? They’re my favorite. They’re the friendliest spiders. They are so brave. They have no

brains. They think everybody is going to be their friend slash food. Is there

food nearby? They’re looking. They’re always looking. They’re not appreciably venomous to humans. green, blue spiders,

these bright colored spiders, anything other than that orange, red colors, totally fine. In the US, those are all

going to be harmless. If you see anything with bright blue, bright green, that’s a that’s a thumbs up, happy,

friendly spider. I mean, it may not like you, but it’s it’s not going to hurt you. All of these are great signs. If

you see any of these, that will wipe out about 50% of the spiders that you’re regularly going to come into contact with that you might worry about. I hope

that sound about right to everybody. You see a big hairy spider and you’re like, “Is that going to be dangerous?” No,

you’re good. Now, I’m going to introduce some of the dangerous things about spiders. The most

dangerous things about spiders by far, trying to kill them. You think I’m joking? I’m not. I’m really not.

Please don’t use fire to kill spiders. 40 acres here, folks. A gas station.

Homes. I do this presentation every couple of years. I usually Google just

burnt house down spider and just pull up the last couple of things that have come up in the last year every time. There’s

always one or two new ones. Always. I’ve I’ve I’ve never been I’ve I’ve never been uh left dry.

I am hoping that all of you come away from this with this very very important uh lesson which is that you have heard a

lot of spider myths and I want all of you to be absolutely monstrous out in the world telling

people about how this is actually a myth. It’s not real. So here are some things I want you to know. You you do

not eat spiders in your sleep. Y’all you don’t do that. What would you climb into

something wet and No, you wouldn’t do that. The spider’s not going to do that. they you you don’t do that. Um if you

get a bug bite in your sleep, it’s probably not a spider. Spiders also have no reason to want to bite you in your

sleep. I’ll talk about a couple of possibilities where that may not be the case. But in general, unfortunately, it

takes sometimes you can get an immediate bite reaction, but sometimes it can take 24 to even 48 hours to get a bite

reaction from something that has bitten you. A lot of people will wake up the next day after being out and getting

mosquito bites in the evening and think overnight I got these bites. That may have happened yesterday evening. That

may have happened yesterday morning. It doesn’t necessarily mean it just happened overnight.

Anybody hear uh spiders want to bite you or you got every time you get a bad wound, it’s a spider. I know I’ve heard

that one a million times. Um how about you’re always within three feet of a spider? You’re not always, but there are

a lot of them, aren’t there? Um, who’s here heard Daddy Longlegs are the most venomous spider? Have you heard that

one? Yeah, everyone’s heard that one. We’ll talk about that in a minute. Um, if you find a spider in your house, you better get rid of it. It’s going to bite

you. Um, I I think this is one people feel more than they think necessarily, if that that sounds right. Um, and then

black widows always eat their mates. Everybody’s heard that one. That’s a fun one. I said again, spiders want to bite

you. They don’t want to bite you. I swear. Let’s talk about the dangerous ones, though. Daddy Longlegs. Has

everybody seen these? When you think of daddy longlegs, is one of these what you think of usually? I’ve also heard people

tell me the crane fly is something that they consider daddy longlegs. That’s the really long-legged fly that you get in

your tent if you’re ever out camping. And you know, I don’t know why they always show up there. Um, this top

spider uh is also called a cellar spider. They like to hang out in corners, um, stairwells frequently.

You’ll see them. Uh, these bottom ones aren’t spiders at all. They’re actually a completely different form of veracid.

They don’t have teeth that at this stage that have any ability to bite anybody.

They also don’t have venom. They’re really made for mating and that is it at this point. I don’t actually think they

eat uh in their adult form. Um so good news about these things. These are both

harmless spiders. They are not venomous at all to humans. They do not have any human venom. It has nothing to do with

their ability to sink fangs into you. They can’t. They can’t and they won’t. On the other hand, we’ve got black

widows. Everybody knows about black widows. Yeah, these are some of my favorites. I love them very much. Um, I

know. But here’s the thing. You have heard a lot of horrible things about black widows. Probably about half of

them at least are untrue. The rest of them are probably not exactly accurate

either. We’ll talk a little bit about this. Um, here in this image, you can see some of the really uh pretty pieces

of a black widow spider. So, that big bright red hourglass is the classic uh

the classic widow spider marking. Everybody’s seen this. It’s Halloween. You’ve seen it on the decorations out here, I’m pretty sure. Um you’ll often

see it in pictures as the back of the spider has the hourglass on it. This can be really confusing because if somebody

does come across one of these widow spiders that’s, for example, crawling on the ground and they look at the back and they say, “There’s no red hourglass

there. This isn’t the black widow spider.” Bad news, it wasn’t there in the first place. it’s on the belly. Uh,

so that that’s that’s a really frustrating thing for a lot of folks who don’t realize. Now, the reason it’s often shown is that spider these spiders

do tend to hang upside down in their webs because they’re not looking for you. They’re looking for their prey on the ground. That’s where they’re

focused. And you’re going to be able to see that hourglass there when they’re when they’re facing that direction. In

the middle here, you see this white ball. Anybody know what that is? Egg sack. Yes. So, they have these

classic tan very circular egg sacks. I do have some of these that I’ve questionably preserved that I will pass

around. Um, you can see folks have have poked at them, so they’re no longer perfectly circular. On one side, you can

see uh and feel what the egg sack looks and feels like. On the other side, turn around, you can actually see some of the

babies that never got their chance to hatch in the egg sack. So, take a peek.

Big things that are going to help you differentiate a black widow spider. They’re very shiny spiders. They’re they have very brilliant red hourglass

markings most of the time on this one. Can you guys see this? There is an hourglass marking, but it’s hard to see

there. Um, some spiders really don’t have any red hourglass marking at all. Most of the time you’ve got some sort of

red marking. It may not be a perfect hourglass. This one is actually a very dark incomplete hourglass. That’s very

common for northern black widow spiders. Um, there are again several types in the US and two types here. This is one of

the ones that you may be you may be able to see. They can also have some white striped or dotted markings on the back.

You don’t have to worry quite as much about those ones because those are t tend to be juvenile spiders which are

less likely to to bite you in the first place. Um they’re likely to either be solid black or a little bit strike. I’ll

show you some of that in a minute. Um it’s really important to know they are not aggressive spiders. If you mess with

these spiders in almost every situation, they will try to get away from you. They will hide. They will curl up. Actually,

I’m going to go back instead. They have these really interesting hides that they create in their webs and that’s a place

for them to run away and get away from big predators like perhaps me. Uh

they also tend to have triangular shaped webs. These are not going to be those big orb webss that you walk into and are annoyed about. They’re probably going to

be hip height. Knee height or below is typical. They tend to be a little triangular. They’ll be coming out of wherever they hide. And the goal for

them is that they’ll have nice trip wires. If a little bug, they love crickets. Comes along, gets caught in

it, they’ll jump down and grab it out. Let me see. We talked about the eggs.

Can you spot the male in this picture? Anybody see it? I’m going to give you a good good 10 seconds. Look hard. Look

hard. You see it? You got it? Yeah. Here’s a male black widow spider. Real different look, huh? Yeah. The males

males have a little bit more of a fun stripey pattern. They’re very small compared to the female. They’re not that

glossy, beautiful shape. They do have a nice hourglass here, but as you can see, it’s more of a tan orange color. It’s

not that brilliant dark scarlet that you see with the black widow females. The other thing that can help differentiate

the male, they’re going to be usually hanging out on the edge of the black widow’s nest, you know, waiting for their time, you know, checking things

out, seeing seeing if she’s amenable at the moment. um at the front by their face uh where you might expect their

fangs to be, you’ll see these little uh bowl and ball boxing glove looking things. You’ll see that here.

Those are actually uh where they keep their stud. They’re they have very

specialized pedophiles that are used to uh mate and really that alone. You may

have heard that black widow spiders always eat their mates, hence the widow name. That is why they’re called that.

Um, unfortunately that’s because the researchers who first looked at black widow spiders uh made an uh interesting

choice to keep them underfed in very close proximity to the males and uh they got hungry. In the wild most of the time

black widow spiders don’t eat eat their mates. The males do escape which is great for them I guess. Um you’ll notice

that is not what this slide says and that’s because this slide is not about a black widow spider. This spider is about

or this slide is about their southern hemisphere cousins, the redback widow. For my Australian in the audience, I see

you. Um, redback widows are very well known because they do in fact eat their

eat their mates almost all the time. I think it’s about 60 60s something percent. And that is because during

culation, the male will do this really fun somersault into the female’s jaws. Works great for her. She’s got extra

energy to lay an egg sack, raise their babies, prosper out in the world. Doesn’t work so well for the male, you

might guess. Um, I’m a medical doctor, so I’m going to

tell you a little bit about the bite and what what that means. Um, the reason that black widow spiders are so

concerning uh medically is that they contain an a really interesting venom

that has alpha lacrotoxin in it. This is a neurotoxin. It affects mammals, which is not common for spiders. Most of

spider venom is really focused on the insects that they’re eating. There actually some that focus on crustaceians. There’s some that focus on

fish. We’ll talk about those later. Um, but unfortunately, this affects mammals and it forms pores that allow calcium

leakage through cells, specifically sensory and endocrine cells, which does not feel good. It causes some pretty bad

pain. You do not want to get a bite. It stinks. Um, there are some other little

molecules that we don’t know much about in spider venom. This is surprisingly not studied as well as I would

personally like, but that’s because I’m crazy. What happens if a black widow bites me?

You’re not going to believe this, but probably nothing. Um, you probably would think, hey, I just got a bite from a

black widow. I need to go to the hospital right now. Who has who would think that? I Yeah, most people

probably, which is reasonable. Um, great news about black widow bites is that they’re actually very, very unlikely to

be a problem. The vast majority of human bites from black widows are will result

in no symptoms whatsoever. And that is because widows have the ability to give a dry bite. This is where they bite you

to say, “Hey, you’re squishing me. Get off me. You’re on my egg sack.” But they’re not saying, “I would like to eat

you.” Because they cannot. We are too big. They do not need to waste their venom on

us. um they will not eat us. It’s not useful. We’re not a small mammal that they could possibly give it a go. So,

the the good there’s a good chance that if one of them does end up biting you, you’re going to be fine. And you’re

going to find out pretty fast because if you do get a little dose of venom, you’re going to feel it. Um within about

10 minutes, you’re going to be feeling pain, cramping. Um next, you’re going to get some sweating, goosebumps. That’s

also called pyo erection, which is a really goofy uh word in my opinion. Um,

this is something that kind of differentiates uh, black widow and other widow spiders from uh, other types of

uh, illnesses and injuries because sometimes this sweating and these goosebumps will be very localized.

You’ll have the bite on your arm and you’re going to be sweating in a patch on your arm or having goosebumps in a

patch here on your arm. Not very typical for a lot of things. Usually, if you’re sweating, you’re sweating. Um, so it’s

kind of a kind of a fun thing, you know, if if you’re into that sort of thing, which most people experiencing it are not. Um, please give them their space

and respect. They they deserve it. Um, and then the next step is, of course, an expensive emergency room visit. Um, I

like to tell people to avoid that expensive emergency room visit if possible. Sit for 5 10 minutes if you

have a safe way to get to the hospital. Um, or go ahead and go to the hospital. Sit there for a couple of minutes. If

you don’t have any symptoms within about 10 minutes, you’re not going to get symptoms. You got a dry bite. You can go home. You’re in luck. If you do, you’re

gonna want to be there. So, it’s a helpful thing. I also recommend everybody who gets a black widow bite

and has symptoms called poison control because there are some really, really cool um projects going on right now to

try to test out new treatments for um black widow bites. Um,

oh, I’ll come back to that in a minute. But right now, the treatment is really mostly supportive care. It’s are you

feeling really bad? Let’s give you some pain medication. Do you have are you are you having a rough time? Are you

cramping a lot? Let’s try to give you some muscle relaxing. See if that helps a little bit. Um, this is not the case

for everybody. Some folks will get a different treatment. We’ll talk about that in a minute. Um, but for most

people, this is going to be where things end. You get pain medication, you get some support and treatment, you go home.

Probably in the couple of days, you’re going to be feeling better. It can take two to five days for for the average

fight, which is a bummer. Um, I know what you’re thinking, Aaron. Why are people so afraid of black widows if it’s

not that bad most of the time? Um, there are a couple of reasons for that. Mortality used to be quite high. And

when I say quite high, I mean like 25% high. That’s really high. Why? because

in the 1920s the historical treatments were force-feeding you alcohol and opiates. As you may know, that kills a

man. Please don’t do that. Um, they also did lots of exploratory surgeries because people would be having these

really bad abdominal cramping and they would think maybe it’s causing appendicitis. It wasn’t. I’m sorry. Um,

really, really high mortality rate. There’s also another thing that I think may have contributed to our collective

fear of black widow spiders in general. Um, and that’s some of the early reports.

Yes. You can see here this is a 1927 case series. So, a series of cases in uh

over the course of I think 1925 to 1926 um in which every black spider bite case

was collected here. And you’ll note the vast majority of them involve a gentleman being bitten on the penis

while using an outhouse. And I want to say it was like 10 out of the 15 of these cases. Like it was a lot. Um happy

to report we don’t use outouses very much in the US anymore. Um not a lot to worry about here from that respect.

Really exciting news. Um breaking briefing spider news for us all today. But I do think that this quietly

circulating among back among back rooms may have been a part of the significant

fear of black widows that many of us feel today. Um I don’t know. I did delete that slide.

The treatments today are not uh force-feeding you alcohols and opiates. We do have veteran um in this period of

time a lot of work was done to develop an antivenenom for black widow spider bites and you probably think oh

everybody’s got to get that and then they’re fine. It’s not very common to get this antivenenom. That’s because it is a horse serum antivenenom. Um if you

know anything about immunology, you don’t really want to inject people with serums from other animals. If you can

help it, if you got to do it, you got to do it. This is one of those cases sometimes. But you can get some pretty

severe allergic reactions to other animal serum. And this is no exception.

So this antivenenom is really specifically used for people who are very young. So, you’re thinking

children, infants, people who are very old, elderly, have a lot of comorbid conditions, and pregnant women or

pregnant people who uh may go into labor if they are bitten by a black widow

spider, which is not great if you’re not ready to do that. Um, good news is we’ve had several case reports of uh that

labor being halted with the antibom. So, we do use it in that case. Um, one of

the reasons I recommend everyone call poison control if they have a symptomatic black widow bite is that there is work being done right now on a

human serum based antivenenom. Um, if you call poison control, they may have the hookup for that. It’s mostly doing

out being done out west from what I understand, but I don’t know where you guys are going to go. So, I’m going to let you know. Call poison control.

Um, now this is the benefit spinner you’re most likely to find in Georgia. That’s going to be the brown widow. Uh,

who here has heard of the brown widow before? Yeah, I see a couple hands. Yeah, I’ve been talking to some of you. Uh, the brown widow. This is actually my

very favorite spider. This is the one that I was telling you about that was newly invasive in my region uh when I

was 12 and very excitedly trying to send venomous spiders through the mail. Um, this originally came from South Africa.

We believe probably uh shipping truck shipping vans or shipping vans shipping

uh cars. It has since migrated across the US oftent times in shipping trucks

and on shipping trucks. It is almost the same from a medical perspective as the

black widow spider with a couple of really exciting changes. One is that it is actually even less likely to bite you

than a black widow is. Um, if you mess with these guys, not only will they curl up and try to get away, but they’ll

actually curl into a ball and fall out of the web in the hopes that you will lose them and they can they can escape

from you there. They are not aggressive whatsoever. Um, they also tend to inject

slightly less venom than black widow spiders, which is great because if they do inject venom, you don’t want that.

And like black widow spiders, they are very unlikely to inject venom at all, even if they do manage to bite you or

you manage to get them to bite you. Again, it takes some work. Um, you can still get uh thatism or that severe pain

and other symptoms from these bites. Um, and in in very very very rare cases, that can end up being fatal. So, if you

are symptomatic and you’re having a hard time, please do call poison control, go to the hospital. There are treatments,

don’t tough it out, but it’s unlikely you’ll get to be in that situation at all. These spiders are brown. They are

also kind of shiny looking like black widows. You might say, “Hey, on the left, that’s a black widow.” It’s not. I

can tell the difference. You don’t have to tell the difference for any functional purpose. If it looks like that, it’s a widow spider.

The hourglass is a little more orange. It’s a little more bottom heavy. You can see these very bright colors here and

here. That indicates to me this is a brown widow spider. If you looked at this under the light, the legs would actually be stripes, which is also very

common for brown widow spiders. This is another brown widow spider. They just have a lot of variation between them.

There’s no real difference between them other than that. They just look different from the colors. Um, but the

big difference that you’re going to be able to identify them by if you do find an interesting web is going to be this middle section. Those are their egg

sacks. Um I do have some in a jar that I’ll be passing around. Sorry, the ones in the jar are really small. I don’t

know why. I just grabbed them this afternoon, so I figured I should compare them. But um they they’re usually a

little bit smaller than than a black widow’s egg sacks, but not that much smaller. Nothing else has spiky egg sacks like this. If you see these out in

your yard, you’ve got brown widow spiders. You don’t have to do much about it. These ones really like living close to human habitations. I have I count on

one hand the case reports I’ve even seen of these binding people. It does not happen often. I don’t expect it to

happen. I broke it. No, that was my fault.

Sorry, I was having too much fun. They don’t come back. So, I I wouldn’t worry about it. Um,

some people do like to get rid of them anyway. That’s okay. You guys know fiddle bats. Who are sort

of a fiddle back? Uh, violin spider round recluse. They have some really fun

nicknames. Uh, can anyone recognize the fiddles on the back here? Anybody know which one of these is the real recluse?

Here, I put the fiddles near them so you can kind of compare to the best of your ability. Um, sorry about the blurry

photo. That’s a very realistic photo of what people sent me.

None of those were ground recluse. I’m just being mean. Uh, there are a lot of spiders that have fiddle looking uh

identification markings on their backs. It’s a terrible way to tell what a brown recluse is, unfortunately. I do like to

point that out before I introduce them. This is a brown recluse that one of my friends caught for me. Um, she’s really

pregnant, which is why her backside is so large. Um, you can see that lovely

violin shape there. Um, as you might guess from the name, they are very reclusive. I tried to go out and catch

some with her because she had an infestation in her home. Couldn’t find any that day. She had to give me one

later when she was able to find one. Um, all right. Pop quiz group. How many eyes do spiders have? Shout it out.

There’s a lot of variation here. If if you if you think back very hard for your

elementary school science classes, they will tell you spiders have eight legs, eight eyes. This is an exception. Round

recluse have six eyes. Um, I’ll show you some other exceptions later. They’re fun. This is one of the best ways to

identify a recluse. They just get a really good close-up picture of their eye, which people love to hear when I

ask them for better identification. Um, these again, very reclusive, unlikely to

find you. We are in their zone. We’re right here on the corner of the zone where you can find brown recluse

spiders. There are a couple of other uh other uh spiders that are related to

them that you’ll find in the southwest, but you’ll notice the vast majority of the US doesn’t really have recluse

spiders. That does not stop people from having reclusive spider bites in those areas. Talk about that in a little bit.

Um, but what happens to you if you do get a bite from a brown recluse spider? You’ll be shocked to know that the

answer is probably nothing. More than 90% of their bites are dry bites. Nothing will happen to you. 90% of the

time you get a brown recluse bite. I know. Insane, right? Because I know who here has heard of somebody getting a

brown recluse bite nearly losing their leg, their arm, getting a large amount of flesh chopped off. Yeah, we we’ve all

heard the stories. Uh, absolutely. Sometimes you will get a pale lesion

that will form. It’ll end up becoming a modeled bruise-like patch and then become necrotic over a period of several

uh usually several weeks. You can get some serious systemic symptoms um in

early on after being bitten. Fever, chills, rash, bruising. Uh you might end up being very pale, weak. If any of that

happens, you do want to see a doctor because I want to get some tests if you roll into my clinic with that. One of

the serious things that can happen with round recluse bites is that you can end up with hemolysis. Uh this is when your

blood cells break apart. As you might imagine, that’s a bad day. We want to treat that if you get to that

point. Um so 90% of the time nothing happens. that other 10% you may end up

with a wound or very very rarely with systemic symptoms that will require will

require medical treatment. Um there is no antivenenom for this available in the US. There’s one if you’re in if you’re

in Chile um Chile if you happen to be bitten by a rootless spider in Chile, go to their hospital. I

don’t have that for you here in the hospitals, but you’re likely to be fine. What doesn’t really happen with these is

you probably won’t lose a limb. You won’t end up with giant oils filled with pus. You won’t get a sudden rapid

immediate wound. Um, that’s very shocking to pretty much everybody I’ve ever talked to about this who hasn’t

read brown recluse literature. Not that I recommend everybody go out and do that, but it it’s it’s very different

from what you’ll hear on the street. One of the biggest issues with brown recluse is that they are blamed for every kind

of skin lesion under the sun. anything you can imagine. Somebody has told me it was a brown recluse bite and I ask them,

“Did you see the spider biting you?” And they say, “No, every time.” And I say, “Have you ever gotten a mosquito bite?”

They’ll say, “Yes.” I said, “Did you see the mosquito biting you?” And they’ll say, “Oh, yeah.” I said, “You may see a

bronus biting you, too. Just you might.” There’s a lovely gentleman from UC

Riverside named Rick Better who created a tool that he published in uh JAMAMA, the Journal of American Medical

Association. This gives you a really nice way to remember what is not a brown

recluse bite. If somebody shows up with an unusual wound in your clinic, uh, this is the notreluse tool. I highly

recommend using it on your friends and family the next time somebody tells you they’ve got a recluse bite because all

of these are really good tip offs that your friend does not have a recluse bite. They tend to bite once. They’re

not likely to bite more than once. It’s usually if you’re squishing them there. You got some old clothes out of the

attic, out of a closet. You maybe put on sheets that have been in storage for a while, lay down on those. You squished

the spider, it tried to bite you in defense. It’s not going to be a bunch of bites. They don’t want to eat you. They

can’t eat you. They’re too small. When and where it occurs is also

important. That occurrence is for where did it interact with you. If you’re outside and you got a bite, it’s very

unlikely that that’s from a brown recluse spider. You’re not going to see them while you’re gardening so much as you will see them tucked away in a

closet or in bedding. The timing is also important. Um, if it’s really cold out, they they won’t be around. You’re not

likely to to experience them. Red center on the wounds, not likely to be reclused by elevated wounds, not not them. Um, if

it’s going on for a really long time, somebody comes in, they’re like, “The last six months I’ve had this wound,

we’re going to biopsy that.” And if they’re not saying we should biopsy that, maybe you suggest it.

Really large wounds. Also, it is very unusual that you get a really large wound. These tend to be relatively

small. It can be big from your perspective because that’s your body that you’ve got a wound on. Like it’s there’s really no small wound for for my

body. Personally, I’m not a fan of them. Um, but if somebody’s telling you, man, my whole back or my whole leg’s falling

off, I don’t think that’s a recluse. I’m going to be looking at alternative diagnosis. The other big one is

ulcerating early. People tell me, “Oh yeah, this wound showed up in one day. I was wholly fine the next day. Boom, big

open crater.” That’s not a recluse bite. It takes them about 10 to 14 days to even get to the point where they start

to ulcerate, start to form that open wound. Um, they also tend not to be swollen, although there can be

exceptions for the face and the feet. Please don’t step on a spider with your face.

It happens, but try not to let it happen. Um, they don’t tend to have a

whole lot of paws on the inside. They they tend to be kind of a dry necrosis for the most part. Um, you’ll notice

that a lot of this could be avoided if you shake out bedding, shake out clothes that’s been stored in the closet. Since

we are in a recluse area, I do want you to think about that. Um, although they aren’t commonly found in the city

limits. When I Google photos of recluse bites, I have found every possible thing

you could possibly have medically other than a recluse bite as the images. Even

in medical literature, I have seen things where I’m like, that is assuredly not a recluse bite. I’ll go through the

literature. I’ll go through the thing and they’ll say, well, we figured it was a recluse bite. No spider was ever seen.

They don’t live in an area with recluse spiders. You got to be really careful with these

photos. Also, please don’t Google this. will not like what you get. Um, I have

gone ahead and not put any of those into these slides. Now, what about spider babies? You’re

probably thinking, or you have thought in the past, or perhaps you saw one and you were concerned. They’re really

small. They’re not really able to bite you. They don’t have a lot of venom. They’re pretty harmless, and about 90%

of the ones you see are going to be eaten by something else before it ever gets to a size that you would be concerned about it in general. That’s

the good news. Uh, bad news is they tend to have a lot of babies. Any guesses how many babies you might find in a black

widow egg sack? Throw them out. Throw them out. 300.

7,000. 7,000. Is it 7,000? That’s a good one. Okay. Yeah, you’re probably going to find between about 30

and 300. That’s pretty good. Yeah, you can get a lot. I think the one I passed around is closer to the 30 side. That’s

usually where I’ve seen them. A lot of them will eat each other on the inside before they even get out. So, you’ll never know.

I want to give you a caveat here. This next slide is not going to happen to you.

But if it does happen to you, this is how you’re going to deal with it. Okay.

First aid for a spider in your ear.

Why is there a spider in your ear? You ask. Spider is scared. It thinks your ear is a cave. It’s dry in there. Seems

like a nice spot. It’s wrong. It doesn’t know that. They don’t have big brains, folks. Since the cave is a safe space,

any threat to the spider may make it go further into the cave. This is, of course, the opposite of what we’re

looking for when a spider is in your ear. If you think a spider is in your ear, do not shine a light into your ear

to look for it. It will hide from the light in your ear.

If you think a spider is in your ear, do not stick fingers or Q-tips into your ear. It will hide from these items in

your ear. Also, don’t forget your eard drum is still in your ear and could still be damaged from sticking things in

your ear. People tend to forget that part when there is a critter in their ears.

Instead, you’re going to use a mineral oil or alcohol. And when I by alcohol, I mean rubbing alcohol, not alcohol that

you’re buying here. You can do that, but it will be sticky. Um, use a mineral oil or alcohol to

gently rinse the spider out of the ear. You’re not going to do pressure because remember your eard drum is still in your ear. You’re going to gently continue to

pour it in. Then you’re going to pour it out. It will come out after not that much time. Here’s one from this week.

One of my old roommates sent this to me. Um she had a patient in her clinic who uh on last Friday started to hear

something in her ear. A little screeching noise. It was bothering her. Um

on Tuesday, she came into my friend’s clinic. They washed out her ear. This

little guy came out. He’s going to go live his happy life, not in her ear. Good news, she did not get a spider bite

during this. And spiders don’t want to bite you. They want to live in your cave ear. Apparently, they don’t. I promise they do not do not want to actually do

this. This won’t happen to you. This was just one that I happened to get this week and thought was fun.

All right. Spiders don’t want to hurt you. They just want to raise a family. This is a wolf spider. Um, wolf spiders

are uh spiders that don’t really live in their own webs. They wander the world looking for food. They are voracious

predators, hence the wolf particle spider. Also, they’re a little bit hairy. It’s another piece of a wolf spider. Remember what I said about hair?

Not dangerous. Remember this. Wolf spiders you may come across in your house. This one’s actually carrying an

egg sack, which is very well camouflaged there on the left. When she hatches her eggs, they will climb onto her as little

baby spiders. She will carry them around until they are too big, and they will fall off and wander on their merry way.

They’re excellent mothers, as you can see. Um, if you’ve ever heard somebody say they stepped on a spider and it

dissolved into a million spiders. Anyone ever heard somebody say that? They stepped on a mama wolf spider. Yeah,

it’s actually a bummer for everyone involved. That was that was a young mother lost her life too soon. Um, yeah,

don’t step on them. Let them go on their way and they will lose their spiders elsewhere. Spiders also don’t want to hurt you.

They want to go fishing. This is a fishing spider. Uh we do have several dolomdes species here in Georgia. You

will see them around rivers, around creeks. Um they will usually be on a tree, low on a tree facing the water.

They are very large. Some of them can be quite hairy as well. Um I see some nods.

Some folks have seen them. Uh this is one of my absolute favorite videos of all time because that’s insane.

This spider, as you might guess, does have venom specific for fish, which most spiders do not have, just like they

don’t have venom specific for mammals. This is a South African wheel spider. You will not find this here in the US,

but uh you can find them living on sand dunes in South Africa. Um

these spiders have a serious predator, which is a wasp. And this is the fastest way they can get away from that wasp

without being stung by it. It is to straight up roll down the hill as fast as possible and hope that they escape

it. Uh it’s one of my other favorite I have a lot of favorite spiders if we can’t tell. Um

how big is that? It’s not that big. It’s not that big. Um

spiders just want to have food delivered to their doorsteps just like us. Um it’s a trapoor spider. I’ve always wanted to

find them out in the wild. I never can because they are nocturnal and really really well camouflaged and I’m not

constantly throwing food in rock walls hoping that one pops out. Um, they just

want to blend into the crowd. Can anybody actually see the spider on the left side here? Um, it has this is an

orb weaver that’s made a lovely junk web, which means it’s just picked up little things from its environment to

shove into the web to disguise itself. The spider itself is here. It’s right there in the middle. Um, it’s got some

weird little pokey bits here and its legs are curled up right there under it. Um, this is one of those fishing spiders

that you can find here. Um, this is me. That’s my hand. I am holding a cypress tree. I’m actually kayaking in this

photo which you cannot see. I’m holding on to the tree because otherwise I will float away. Um, I’m also trying to take

a photo of that spider. Can you see it? It’s It’s in that crevice there. I did manage to tease it out. Tried to shake

hands with it. it didn’t really appreciate that. But, um, that’s the size. I mean, they’re they’re pretty big

spiders and they’re hiding in pretty small spots. They they don’t really want to bother you. They want to hide and catch fish. Um, they also just want to

be loved. This is one of those lovely jumping spiders we were talking about. Quite often they’re being sold as pets

these days. You can go to any of the reptile festivals that show up in in Atlanta and buy a little jumping spider

as a pet. The females will live longer than the males. They’re also bigger. Um, some people have told me they’re more friendly. I think they’re all pretty

friendly. They don’t have big frames. They also want to dance. Anybody seen

one of these? It’s also not found here. This is a southern hemisphere spider. This is a peacock spider. They have

fantastic mating dances. So, this little guy is trying to impress somebody. That big expandable uh piece you’re looking

at is actually the spider’s abdomen, which they will inflate for this mating dance. Um, what you’re seeing here in

the front is its sephlothorax, that head and thorax combination, and then it’s lifting his butt in the air, wiggling

around, as we all do, trying to find snakes. Pop quiz. How many eyes do spiders have?

Eight. Except for these ones. Here’s some sixeyed spiders. Um, this is a six-eyed sand spider. Again, you will

not find this here, but I do love them because they do bury themselves in sand. I think that’s hilarious. You won’t find

that brown recluse spider here, but again, reclusive. Good luck finding them. I have a hard time.

This is a spitting spider. You can find these here in Georgia. I have caught several. They’re wonderful. You might be

asking, “What the heck just happened?” It just spit a web/venom

combination at that fruitfly. These are insanely bizarre spiders. They will spit

a sticky and venomated web at their prey in the hopes of catching them. In this

case, it landed on um a glass plate, so you can actually see it drying there uh in this in this video, which I adore. Um

what’s this ant doing in my spider presentation? This is a mimic. Uh this is an ant mimic spider. It’s picking up

its two front legs and pretending that they’re feelers. Um it thinks it can get close to ants that

way and and catch them and eat them. It’s probably right. I’m assuming there’s a good reason for this. I found

this one on my wall at my house. Now, what’s in your backyard? This is the question everybody wants wants to

ask. The draw spiders definitely in your backyard right now. Um for the next probably week or so, it won’t be too

much longer. It’s getting cold. Um these are newly invasive spiders to the US and Georgia. They’re a close relative of the

native golden orb weaver. They are absolutely everywhere. You’ve all seen them. Uh here’s one making a web in my

backyard. Um on the right, you can see a really nice version of it. And I’m going to pass around one that I made earlier.

Um, these produce gigantic webs. You’re going to see that big circular orb web.

Remember, orb web harmless. Despite the big red colors and terrifying look,

these are harmless spiders. That big orb web usually has three layers for the Joro spider. That front layer usually

has something hanging from it, like a leaf or a stick. That’s going to be for you to see and not walk into. It doesn’t

want to catch you. It wants to catch bugs. They don’t have venom for you. They have venom for bugs. The back

layer, same thing. That back layer, it’s going to have sticks, little pieces of dirt or things in them. Again, that’s

for you to see and not walk into. We’ve all made the mistake. It happens. The middle layer, all sticky goodness,

hoping to catch critters. The next spider that I hope you still

see around despite the draw infestation, is going to be the golden silk orb weaver. Um, you’ll notice that these

spiders both have that same uh genus name. They’re very closely related spiders. They look alike, too. They’re

native. They look almost the same as a Joro. The difference for you all to remember is that the old one has leg warmers. Leg warmers are, of course, an

old thing, as the young folks in the room can tell you. I’m sorry older people. I love being warm, so I think it

was a good idea. These guys think it was a good idea, too. Look at those fuzzy leg warmers. And remember, fuzzy

harmless. We love our fuzzy leg warmer spiders. If you see them, these are the fuzzy leg warmers here. This is your

native golden orb weaver species. Now, these are both going to produce a beautiful golden web. I have used it to

make bracelets and bookmarks when I knock webs down around my house if I’m annoyed at them. Sometimes they’re in

places you don’t want them to be. Feel free to knock those webs down. They’ll rebuild somewhere a little bit different in the hopes that that’ll be better. If

it’s not, knock it down again. They’ll move. It’s okay. The garden spider or writing spider

they’re often called is another one you’re going to find here. That’s a different genus, different species, also native to Georgia. They have a much

thicker abdomen. They may have designs in their web, hence the writing. I’ve been told that if you see your name in

the writing spider’s web, you will die soon. So, if your name isz I’m sorry,

nothing to be done. Um, I love these photos. They got a good front on the

left, back on the left. You can see it’s the same spider. It’s got a little beetle in its in its uh web. And then on

this side, you’ve got the male over here. You see those boxing gloves and its mouth. This is a male trying to get

lucky. Who knows? Maybe it will. Unfortunately, orb weavers are some of those spiders that are more likely to

eat their mates. So, it’s got to be pretty careful. It may or may not make it out of this trrist.

You’ll notice these are also a little bit hairy, too. Again, hairy harmless. Keep reminding yourself these big orb webss, which these will have even with

the writing. big circular orb webs hanging right where you’re going to walk into them. All harmless.

Here are some other ones you can see in Georgia. This is one that I was messing with and it did not appreciate it. That was its defense mechanism.

Um yeah, this is a lovely arrow shape. Anyone guess what the name of this

spider is? It’s an arrowhead spider. Yeah, we’re really creative. Um this is

also an orb weaver. And you’ll notice that when I was messing with it, it didn’t jump out of its web at me, but it threatened to like it was going to. It

won’t. They will never do this. These spiders are really attached to their webs. That’s their whole life. They

spend a lot of time and energy and effort making these webs. They’re not gonna they’re not going to jump on you.

They might escape from you. They might try to get out of the web if you’re destroying the web. They don’t want to be on you. They’re not going to jump out

of their web onto you because then they have to get back to the web. They don’t want to have to do that or they have to make a lot of So, they’ll have to spend

a lot of energy making more webs. This is a spiny back orb weaver. Anyone seen any of these nearby? I love these. You

can find these here. I think they all have like little smiley face skulls on the back. Um, they have a really fun

scientific name. It’s gastroampus, which means spiky stomach. Um, I find really

amusing. Again, weaver. Completely harmless, despite the fact that it’s got a skull on its back. Harmless. Good luck

getting one to bite you. You can try. Here’s uh one I also found in my

backyard. Uh, as you can see, it’s uh just caught something.

Yeah, poor guy. Um, yeah, I really like the lightning bugs, so this was kind of

a bummer for me. It happens. Um, these are called marbled orb weavers. Um,

they’re also called uh the pumpkin spider because they’ve tend to show up around this time of year. Keep an eye

out. You might see them around. Again, weavers. Harmless. Very bright, very beautiful, very brilliant colors, very

shocking patterns. Harmless. Yes. Where are they other than now? These are

my favorites. They’re so docil, but I never see them until Yeah, this is the season for them. So,

when they’re small, you may not even notice them. They may be more out of the way. They may be hiding during the day,

so you might see their webs or you might not. Some of these spiders actually um trying to remember if this species does

or not, but quite a few of the orb weaver spiders will actually take down their web um and remake it pretty

regularly. So, they may pop out at night and you may not be seeing them until they’re very large and feel more

comfortable being out in the open because small spiders are prey for everything. Um but yeah, this is their

time. This is when they’re big, beautiful, out in the world. Uh other times of the year they’re going to be

not around at all or have just hatched or be too small to really be noticed. Um but keep an eye out. You’ll see some of

these very beautiful different colors, too. Um this is one you won’t necessarily find in your backyard, but

you may find it if you go hiking hiking in the uh in the mountains here in North Georgia. This is an ancient spider. It’s

sometimes called a living fossil. It’s a lampshade spider because their webs look like lampshaped.

It’s pretty fun. There are three populations of these spiders in the world that I’m aware of. There’s this

one. There’s one in the San Bernardino Mountains in California. And there’s one in a very small chunk of China at some

point many millions of years ago. They were all in the same place. Pangia did not exist for very long. They broke up

and now we just have these three left. It’s pretty cool. Keep an eye out. You’ll see them on cave walls or or the

edges of walls uh in the in the caves and cliffs up in up in the mountains

here. What can you do to help preserve these

beautiful, lovely creatures that I hope you now believe are beautiful, lovely, and and pretty amazing. Hopefully people

have some of these thoughts. I hope. Um leave the leaves. You’ll notice some of the prey items that I’ve gotten there.

those beetles, um the fireflies, these are things that really do better if you

don’t sweep up your leaves and shove them somewhere else. They want to live grow in the leaf litter when they grow

up and become big, strong fireflies. They’ll be caught by my spiders, which will be very happy. If you’re able to

try to keep places that are a little bit more natural in your yards or garden, um you also want to dump standing water. Do

not leave pools of water around. And that is because if you do do that, mosquitoes will show up. They will grow.

They’re awful. And they will result in your community spraying for mosquitoes, which will kill all the other bugs, will

kill these critters, may kill my spiders, or at least make it harder for them to get food. Please dump your

water. I hate mosquitoes. That’s why I’m on team spider. They’ll eat them for me. Please correct misinformation. If you

hear somebody telling you about how their leg was rotting off because the run reclusite, I want you to think of me every single day.

And along those lines, there are other things that you can also do when you’re out and about, you see something that’s interesting or you’re not sure about. Um

there’s a wonderful app that I think some of you are aware of called I Naturalist. There’s some other options like that which you can use to take

photos of spiders that you don’t know or don’t recognize around. And um if you take a photo, upload it, it will give

you an idea of what the app thinks it is, but also there will immediately be somebody else there saying the app is

wrong. It’s this very helpful in my opinion. Um, and you can always add to

our scientific knowledge as Dora spread across the the southeast US. We are tracking it. We’re trying to figure out

what we can do about it. If anything, what we should do about it, they are in

a very similar place as our native spiders. They’re almost exactly the same, but they are expanding rapidly.

So, if you’re keeping a pollinator garden, they will eat your pollinators. So, go ahead and kill those. Move them

out of the way. Some folks think we should be working really hard on eradicating them. Others are saying it’s not a huge issue for them to be here.

Um, keep an eye out that knowledge is changing rapidly. There’s a lot of research going on on juror spiders right

now. If you live in an area where they’re just showing up, head to jorowatch.org, report your spider, let

let folks know that they’re in your region. Um, and then of course you can become a Xerxes ambassador. Uh, the Xerxes Society is a society focused on

insects and arachnids. Um, my favorite thing, not everyone’s favorite thing,

but if you’re interested, look them up. And if you really hate spiders after

this whole talk, you can be on team Wasp if that’s your thing. Wasps love

spiders. They will eat them. They will put babies in them. I’m not a fan.

All right, that’s all, folks. Do things that scare you. Check out spiders. Get your vaccines.

What would all the people show me?

It’s almost always

like It totally depends on the bite. Uh they can range from looking like any other

kind of small directed bite to the classic thing you’ll see is it’ll be um

a pale lesion. They’ll start out very pale. It may get a little bit modeled. So you may see some modeling. It might

turn a little bit of a darker dusky color. Again, not red, not raised. It’s going to be sunken usually. So these

like it may have irregular borders. A regular border is usually a small regular border lesion sunken maybe a

little bit of modeling. Over the course of about 10 to 14 days it’ll get a little more sunken and then the skin on

the top will start to come off. It’ll be usually a pretty shallow ulcer. So that’s what I would usually expect. Um

treatment is actually just supportive. You do not need to immediately run to the doctor to get it treated. I actually don’t even recommend people see a doctor

if they’re not experiencing other symptoms until about a week in and that’s to schedule an appointment for

two weeks in suggest take a look at wound care if they need it. Um that’s that’s really my thing. If you’re

experiencing some other symptoms of fevers, chills, you’re not feeling well, you’re pale, please.

Yes. Where do spiders over winter? Because they’re so

kind. They like to sustain gas. Are they going underground to stay warm?

They’re dying. So, how is that population sustained over time?

Yeah. So, these spiders will actually lay eggs and die right around now. Next

couple of weeks, you’ll stop seeing so many of these big webs out there. Um, those eggs will overwinter just fine.

They’ll hatch in the spring in the sack, in the egg sack. They’ll hatch in the spring. Those spiders will start to

disperse over. You’ll actually, you can go out early in the spring, summer, and take a look, and you’ll see these very

tiny looking spiders making, you know, moderate sized webs. Those are just baby

joros. Over the season, they’ll get bigger and bigger. They’ll malt, and um they they do not tend to live through

the winter very well. If you I mean,

it’s a it’s there’s a lot of back and forth on whether we should be killing these spiders in general. I

don’t I think the jury is still out. I think if you are concerned about displacement of your native species in

your yard, it’s very reasonable to get rid of these ones. Um, you know, keep an eye out for those leg warmers. That’s

what you want. Um, but if if you’re seeing too many drawer, you’re not liking it, it’s okay. It’s okay to get

rid of them. They’ll squish like everything else. Are there ideas about why they’re so

successful? Yeah. They have a very very similar They’re

very, very similar to our native species, but very, very similar. I think really just the fact that they were introduced here. The habitat is just the

same for them as anywhere else. They’re like, “Yeah, this is great. I love it here. It’s a little bit humid. It’s a little bit hot. This is where I’m from.

No, they tend to have a lot of babies.” Yeah. Yeah. I’m imagining that in their home environment maybe more things eat

the babies than they do here. I don’t know for sure, but that’s one of the big pieces is um those brown widows I talked

about earlier, those guys, the more invasive species, they will have five,

six, seven egg sacks a season. Black widows maybe two to three. So having the

different number of egg sacks of babies out there does play a huge role in what’s around in your area.

It’s true that um likely is actually more than

Yes. So, um you’re really looking at the size of me versus the size of an infant.

That same amount of venom is going to be a problem for infants more than it will be for me. So, infants almost always get

antivenenom for safety. It’s you don’t want to play around with that.

Yeah, widow spiders can cause problems with pets. Um, I don’t recommend letting your pet get fit by one. It again, these

things don’t really want to do that. But if your pet likes to stick its nose into a widow’s web, maybe relocate that

widow. It’s not a good spot for it. Is it a myth that black widows around?

Oh, what a great question. So, there have been quite a few very contradictory studies on this. Um, what I can tell you

is that there are studies that show that these spiders can carry infections.

There are not studies that show that these spiders cause infections. It’s a little bit different because you all

carry staff on your bodies as well. You’re not causing a ton of infections. I hope I hope

use good food safety. Um, we can only hope. But I do know that there is kind

of an ongoing battle about like will these spiders cause infections. There aren’t a lot of documented reports of

known documented widow spider bites causing severe skin infections. In fact, most of them will tell you the bite

doesn’t really look like anything at all for a black widow. People are like, “It bit me right here.” And you’re like, “Where?”

But you know, they’ll be feeling it. They can tell you. Besides mosque, what other predators

prey on spiders? And are they prey on enduro spiders? Yeah. So, in this area, wasps are, of

course, the big ones. Um, lots of spider predatory wasps. Pick aside, folks. I

have one. No, I’m just kidding. They’re all really interesting. But, um, there are a lot

pretty much anything that eats other types of bugs will also eat spiders if it wants to. Amphibians, reptiles, big

spider fans. Um, you’ll notice they’re in kind of big open webs in a lot of these cases. The amphibians will not be

getting them easily there. bummer for us if if you’re not a spider fan, but or if you’re more of an amphibian fan, you can

pick sides, too, if you want. Um, but uh birds will frequently eat them. And that

also that extra layer of webs for these jorros, that will also kind of keep some of these predators out as well because

it’s very hard to get through their webs. If you guys have played around with their webs, they’re incredibly strong webs. Incredibly strong. Um,

yeah, it’s and if you’re if you’re a bird looking to get a spider and you run into those first few layers of webs, you

might abort that mission. Um, I’m no bird, but I am. Um, but yeah, interested

interested animals, the rogue deer. Um, really it’s there are quite a few

predators, but the biggest predators to spiders are going to be wasps. The second biggest are going to be other spiders.

Following up on that, websites.

They will they will eat other spiders. They all look like prey to them. Yeah. Am I bigger than it? Can I eat them?

Great food. And other other spiders will do that, too. You don’t often see kind

of colonies of webs. You’ll see somebody will become dominant at some point.

Oh, black widows. Why why would they evolve toxic toxic commands?

Such a great question. Black widows are very interesting in

that they will eat anything. Um, I have seen photos of them with snakes in their webs. I have seen photos of them with

relatively large birds in their webs. They have also very, very strong spider silk. Um, I imagine that they will

sometimes eat small mammals. Um, I haven’t personally seen it, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Um, I’m

pretty sure I’ve seen a photo of a rat once at that happens in the southwest.

Yeah, that sounds about right. Can’t confirm that.

I don’t think so. No, I think they’re they’re separate uh species wise. They may look very similar, but um a really

fun thing about spider researchers is that they spend a lot of time looking very carefully under a microscope at

spider genitalia. That is one of the easiest ways to tell spider species apart. If you’re not sure about your

brown or black widow that you’ve got and you can’t tell which one it is and maybe it’s got a funky hourglass, it’s not

really easy. They both look black sometimes that spider research will pull that up under a microscope and say,

“This is obviously a brown wow spider.” and you’ll say, “Oh, obviously

it’s we’ve all got our hobbies, guys. This is mine. I’m sorry.”

You mentioned that or weavers sometimes take their webs down and put them back up. Is it just or weavers? And why do

they do that? Other spiders will do it, too. Um, one of the You’ve all seen cobwebs around.

You know how a cobweb is sometimes really wispy looking? It might have some gunk in it. It doesn’t, you know, you

can tell a cobweb versus an active spider web quite quite often just by looking at it. That’s because spiders

actually do a lot of maintenance on their webs. It’s their home. They try to keep it tidy. Um they’ll be cleaning out

dust and debris. Uh to do that, often spiders will actually eat their own webs. They’ll recycle it. So that’s at

night. Many of these orb weaver spiders will eat the web. They’ll come into a different place. They’ll remake it. The

reason for that is that in the daytime, maybe if they’re not catching it, if it’s a spider that is mostly catching moths at night, it doesn’t really want

anything during the day, doesn’t want anybody walking into the web or destroying it during the day. It’s a lot of energy. It’s going to eat that web,

recycle it for later, save some energy for itself. Some of the spiders in other places where they won’t be walking into

as much, won’t do that so often. So, they’re pretty stable. are weavers I notic they will like

mark their webs like spiders is that just for visibility so predator doesn’t

bump it a lot of research on that some folks think it’s a marking for birds to help birds actually in many cases stay

away from the web and avoid the web in other cases some folks believe it may help them attract the type of prey

they’re looking for that some some things will see that on the ultravio ultraviolet spectrum and think it’s

something that they want to be attracted to Um, I think the jury’s out on a lot of it there. I I think this is one of

those places where there is a lot of uh there’s a lot of literature back and forth. I I don’t I can’t tell you what

the real answer is on that. I’m going to have to defer to the experts there, but keep an eye out. Maybe you’ll see it

breaking news. We’re 100% sure what those hash marks are on the spiderw webs. Yahoo News or something, I’m sure.

Sorry I’ve kept you all really late.

Thank you. Thank you everyone. Um if you are interested in talking to us about other uh topics, we’re available right

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