Borwn "house spiders"

[cricket54]

Has anybody every fed a tiny orb type weaver house
spider to their tarantula spiderlings or other
arachnids? I tried feeding one to a young black
widow once and the tiny spider, which was much smaller,
actually killed my black widow. She didn't even
try to defend herself! That was pretty disappointing
and completely unexpected. It was was what they call
a "house spider" a brownish spider with the
females shaped the same as a widow, and the
males that have the same shape as black widow males.
I know none of these spiders here are exposed to
pesticides because I don't use any around the
house and so my house has large and small
"house spiders" all over. I'm constantly cleaning
cobwebs off of stuff. Maybe the wolf spiders in
our basement eat them? When these house spiders
make an eggsack, they usually have aout 3
of them so I can't keep up with all these tiny spiders!
They often appear in my tarantulas tank and steal
her crickets at night so I try to remove them, but I
really hate killing them. Usually I put them outside,
but them its not hard for them to find their way back
inside. When we lived in NC, we didn't have this
problem. The wolf spiders came inside and feasted
on them and any other bugs along with anoles, the little green "house lizards". Wish the lizards could survive
loose in the house here!
Sharon

 

[Wade]

Your house spiders are probably either Steatoda or Achaearanea species. They belong to the same family (Theridiidae) as the widows.

They are very good at what they do. I pretty much let these guys have free range in my animal room, and subsequently I have almost no pest problems. They eat escaped crickets and keep the fly and moth population in check. I have not ever seen a pest cockroach, and I never spray. Sometimes they're a little TOO good and they've gotten into scorpion and stick insect containers and killed the occupants! I've even found young five-lined skink carcsses in webs.

Wade

 

[cricket54]

I can't help but give these guys free range, they are
on everything. The only bug they don't seem to take
care of are the carpenter ants and termites. Like I
said I haven't used pesticides here and just hate
killing these spiders. We also have a strange one
that looks very much like some kind of violin spider
but we have been told there are none in NJ. Its very
pale and has what appears to be a faint shape
of a violin on the carapace, but it is so light it
is hard to tell. We haven't found any info on these.
They don't spin a web as far as we can tell, just travel
around. No one here has been bit by any...yet. Don't
know if they would bite, don't give them a chance.
We've tried to do some extensive searchs on these,
talked to emptomologists here in Jersey and they
don't know of course. They are such a light color
that if I tried to post a picture, don't think you could see it.
They don't get as large as a full grown brown recluse
and they are not the males from the brown house
spiders we have because I have seen them. South
Jersey seems to be quite a "buggy" place compared
to what I expected. We are on the edge of the
sand hills type area.
Sharon

 

[Iowa T Keeper]

How big are these house spiders? The ones I have seen in our house are small like not even an inch leg span.

 

[cricket54]

They aren't real big, around between 1/4 and 1/2"
without stretching their legs all the way out. The
only brown recluse I have seen had a very large
abdomen, and these definitely aren't one of those,
but look like the "violin" type spiders that we have
seen photos of that are only supposed to be
in the desert like places in Arizona.
Sharon

 

[xanadu1015]

They do look more like a desert loxosceles(sp?) than a brown recluse.



Laura

 

[cricket54]

Thats the name I couldn't think of thanks Laura. It
looks a whole lot like one of those and everyones
says its not possible. I've even seen one where I
work, at an Eckerd store, in a strip mall here in
s. Jersey. It has a very, very faint mark on the
carapace that we can't make out, like it could
have a violin shape , maybe?
Sharon

 

[bumhead]

we get that in oz. its a circle of death type thing. see, we have our brown house spiders, who enjoy killing redbacks (obviously related to your black widows). in turn, the redbacks love to kill our white tails, who seem to enjoy killing the house spiders. when i find dead redbacks, white tails and hous spiders, i usually find one of the others very close by, and also usually dead. interesting.