Look at what I found.

[Jmmarich]

Amazingly, this girl was SUPER agressive. I checked for an eggsac for an explanation, but think she is just grumpy. She was about 6" from a litterbox my cats use in the garage. Took 3 tries to catch her finally.

Sorry for the quality of the pictures

 

[rknralf]

Beautiful spider!
I've been searching for one for a while now and haven't been lucky enough to locate one in the wild.
I live in Newport News, VA, and I know they are here, just can't find them.
Ralph

 

[Texas Blonde]

YUM!! I love widows. Do you know if thats mactans or hesperus? I have a mactans running around loose somewhere in my Jeep at the moment. Though Im sure there are also some hesperus as it was parked in W Tx for a long period of time.

 

[Jmmarich]

Hmm, I actually know very little about widows. I had one last year that was HUGE when we found it (why I kept it) and it did good. I let it go after about 3 months.

This one has 3 small red dots down its abdoman, and after the 3 spots, one big red spot. The on the underside, of course the red hourglass. How do I identify between the two? Also, she is psycho. I open the top and she goes nuts. The other one I had was totally mellow.

--Josh

 

[Texas Blonde]

The red along the top or the abdomen juvie markings. They will go away as the spider molts into a mature female. Im guessing female from the pics, but at that size its usually pretty obvious. The difference between the two has to do with the hourglass and the way their eggsacks look.

Latrodectus mactans:

Eggsacks are usually perfectly circular, like a shpere and are greyish in color.
The hourglass has a more rounded posterior triangle.
L mactans is more common on the East Coast, with a range that spans from Southern New England, to East Texas, to Florida.

Latrodectus hesperus:

Eggsacks are an oval shape and yellowish in color.
The hourglass is generally complete, and if not the anterior triangle will be larger and broader than the posterior.
They are more common in California, and they range from the West Coast, to West Texas, and Oklahoma.

Or you can use a test my good friend came up with, eat it. If it tastes like Southern Fried Chicken, its L mactans. If it tastes like Malibu Chicken, its hesperus.

 

[MizM]

Unexpected spider! This is the TARANTULA FORUM!!! I thought you'd found some smooth black T species!!

All I've ever seen out here is mactans!! I can't EVER find hesperus!

 

[Malhavoc's]

Unexpected spider! This is the TARANTULA FORUM!!! I thought you'd found some smooth black T species!!

All I've ever seen out here is mactans!! I can't EVER find hesperus!

Terri. bad nes.. I think the ones I gave you are hesperus infact I find it revearesed I haven't found any mactans.. all the oens I catch and give you have a 'tear drop' egg sac, And hte hourglass is seperated in the middle but you can only tell when their about to drop a sac or bloated..or looking pretty good..

 

[metzgerzoo]

Very nice. My hubby wants one of those but we don't have widows this far up...plenty of Hobo's, but no Widows.

 

[PapaSmurf]

Very nice find I've only ever found one widow in my life and it didnt last long in captive.....
metzgerzoo, You can buy Black widow go to insecthobbyist.com search the classifieds there most people have them for farley cheap.

Josh

 

[MizM]

Seems I haave PLENTY of hesperus in stock. If y'all want some, pm me, we can arrange something!

 

[Jmmarich]

Mine appears to be a Latrodectus mactans. Took her forever to come down from where she was so I could get a GOOD look at her underside.