Selenops video

[Techuser]

Striking on a fly, showing how fast it is

[URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gTgPG0Sud8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gTgPG0Sud8[/URL]

 

[Stefan2209]

Hi again,

question time! Now it´s my turn:

Do you know anything about the toxicity of Selenops spec.? I´m not looking for scientific results, as i think, i know them already.

I´m very interested in "sayings" and "tellings", what does the "usual guy from the street" know about their venom?
What do perhaps indio tribes think about this spiders?

Do you know, have you ever heard anybody talking about this creepies being significantly toxic to humans?

Greetings,

Stefan

 

[Techuser]

Nope, never heard nothing about selenops

in fact this spider is not much known around here, most of hobbyists never heard about it, i didnt knew it before getting one :?

now i´m curious, how strong is their venom?

 

[Stefan2209]

Nope, never heard nothing about selenops

in fact this spider is not much known around here, most of hobbyists never heard about it, i didnt knew it before getting one :?

now i´m curious, how strong is their venom?

Hi Techuser,

have to admit, your post made me laughing:

This spiders are not only in your part of the world virtually unknown, everywhere else, too, for that matter.
Quite strange, as they´re not a too rare genus...

However, here´s what i "know" about toxin or a tad more detailed about the whole story around it:

A buddy of mine got hold of some Selenops spec. from africa some months ago. As this spiders have to our knowledge never been around in the european hobby, the first interest was about a more detailed ID and about toxin potency.
Getting hold of this infos was quite difficult, Peter Jäger (SENCKENBERG) helped out with the genus ID and established contact to a specialist for this genus in south-america.

That guy was helpful, too, at least, as much as he could: he stressed that to his very best knowledge, none of the african species are dangerous toxic to humans.
However, he mentioned too, that he heard some rumours from an indian tribe, that one of the south-american species SHOULD indeed be quite toxic....
He pointed out that there are no scientific analyses of the toxin potency available at this time for any of the Selenops spec., so it´s just unknown, if these sayings are true or not.

Guess, now you have some better understanding of the background of my question.

Personally, i take this for a quite easy concern: once again, hands off, of any spider, that hasn´t proofed to be harmless.

Greetings,

Stefan

 

[Gordon]

Great Video!! I really never kept a spider that is so fast as Selenops are. Even Sparassidae and Ctenidae are slow in relation to Selenops sp.

Here is a picture of the Selenops sp. from Namibia that Stefan mentioned above:

 

[Stefan2209]

Olá Gordon,

glad to see you chirp in here!

Stefan