The coolest thing ever :O

[Elmolax]

I dunno what it is... sry cant get a pic, its too small.
Found it in my backyard...
At first I thought it was a small black widow, because i saw a big but and a red hourglass under it. I got it in a jar and lokoed at it closely, and noticed white 1 or 2 lg stripes on each front leg (front legs reached about 5 cm) and its rear (abdomen) had vanilla swiril striped on the side, with a odd red (jaggedy) stripe dead center, on top. it connected with the hourglass shape. Any idea on what it is? Ill be mad if it was a male widow

 

[Empi]

Sounds like a male widow to me. I just caught one myself and it matches your discription.

 

[Venom]

You might want to have a look at these pages:

Female / juvenile widows:

http://www.spiderzrule.com/redblack.htm

Male widow:

http://www.uky.edu/Agriculture/CritterFiles/casefile/spiders/cobweb/malewidow.jpg

 

[JPD]

You might want to have a look at these pages:

I am so glad you posted those links. At one time, I had the one saved to my favs, however, I somehow deleted it and could not remember the website.
Thanks for that!

 

[Venom]

Hey, you're welcome. I'm at that site all the time, so it was fresh in the front of my brain. It is a pretty good site for getting identifications. I only wish there was a species specific search function to pull species' pics out of the long, chronological list!

 

[Python]

It sounds like a male widow to me too. I love these things and have several of them. They are great to watch although males I don't think would be the same. It is my understanding that they go off feed once they mature and their whole existance is mating. Apparently (if I have any wrong information please correct me) they die soon after maturity so they have a limited time to find a female. I will know more aobut them soon as I have been raising eggsacks for awhile now and they are getting bigger all the time. Still not big enough to pick out individual sexes though

 

[Empi]

Yeah thanks for posting that site. I just got what I thought to be a male which it turns out is just a young female. That is nice to know!

 

[Elmolax]

Dang lol.
I fell dumb now XD
I used to breed widows, but my males NEVER looked like this :S
but similar
MY males lacked the vanilla swirls and were a bit more brown than balck.
Close tho

 

[Bigboy]

Maybe even just an immature widow?