Purseweb Spider!

Lycosa

Lycosa

Joined
Aug 24, 2007
Messages
43,271
On Thursday, my son and I, found our first Purseweb spider, here in central Pa. It was very exciting! The spider was a male, no doubt out looking for a mate. We'd love to find a female next. Google, Image of Purseweb Spider, for a pic. Thanks!
 
Whoa. chelicera! :eek:

I've seen them from time to time, but I didn't realize they belonged to a suborder of megalomorphs (e.g. tarantulas).

Very cool! :cool:
 
MacHete---Whoa, a spider response!! Yes, these Pursewebs are very interesting spiders! I'll be looking for the larger female now. The poor spider---still feared and misunderstood---but not by all! :)
 
Man, thats a cool one! Glad to know you're interested rather than disgusted! My avatar is a closeup of the dangerous piece of a Brown Recluse. We have a TON of them down here. Thats why I never kill any other spider. They pressure the recluse, and if you kill them it makes it easier for the recluse to flourish.
 
Fiddleback---I like the Brown Recluse. Arachologist, Paul Hillyard, says; "All spider bites are accidental." I agree with him. Thanks for the post, Busseman!
 
Lycosa said:
Fiddleback---I like the Brown Recluse. Arachologist, Paul Hillyard, says; "All spider bites are accidental." I agree with him. Thanks for the post, Busseman!
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I agree somewhat. In that my grandad's place is infested with them and nobody's been bitten. Still, an accident with one of those trying to snuggle up in the same blanket as my daughters would be disasterous. I'm still wary.

Busseman~! Ouch.
 
Fiddleback said:
My avatar is a closeup of the dangerous piece of a Brown Recluse.
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Yeah, maybe, but if you have dirty old man syndrome like I do and squint just right it looks a whole lot like something else.;) :p :eek: :D

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Yvsa, I honestly don't remember the last time I had a nightmare- but by golly I bet I'll have one tonight thanks to that! :eek:
 
Those "purse spiders" look quite like the "mouse spiders" iv seen in OZ.

I see these "golden ord web spiders" all the time here, This is one of the coolest iv seen.
The ones I see most of the time are black with yellow but this one must be stuck in the 60s or something :D

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Ah, the argiope- usually refered to around here as "garden spiders"- include a number of large orb weavers. I happen to think the gold and black variety are beautiful. Kathy was giving me a hard time about my admiration for them once. I just told her, "Honey, you know I'm a leg man." ;):D;)

Here's an interesting short video about some experiments on spiders and their webs:
[youtube]sHzdsFiBbFc[/youtube]
 
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Agriopes have legs in pairs. That looks like one, but the legs are throwing me off.
 
I've seen quite a few of those golden orb web spiders around here. IIRC they are a subspecies of the common bananna spider which I'm told is the largest North American spider outside of the tarantula. I have two golden orb spiders, and 3 bananna spider IN my house right now. I love them, they keep out (actually take out) the other bugs that would otherwise infest the place (no matter how clean you are, in Florida you WILL have bugs. I'm rather surprised as they don't seem to mess with the wolf spiders we also have.

I try not to mess with them, as I like them around. The last unhealthy encounter I had was several months ago when one decided to hide in my bath towel and jump on me as I came out of the shower. I didn't kill it, but I landed a few good blows with the towel. You'd be surprised at how fast they can move.

Sometimes they mess with me and string webs between the two cars, which is great when I walk right through it leaving for work at 11pm. One time one had build this enromous web between the house and the nearest tree out front (now this web was about 30 feet long, and about 2 feet high, built overnight, think about that). Because of the low light, I idn't see it, the thing flat STOPPED me when I ran into it. These suckers are strong. I ook up and see the spider hauling butt towards me, I looked at it, and said "sorry sweetie, I'm too big for you, you'll be my lunch." She stopped moving and just stared at me as I extricated myself (yes, I left the web up, I thought it was cool. Man did that thing catch a lot of bugs).
 
Fiddleback said:
Agriopes have legs in pairs. That looks like one, but the legs are throwing me off.
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You're right. I had forgotten about that- they are sometimes called "saltire spiders" or "St. Andrew spiders" because of the "X" silhouette they make when sitting in their webs. They also usually have a vertically oriented Zia-zag reinforcement running from top to bottom of their webs. The picture spider is obviously an orb weaver, but probably not an argiope. (I'm so embarrassed.)

Cpl Punishment- I almost got caught in a huge web once. We were backpacking in Red River Gorge, KY, and it was a very hot and humid summer. There were micrathena spiders everywhere. It seemed as though there was a web in every cubic foot along the trail. We were actually taking turns walking point to bust up the webs across the path, and when we stopped for frequent breaks because of the humidity, we had to brush them off of our packs before resuming. At one point, we went off trail because my idiot buddies wanted to body-rappel down a small rock face. This was idiotic because the only rope we had with us was NOT climbing rope, so I demurred and went around the long way to the bottom to scoop up the likely debris of my falling friends. :rolleyes:

On the way to the foot of the rock face, I almost walked right into a really big, really stout orb web. The architecht was not a micrathena like most of the spiders we'd seen, but an ordinary, roundish "barn" or "wood" spider (as seen in the above video). The web was strung between two trees and was about six feet high, and the top was about eight feet above the ground, with two feet of clearance underneath. It was about ten feet wide and the trees were almost fifteen feet apart. The ambitious arachnid in the center had a leg span of almost five inches, her abdomen was the size of a fifty-cent piece and her cephalothorax about the size of a quarter. I could see the expression on her face. :eek:

While I was wishing for a jar or something to catch her in (because no one would ever believe how big she was) she scurried off into a silk-lined, rolled-up leaf on the southwestern tree.

But for some rope-burns, my buddies all survived their trip down the rock face and I took a couple of the to see the spider. She hadn't come out of hiding, but they were sufficiently impressed with the web.

When I got home, I checked all of my books and field guides, and couldn't find any similar specie in North America that was supposed to get half that big.

I've seen some other spiders and one snake that was way bigger than usual. Recounting the encounters usually just sounds like "fish stories", so I seldom tell them.

Fun thread, Lycosa. It's kinda cool to see some folks with similar interests beside the usual here. :thumbup:
 
Naw, man, when certain animals eat really well, they just keep getting bigger. Especially your primitive animals like insects, arachnids, reptiles and fish.

Good story.
 
Great Posts, Everyone. Spiders need ALL the PR they can get!! :)
Today, I found a Burrowing Wolf Spider and she brought her egg-sack to the top of the burrow to sun it. Da bom!!
 
MacHete said:
You're right. I had forgotten about that- they are sometimes called "saltire spiders" or "St. Andrew spiders" because of the "X" silhouette they make when sitting in their webs. They also usually have a vertically oriented Zia-zag reinforcement running from top to bottom of their webs.
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Iv seen a few spiders that sit like that,

This one sat in a sort of "six leg" formation rather than the X formation.

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This spider was HUGE, the pic is so crappy because she was way up in a tree so it was hard to get a good shot. The X formation is still visible though.
The thing it has in its web is a big butterfly or a bat :D im not sure.
The web was also very large and seemed to be made up of random "platforms" of silk set a different angles.

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This is a well fed black and yellow orb web. The pic was taken near the end of last summer, this was a pretty big spider by any standard :thumbup:

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