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Comments & ID Thoughts
I don’t think it’s the newish (to Ireland) false widow. Not sure really. Hoping to find out.
- Submitted by:
- Submitted: Jun 19, 2020
- Photographed: Jun 19, 2020
- Spider: Unidentified
- Location: Dublin, Ireland
- Spotted Outdoors: Man-made structure (building wall, fences, etc.)
- Found in web?: No
- Attributes:
I’m hoping someone can help identify it. It’s about the size of a two euro coin or perhaps bigger including legs.
It looks like a Giant House Spider in genus Eratigena. They aren’t medically dangerous to people, so they have been allowed to live in houses for a long time as nontoxic insect control. They aren’t aggressive toward people, so they’re a benefit. False Widows are much smaller, you probably don’t have a coin that small. It IS a good idea to use coins as reference because people worldwide can easily find the diameter of other countries coins online. Most of us volunteers on this site happen to be in North America, I try to use the metric system for other… Read more »
Hi. Many thanks for the response. Very reassuring. Ireland and the Uk along with New Zealand (one spider exception there) have no (or very few) dangerous or poisonous animals. The Uk has Adders and Slow worms but they are really very rare to bump into there. Ireland has not had even moderate threats (For humans) since wolves and bears were killed off. The last ice age (or Saint Patrick) did interesting things. That is until invasive animals arrived as escaped pets or on shipped goods/foods. Oh and the weather might have warmed up enough to support them. My partner got… Read more »
Thank you for explaining. I’ve wondered why people in Britain and Ireland worry so much about dangerous spiders. Apparently novelty? We het a lot of worried questions about False Widows from the area. I had to look up Slow Worms, they seem really interesting. St. Patrick helped get rid of quite a few people (some of my ancestors left Ireland because of the persecution). The last Ice Age removed many animals from the area where I live in NorthEastern USA. It took away our soil too. My yard is mostly rocks.. False Widows have been in Europe a long time,… Read more »
Here’s an article from The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/oct/17/false-widow-spider-attacks I found at least one article from them that had the same false info that the other media outlets put out. The article mentions the spider species that you posted as one of the most visible species (at least in Britain). Yes, you’re correct the False Widows are new in that they are increasing their range and population. It certainly doesn’t help that they resemble Black Widows.