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Comments & ID Thoughts
I live in the US but it looks a lot like the false widow spider from the UK. Found it in my bathroom crawling towards me.
- Submitted by:
- Submitted: Oct 21, 2020
- Photographed: Oct 22, 2020
- Spider: Unidentified
- Location: Hanover, Pennsylvania, United States
- Spotted Indoors: Sink or bathtub
- Found in web?: No
- Attributes:
You got it! This is a False Widow in genus Steatoda. There are some native species. Most of the ones we see are probably the European imports. Steatoda nobilis, for example, arrived in the US via California. Brown Widows did too and they have been eating native Black Widows. The good news is that some Steatoda kill and eat the Brown Widows. They are all in the same family, Theridiidae. Despite tabloid-style media hype and false stories produced by media for the UK audience, these spiders are not dangerous. Unfortunately Google searches produce these articles worldwide and spread the truly… Read more »
Thanks for the quick reply! It’s my first time seeing one of these guys. I thought it might be dangerous from all the articles I read but now I know it’s not. I had a black widow almost land on my head when I was a little kid and it scared me then, but I personally like learning about spiders. Thanks again for the info!
Do you have any clue where I could report a finding like this? I haven’t found any sites that say this spider has made it to Pennsylvania.
@TangledWeb and yourself are both correct. It is a false widow in the Steatoda genus. More specifically it appears to be Steatoda triangulosa, the Triangulate Cobweb Spider. SpiderID and Bug Guide both list this species as being found in Pennsylvania. Bug Guide has more complete info on this kind of stuff while SpiderID is more of a branch off site specifically focused on IDing spiders. You can take a look for yourself if you want https://bugguide.net/node/view/6927