Comments & ID Thoughts
Is this a young black/brown widow or a cobweb/house spider?
- Submitted by:
- Submitted: Jun 7, 2019
- Photographed: Jun 6, 2019
- Spider: Steatoda triangulosa (Triangulate Cobweb Spider)
- Location: Savannah, Georgia, United States
- Spotted Indoors: Other
- Found in web?: Yes
- Attributes: Dorsal
Had a messy pile of dirt and dead spiders right under the web. Web is messy/no order.
Hi, see above image for ID. 🙂
Great. What’s your level of confidence. I am just concerned that an adolescent widow may be present in the house as they are 100% present on my back porch. Thanks again.
99.99% sure.
Great. Thanks. Main thing is, it’s not an adolescent widow.
The False Widows are mostly in genus Steatoda. The True Widows are in genus Latrodectus. It isn’t a matter of just variations between species, but between genera. There are enough differences for near certainty from a photo. The second piece of good news is that even if you were to be bitten by a Black or Brown Widow, in America hospitals have anti-venom treatments and almost nobody dies from the bites. Mosquitoes are vastly more dangerous to humans because of the diseases they carry. I don’t want to make you more scared of mosquitoes, just give some risk perspective.
Honestly you probably should be scared of mosquitos. They are responsible for more human deaths than any other animal on Earth.
You have a valid point. Hmm, has been deadlier to humans? Mosquitos or Homo sapiens?
Mosquitos are number one, but humans are in second place. For the life of me I can’t remember what came third…
I tried searching it, it keeps coming back to snakes as the distant third. The stats for humans killing humans are only including murders. If you include negligence and working for companies that make deadly products, like cigarettes, that would really change the results. As is, mosquitos are the unanimous most deadly animals due to being flying used hypodermic syringes.