I found a gnarly spider today...

Zenimus

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I found it in a nature reserve area in Costa Mesa, near Newport Beach. It was pretty big, about 1.5" to maybe 2". I've never seen anything like it here.

I don't know if it's venomous or not, so I tried to keep my distance.

yellow_spider.jpg
 

Phyeir

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Used to be in my mom's garden all the time... they never hurt anything, in fact, they helped.
 

loegan43

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Pretty sure that's your common garden spider. They make some big ass webs. Not poisonous to humans as far as I recall.
 

Zenimus

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Pretty sure that's your common garden spider. They make some big ass webs. Not poisonous to humans as far as I recall.

Is it just a garden spider?

How weird. They must not be common around here, so it seems exotic to me. :D

The only other "rare" spiders I've seen in this area are green lynx spiders, and black trap door spiders. Now those are freaky!
 

NeoCverA

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There's like 2 homer Simpson profiles on that spider, rad!
 

Phyeir

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Is it just a garden spider?

How weird. They must not be common around here, so it seems exotic to me. :D

The only other "rare" spiders I've seen in this area are green lynx spiders, and black trap door spiders. Now those are freaky!


Yeah, just a garden spider. What's really funny is if you freak them out by getting to close or barely touching them, They'll sit at the center of the web and shake the web back and forth. It's kinda neat.
 

Murray

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We used to get some enormous spiders like that around here. Anything that eats mosquitos and mostly keeps to itself it fine by me. They were only ever a problem when they accidentally built a web across our front walkway.
 

Ghost-Dog

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Yep, looks like a common garden Spider to me as well.

As a Floridian, I have a love/hate relationship with Spiders. They keep the insect population in check, which is nice because we have so many fucking insects here. However, we also tend to get Black Widows and Brown Recluses here.

Black Widows are usually no big deal, they hide in out of the way places.

Brown Recluses, while also shy, are more likely to come into contact with humans accidentally. They love to hide in laundry piles and old shoes and the like. You don't want to see what a Brown Recluse bite can do to the human body. This is why I always bang out my lawn mowing shoes that I keep in the garage before putting them on.

We also get these huge fucking housekeeping spiders here. When I was a teenager, my grandmother's house had one, and I shit you not, it was probably 6 or 7 inches across. I would go into the utility room bathroom to take a piss during one of our late night D&D sessions, and BAM! He'd be right there above my head on the ceiling. Scared the shit out of me on many occasions like that.
 

lithy

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Yup, you can tell by the type of web too even if it wasn't there. The tight darker white 'zipper' in the dead center is the garden spider web.
 

fenikso

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How long 'til you make a blanket from its silk?
 

Takumaji

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Looks like a nephila (e. g. orb spider) to me, they weave very complex webs.
 

BigFred

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They have different names around the world. In Australia they're commonly known as St. Andrew's Cross Spiders. Why? Because of the way they keep their legs together. Google it.

Very common over here, maybe it was introduced to you guys.
 

BigFred

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We also get these huge fucking housekeeping spiders here. When I was a teenager, my grandmother's house had one, and I shit you not, it was probably 6 or 7 inches across. I would go into the utility room bathroom to take a piss during one of our late night D&D sessions, and BAM! He'd be right there above my head on the ceiling. Scared the shit out of me on many occasions like that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCO56iyBXtU

and that sounds like the common huntsman spider. They can grow up to eleven inches in length and never spin webs.... hence the name.

I fucking hate these spiders. I work in telecommunications (fixing phone lines). I can guarantee there's at least 3 of these fuckers hiding inside every elevated joint. They shed their skin too. So if you see like 40 small discarded skins drop, from the joint there's guaranted to be one giant bastard in there somewhere.

To be honest they're not the brightest of spiders. They have no spider sense if one ever existed and i've seen them get taken out by groups of ants without even putting up a fight.
 
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IsamuBlue

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Watching that guy scream like a little girl in the car cracked me up. LOL.

The only spiders I ever see here are the tiny house spiders that are smaller than a dime, but my mother killed a Brown Recluse in her apartment a while back.

I do see those tiny centipede/maggot looking things all the time. I'm sure there's a colony or two around my apartment somewhere.
 
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Ghost-Dog

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCO56iyBXtU

and that sounds like the common huntsman spider. They can grow up to eleven inches in length and never spin webs.... hence the name.

I fucking hate these spiders. I work in telecommunications (fixing phone lines). I can guarantee there's at least 3 of these fuckers hiding inside every elevated joint. They shed their skin too. So if you see like 40 small discarded skins drop, from the joint there's guaranted to be one giant bastard in there somewhere.

To be honest they're not the brightest of spiders. They have no spider sense if one ever existed and i've seen them get taken out by groups of ants without even putting up a fight.

He did look a lot like that, only bigger. Probably the same species.

I was forbidden to kill him, and he did live in the house for some time, until he met an untimely demise by being crushed in a doorjam.
 

Deuce

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Garden spider.

And all spiders are venomous. It's just a question of how toxic the venom is. Garden spiders are harmless.
 

Deuce

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but my mother killed a Brown Recluse in her apartment a while back.
I recently had to kill a Black Widow, which frustrates me. I used to be extremely phobic of all spiders, but now they don't bother me. I just don't like having to kill something that's generally helpful.

I do see those tiny centipede/maggot looking things all the time. I'm sure there's a colony or two around my apartment somewhere.
Earwigs?
http://www.paranormalknowledge.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/earwigs.jpg
 

Force

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I found it in a nature reserve area in Costa Mesa, near Newport Beach. It was pretty big, about 1.5" to maybe 2". I've never seen anything like it here.

I don't know if it's venomous or not, so I tried to keep my distance.

yellow_spider.jpg

yeah, thats a common garden spider. They're all over michigan. I used to chase em around when i was a kid. Totally harmless, but I got bit once handling one, and it hurt like hell. There are variants here in hawaii, and they get much larger, but have slightly different coloration. I wish I would have taken a picture of this abandoned bathroom/pavillion at a beach park along the hamakua coast. The ceiling was so covered with spiders and web I couldn't see the ceiling itself. Really creepy. And this was like a 30x30 area.
 

Takumaji

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Our cat Sam loved the large hairy house spiders we have here when he was still alive, he used to chase them, then stunned them with a slight dab of his paw, put it in his mouth and carried it around for a bit, then came over and presented it to us. The spiders used to roll up to a small brown ball in his mouth, then he usually spat them on the sofa where they unraveled after a few seconds and fled in panic.

It was really hilarious when he first did it, we couldn't believe our eyes when this thing we thought was a hairball suddenly turned into a 4" spider and started to run across the sofa.
 

Zenimus

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Holy crap, if I saw one of those huntsman spiders in my car, I'd probably lose all bowel and vehicular control. Those things are huge...

I recently had to kill a Black Widow, which frustrates me. I used to be extremely phobic of all spiders, but now they don't bother me. I just don't like having to kill something that's generally helpful.

Black widows are not helpful, especially since they can multiply like mad. Sometimes I help out on the security staff at a local college, and the football stadium is absolutely full of them. If you walk through at night, you can see them underneath about 80% of the seats. If the rest of the students knew what was hiding beneath their butts, they'd probably never come to the football games. :D
 

abasuto

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And all spiders are venomous..

Actually, spiders in the Uloboridae sub-genre don't have venom glands.

The hunchback spider is the most common of this species, but there's around 250 total species in the family.
 
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