Spiders

[roaniecowpony]

Many decades ago, I had a flea infestation in my sheep skin seat cover. Girlfriend put a flea bomb in it sized for a small house. That crap was dripping from everything. But, no fleas no more. ?

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[roaniecowpony]

Well sir, I am just going to tell you what I know to be true. I am very familiar with the brown recluse spider sir.The people I am referring to that got bitten. It was a doctor visit because the recluse basically causes gain green (may not be spelled right) lol. And most times does not go away on it's own, but will just keep eating the flesh. And then has to be cut out by a doctor. These were recluse bites, not some other spider.

Also, I don't know what else to tell you. I will explain it as I know it. The recluse absolutely builds their web up high. I going to take a guess here. I believe they have evolved and adapted. They absolutely love building their webs under lights for obvious reasons. I pulled into my local fill up station one day and it was taped, and coned off with a crew exterminating and then pressure washing all the recluse webs down.

I walked inside and asked and was told that's what was going on. I was told customers were complaining there was so many. Not just up high either, you would have to be careful just grabbing the pump handle.

I have had them on my house on the soffit area, yes, up high under my motion lights. In my pool area, up high.

The brown recluse is a northern US spider. But they have hitched rides into FL. On trucks, RVs etc. And in some places their population has exploded. They have not just come to FL. They are thriving in huge numbers in FL.

I know exactly what they look like, exactly what there webs look like. I have played with their webs just to see them come out. I have seen an insect get caught in the web and watched the recluse come out and snatch it.

They are called recluse because they don't hang in their webs like a lot of spiders. They build a funky shaped web where you can see the hole for the entrance/exit. They lay in there and wait. (A lot of times up high under artificial lighting) when something gets caught in their web, they come out and attack. That's why they're called brown recluse. Not because of where they make their webs.

Next time your in FL. Have a look under some gas station awnings, some of them are like a Stephen King movie there are so many.

And here I was thinking of moving to Florida.

 

[longfiredragon]

And here I was thinking of moving to Florida.

The thing about a recluse though is they are reclusive. So unless you stick your hand in their web, or step on one. They pretty much leave humans alone.

Most are bitten because they get in you house or vehicle.

To think they are somehow restricted to just lower levels is about a 25 year old mistake. I watched a show many years ago where they filmed a brown recluse fall out of a tree that an RV was parked under.

I believe in FL. That they have evolved, and in some places there is a lot of them, some you can find even on the sides of structures.

 

[Wabujitsu]

Well sir, I am just going to tell you what I know to be true. I am very familiar with the brown recluse spider sir.The people I am referring to that got bitten. It was a doctor visit because the recluse basically causes gain green (may not be spelled right) lol. And most times does not go away on it's own, but will just keep eating the flesh. And then has to be cut out by a doctor. These were recluse bites, not some other spider.

Also, I don't know what else to tell you. I will explain it as I know it. The recluse absolutely builds their web up high. I going to take a guess here. I believe they have evolved and adapted. They absolutely love building their webs under lights for obvious reasons. I pulled into my local fill up station one day and it was taped, and coned off with a crew exterminating and then pressure washing all the recluse webs down.

I walked inside and asked and was told that's what was going on. I was told customers were complaining there was so many. Not just up high either, you would have to be careful just grabbing the pump handle.

I have had them on my house on the soffit area, yes, up high under my motion lights. In my pool area, up high.

The brown recluse is a northern US spider. But they have hitched rides into FL. On trucks, RVs etc. And in some places their population has exploded. They have not just come to FL. They are thriving in huge numbers in FL.

I know exactly what they look like, exactly what there webs look like. I have played with their webs just to see them come out. I have seen an insect get caught in the web and watched the recluse come out and snatch it.

They are called recluse because they don't hang in their webs like a lot of spiders. They build a funky shaped web where you can see the hole for the entrance/exit. They lay in there and wait. (A lot of times up high under artificial lighting) when something gets caught in their web, they come out and attack. That's why they're called brown recluse. Not because of where they make their webs.

Next time your in FL. Have a look under some gas station awnings, some of them are like a Stephen King movie there are so many.

Darryl, please know my disagreement is friendly, and not adversarial. I respect your personal observations, but I also respect my own and the perspectives of countless spider experts, with tons of field work in Florida and other areas, who are most likely smarter than both of us regarding spiders.

By the way Darryl, I live in Florida (Sarasota County) and have lived in FL for most of my life. I used to be a herpetologist, with extensive field and husbandry work, and provided educational lectures to the public. Arachnids, although not my area of expertise, were a hobby of mine. I can unequivocally say that in all of my field collections and studies of herpetofauna throughout Florida, I have never seen a brown recluse. Of course arachnids are not herpetofauna, but again, native and exotic spiders were a hobby of mine, and I have read tons of literature and studies in that field. I learned to identify North American spiders to a high degree of accuracy.

Your observations, in spite of being valid, are completely contrary to countless studies of the brown recluse in Florida. That is not a criticism, but a statement of fact. That, and my own personal observations spanning years of field work, make me skeptical. Please don’t take that as an attack; again, this is a friendly discussion.

Regarding recluses and how they feed: they are wandering hunters. They DO NOT build webs to catch prey. They build webs as retreats only. Obviously if an insect stumbles into their web, of course the spider may take that as an opportunity to feed. However, that is not their standard operating procedure.

On a personal note, a very good friend of my wife and I died from melanoma years ago. In spite of it being one of the easiest cancers to treat when caught reasonably early, he died because doctors, for MONTHS, misdiagnosed it, and treated it, as a brown recluse bite - for so long that the cancer metastasized and became Stage 4 before being properly diagnosed.

Please read this study on the prevalence of conditions misdiagnosed as brown recluse bites, and give me your thoughts on it, if you don’t mind. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0041010103001739?via=ihub

 

[Flip]

Residual insecticides don’t work on spiders. Even if they walk through the insecticide, it won’t affect them because, unlike insects, they don’t clean their exoskeleton with their mouths. They don’t even have an exoskeleton, and they don’t groom like insects.

A bug bomb might work, because the insecticide is inhaled.

We have had to deal with invasive brown widows, and invasive, HUGE, Huntsman spiders in our vehicles. The Huntsman give me the willies! My wife was driving in town one day, looked at her rear view mirror, and there were spider legs COMPLETELY WRAPPED AROUND the upper and lower edges of the mirror, from the Huntsman on the back of it! They can achieve a leg span of five to six inches, and they move like lightning.

Fortunately my wife isn’t freaked out by such things.

About the only thing you can do about spiders in a vehicle is to physically remove them, or deprive them of food by using insecticides. If there’s nothing to eat, they leave or die.

I don't have arachnophobia but if I ever see a spider anything like that there will be no tap dancing it'll be WAR!!!!

 

[Flip]

No. We just have a lot of small spiders in the area. They get carried in their webs with the wind. They somehow make their way in through the smallest of crevices and set up. I'm not afraid of them, but having webs across my windshield, dash, clothes, and it's gotten in my face once or twice. lol

They love the bottom corners of the windshield and make webs around the speakers. I rarely see them since they don't really come out.

Maybe try the flea bomb that sounds like it worked well for @roaniecowpony if not I know wasp spray kills spiders on contact, they hate that s**t!

 

[longfiredragon]

Darryl, please know my disagreement is friendly, and not adversarial. I respect your personal observations, but I also respect my own and the perspectives of countless spider experts, with tons of field work in Florida and other areas, who are most likely smarter than both of us regarding spiders.

By the way Darryl, I live in Florida (Sarasota County) and have lived in FL for most of my life. I used to be a herpetologist, with extensive field and husbandry work, and provided educational lectures to the public. Arachnids, although not my area of expertise, were a hobby of mine. I can unequivocally say that in all of my field collections and studies of herpetofauna throughout Florida, I have never seen a brown recluse. Of course arachnids are not herpetofauna, but again, native and exotic spiders were a hobby of mine, and I have read tons of literature and studies in that field. I learned to identify North American spiders to a high degree of accuracy.

Your observations, in spite of being valid, are completely contrary to countless studies of the brown recluse in Florida. That is not a criticism, but a statement of fact. That, and my own personal observations spanning years of field work, make me skeptical. Please don’t take that as an attack; again, this is a friendly discussion.

Regarding recluses and how they feed: they are wandering hunters. They DO NOT build webs to catch prey. They build webs as retreats only. Obviously if an insect stumbles into their web, of course the spider may take that as an opportunity to feed. However, that is not their standard operating procedure.

On a personal note, a very good friend of my wife and I died from melanoma years ago. In spite of it being one of the easiest cancers to treat when caught reasonably early, he died because doctors, for MONTHS, misdiagnosed it, and treated it, as a brown recluse bite - for so long that the cancer metastasized and became Stage 4 before being properly diagnosed.

Please read this study on the prevalence of conditions misdiagnosed as brown recluse bites, and give me your thoughts on it, if you don’t mind. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0041010103001739?via=ihub

It's all good brother. I don't doubt your experience in this area. And the article you posted at all. I like to learn new things and am old enough and wise enough to know I can be wrong. After all we gain most of our wisdom from our mistakes.

However just so you know one of the person's that I know was bitten in bed. Most likely rolled over on the thing. Which in his case he just happened to squish the spider at the same time. The next day just realizing that he had been bitten by something, prompted him to inspect his bed that night where he found the recluse.

After some research identifying the spider, freaked him out a little and prompted him to of course take himself and the spider to the doctor.

A couple other people related the same type of bite and wound, and treatment. Truth I can't tell you for sure if they were bitten by a recluse or not. But the nasty sore the recluse leaves was removed and they were ? percent fine after that. Also our medical society is much better at identifying different types of bites, etc. Then the were 25 years ago.

I will be the first to tell you that recluse bits are rare. I mentioned that in my earlier post.

As far as the article you posted, I believe it a ? percent. At the time it was written. Late 90s early 2000s. We are in 2024. I also mentioned this. It's been in the last 25 years or so that I started to notice the increase in population of these spiders in Florida.

I am not an expert, but I have done considerably research on spiders in general. Like did you know there is 5 different colors of black widows in FL. I first found this out in a book years ago, I was like what hell! These spiders have changed and adapted to a different environment. 5 different fricken colors.

Point is if black widows can change and adapt I believe the recluse not only can but has.

If you're in Florida I guarantee if you start looking for them, you will find them.

 

[rohdawg]

@Wabujitsu any guess what kind of spider @longfiredragon might be seeing based on his observations?

 

[BetOnBlack]

Call your insurance company and report that the Jeep caught on fire?
Snakes don't bother me, scorpions don't bother me, but spiders I can't do. If it's bigger than a dime, legs included, I'll scream like a little girl.

 

[roaniecowpony]

The thing about a recluse though is they are reclusive. So unless you stick your hand in their web, or step on one. They pretty much leave humans alone.

Most are bitten because they get in you house or vehicle.

To think they are somehow restricted to just lower levels is about a 25 year old mistake. I watched a show many years ago where they filmed a brown recluse fall out of a tree that an RV was parked under.

I believe in FL. That they have evolved, and in some places there is a lot of them, some you can find even on the sides of structures.

It's not the recluse I'm worried about. We have them and BW spiders here. It's the giant Wabujitsu spider. I can't even imagine what I'd do if one of them crawled up my neck and sat on my head while driving. But it'd be in the papers...Florida man in jeep....

 

[Gangplank]

There are absolutely black widow and brown recluse spiders in FL.

https://www.fdacs.gov/Consumer-Resources/Health-and-Safety/Venomous-Spiders-in-Florida

 

[Wbino]

Best way to get rid of spiders in your Jeep is to get a 4Xe and plug it in.

 

[Wabujitsu]

@Wabujitsu any guess what kind of spider @longfiredragon might be seeing based on his observations?

Matt, I won’t speculate on that; @longfiredragon may be right, in spite of my skepticism. You can Google “spiders that look like the brown recluse” and see a number of examples.

There are brown recluse spiders in Florida that have hitch-hiked into buildings during moves from other states, so yes, they are technically found in Florida. A few folks have been bitten by those spiders. However, the latest scientific study, conducted by a spider scientist who is a friend of mine and was conducted over the last few years, has shown that these spiders do not survive outside in the Florida environment. Extensive searches were conducted by numerous folks on his team, outside the buildings where they are known to exist, and ZERO were found. The field study was conducted state-wide.

 

[KenPewPew]

Y'all sadistic bunch!!! ?

 

[blessidsoul12]

Well sir, I am just going to tell you what I know to be true. I am very familiar with the brown recluse spider sir.The people I am referring to that got bitten. It was a doctor visit because the recluse basically causes gain green (may not be spelled right) lol. And most times does not go away on it's own, but will just keep eating the flesh. And then has to be cut out by a doctor. These were recluse bites, not some other spider.

Also, I don't know what else to tell you. I will explain it as I know it. The recluse absolutely builds their web up high. I going to take a guess here. I believe they have evolved and adapted. They absolutely love building their webs under lights for obvious reasons. I pulled into my local fill up station one day and it was taped, and coned off with a crew exterminating and then pressure washing all the recluse webs down.

I walked inside and asked and was told that's what was going on. I was told customers were complaining there was so many. Not just up high either, you would have to be careful just grabbing the pump handle.

I have had them on my house on the soffit area, yes, up high under my motion lights. In my pool area, up high.

The brown recluse is a northern US spider. But they have hitched rides into FL. On trucks, RVs etc. And in some places their population has exploded. They have not just come to FL. They are thriving in huge numbers in FL.

I know exactly what they look like, exactly what there webs look like. I have played with their webs just to see them come out. I have seen an insect get caught in the web and watched the recluse come out and snatch it.

They are called recluse because they don't hang in their webs like a lot of spiders. They build a funky shaped web where you can see the hole for the entrance/exit. They lay in there and wait. (A lot of times up high under artificial lighting) when something gets caught in their web, they come out and attack. That's why they're called brown recluse. Not because of where they make their webs.

Next time your in FL. Have a look under some gas station awnings, some of them are like a Stephen King movie there are so many.

Sorry to pile on, but I also have an expertise in spiders Yes, there have been documented recluses in the state of florida. No they do not "exist" there.
What you are describing about L. reclusa and their webs just confirms that you are mistaken. Recluse "webs" are basically little mattresses or pads and if they make them at all they are typically on TOP surfaces of something flat on the GROUND. Maybe on the top of the lid of a cardboard box. I am sorry and please don't be offended, but what you are describing is not correct.
Evolution is a constant of course but recluses aren't going to start building webs under awnings to catch prey.

Can you share photos of the spiders you believe to be recluses that you are seeing in FL?

Anyway...

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