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Once, I was driving a loaner car home from Orlando while my parents' was in the shop, and spiders started crawling up the inside of the winshield. Lots of them.
After nearly running the car off the road, I managed to pull into a gas station, where I then called my parents screaming and crying.
quote:It sounds like you lead a very productive life.
Of course. What's more productive than watching spiders? I'd say I learn a good deal more than I would watching TV or the like.
Posts: 1735 | Registered: Oct 2004
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Apparently my feeling about wolf/jumping spider awareness has been confirmed in at least one species: Portia...makes a living by eating other spiders...a risky business at the best...Luckily Portia has brains.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Yeah, ladybugs bite. I've been bitten by one before. It's not bad, but it's definitely noticeable. Like being stuck with a pin.
I thought the Mythbusters did the Daddy longlegs myth and if I'm remembering it correctly, the provoked one until it bit Adam. He said he could feel it, but it didn't really hurt much and they're definitely not poisonous to humans.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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Really? I love Mythbusters, but I've never seen that episode. I've always believed that Daddy long-leg spiders are severely poisonous. I thought I could spot old-wives'-tales pretty well...
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Daddy longlegs are extremely poisonous, but their fangs are too small to inject enough venom into a human being to harm them. Just don't pick one up and eat it. Posts: 1225 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Either you haven't actually read this thread or you have an interesting sense of humor. Either way, I'm rather amused.
Posts: 1945 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Avadaru: Daddy longlegs are extremely poisonous, but their fangs are too small to inject enough venom into a human being to harm them. Just don't pick one up and eat it.
Actually, that's an old wive's tale. From the Wiki article, referencing the Mythbuster experiment:
quote: After measuring the spider's fangs at approximately ¼ mm (average human skin thickness is about 0.10 mm) the show's host was apparently bitten, although the bite produced little more than a mild short-lived burning sensation. This appears to confirm the suspicion that pholcids can penetrate human skin, but that their venom is practically harmless to humans. Additionally, recent research has shown that pholcid venom is actually relatively weak in its effects on insects as well.
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A friend of mine had one living in her car for several weeks and then it got stuck in the dash so she drove to an auto body shop so she could release it.
Posts: 883 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I hate spiders. What makes it worse is that there are a lot of black widows near where I live, and when I was raking out the pool house I felt my shoulder brush against a web. I turn around and I was face to face with a fairly large black widow. Not fun.
Posts: 81 | Registered: Feb 2007
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I'm with joldo. Not that they dont give me the willies on occasion, but I can't stop watching spiders. If I find one that I'm supposed to squish I generally grab a paper cup and set it free in the back yard. More likely than not it will become a tasty snack for my cat, but perhaps it will contribute to keeping my backyard free of annoying flies and such.
Posts: 686 | Registered: Sep 2001
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I hate ants more than spiders. There is nothing quite like the feeling of buy a lot of food and finding it all infested with ants soon after...
Posts: 4229 | Registered: Dec 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Avadaru: Daddy longlegs are extremely poisonous, but their fangs are too small to inject enough venom into a human being to harm them. Just don't pick one up and eat it.
quote:Originally posted by Zarex: Actually, Daddy long legs can bite, and they are not (too) venomous.
Gotta love mythbusters
I was just thinking of that episode... Didn't they set Adam or somebody down in a tank full of them or something?
Fugu, those are the Daddy Long Leggers as I know them. They have a tiny, red, spherical body, with six really long legs (Or is it 8). To my understanding they are insects (Not if they have 8 legs, though). They also kind of stink.
Posts: 438 | Registered: May 2006
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Oh. And Spiders are tied with wasps. Wasps are horrible. I heard a rumor (It may or may not be true), that wasps only sting you in your pores, and when you inhale, your pores close, so if you inhale when you see or feel a wasp land on you, you won't get stung, and you'll have time to smack it off of you.
Yikes. That, I think, was the longest sentence I've ever written.
Sorry. Bunny trails, and all that.
Posts: 438 | Registered: May 2006
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I was out looking at my pretty purple coneflowers today, and there was a nasty white spider sitting on the cone. It looked a lot like this. But didn't have those purple stripes on the side.
Posts: 3149 | Registered: Jul 2005
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I had a running nightmare a couple of weeks ago that ran for a couple of weeks. Every night, I'd dream that a huge spider - body an inch or two in diameter with legs another couple or so inches long (and yes, we do have spiders that big in our house - ick!) - got under our mosquito net on my side of the bed.
Of course, I woke up, freaking out, and grabbed the flashlight and look for it (we keep it on our headboard). Not there. No spider anywhere.
Every single time, I woke up Fahim, but every morning, except one, he denied that I'd woken him up. Lucky him, he didn't totally wake up.
Finally, one day, Fahim lets a huge spider - the same size as the one in my nightmare - out of our bedroom. (Yes, he refuses to kill them.)
No more nightmares since.
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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now that i think about it, there was this one time when i found a funny spoof on a spider documentary and told pH it was on my myspace page. she wouldnt view it cuz she said she absolutely hated spiders and wouldnt watch it.
quote:Fugu, those are the Daddy Long Leggers as I know them. They have a tiny, red, spherical body, with six really long legs (Or is it 8). To my understanding they are insects (Not if they have 8 legs, though). They also kind of stink.
You may have found the problem. In the Western US a Daddy Long Legs spider is a "Harvester Spider". They are generally grey, a small shperical body and "count them" eight really long legs. There is no noticable odor
Posts: 1167 | Registered: Oct 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Nick: I hate ants more than spiders. There is nothing quite like the feeling of buy a lot of food and finding it all infested with ants soon after...
Last summer we were having a wave of infestations (it reminded me of Lost Boys. *shudders*) At one point we had flies, then ants, and as fast as we'd kill them they'd reproduce. So one day we came upon ants eating maggots in our trash cans. I'm about to barf just thinking about it.
Eeew.
Then there was the time we found a black widow in the living room-- just as the cat and the baby were both trying to eat it...
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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I saw what was probably some sort of wolf spider today that was huge! She was bigger than any spider I've seen since leaving Arizona. I had a great time watching her and all her tiny babies that were riding along. So did my toddler, although it was difficult keeping her from "petting" the spider.
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I hate spiders. What makes it worse is that there are a lot of black widows near where I live, and when I was raking out the pool house I felt my shoulder brush against a web. I turn around and I was face to face with a fairly large black widow. Not fun.
