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I live in Australia, and people always freak out when they see me post pics on spiders around our house on Facebook etc. "Ozzie critters kill you!" they say.
by cyberferret 9y ago
I live in Australia, and people always freak out when they see me post pics on spiders around our house on Facebook etc. "Ozzie critters kill you!" they say.
However the most common spiders in our house are Huntsmen spiders [0]. As big, frightening looking and FAST as they are, they are completely harmless to humans, and they eat a lot of the larger bugs around the place. We even give them names as they tend to hang around for days/weeks.
We do have poisonous spiders, but they are rarely found indoors, and I know the places to avoid outdoors where the Redbacks and Mouse spiders live.
[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r011GRdai8Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r011GRdai8Q (arachnophobe trigger warning)
- bryanbuckley 9y agoWhy would anyone be afraid of poisonous spiders? Do they crawl into your mouth while you are sleeping? Ah, you probably mean venomous?
- ClassyJacket 9y agoWhat exactly do you hope to achieve by this kind of needless pedantry? You said yourself that you understood they probably meant venomous, so it's not as if the comment wasn't clear.
- seattle_spring 9y agoI've noticed a huge uptick in pedantic comments like that on HN.
- bryanbuckley 9y agoBecause actually I did't understand until I was about to post the comment with just the first question, at which point I thought to myself OP might mean venomous! There are poisonous animals out there that you really should not eat! But for the most part people aren't afraid of eating poisonous things (it's usually too late to fear).
- notaspider 9y agocome 2 australia m8 and eat some spiders
- itronitron 9y agoyou had me at 'mouse spiders'
- cyberferret 9y agoHaha - Though they sound like "mouse eating spiders", they are far from that, being only about 2 to 3 cm across (less than 2 inches). And they look quite cute to boot, apart from those huge pincers. [0] They tend to burrow and hide in garden beds etc. and avoid humans where possible, but often during their mating season, or after we have dug up a garden bed to plant new stuff, we see the odd one on the driveway or in the carport. As long as you can see and avoid, it is all good, and worst case, if they give you a nasty bite, it will be painful, and may make you sick for a day, rather than fatal. [0] - https://australianmuseum.net.au/mouse-spiders https://australianmuseum.net.au/mouse-spiders