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Black widows are losing to brown widows in the fight for attics and garages
- chasil 4y agoCan I buy brown widows?
- kelseyfrog 4y agoYou can solve your immediate problem by buying them, but trust me. You're going to make a LOT more money selling them.
- jcadam 4y agoSpiders are allowed to live/hunt in my house, but they must remain unseen at all times.
- mpolichette 4y agoI have the same rules
- thaumasiotes 4y agoThat set of rules is as restrictive as it's possible to be. What is the operational difference between "cockroaches are free to live in my house, but they must remain unseen at all times" and "cockroaches are forbidden from living in my house"?
- ysavir 4y agoMy approach is they're free to do whatever as long as they keep out of my way. That is, they're welcome to set up webs in ceiling corners, or in hard-to-reach areas that I forget exist. But if they try setting up a web near a place I frequent or things I often use, I'll give them a forceful relocation.
- malkia 4y agoOnce you hear them, you can't unsee them, even if you haven't seen them yet...
- amalcon 4y agoTraps. Mechanical, glue, poison, etc, are all available and don't care if you see the critter before doing what they do. I won't use them for anything that doesn't pose a structural threat to my house (i.e. termites), but others do.
- thaumasiotes 4y agoYou set out traps for everything you'd prefer not to have in your house, just on spec? How do you move around without sticking to a dozen traps and having a dozen others slam shut on you?
- Izkata 4y agoYep, diatomaceous earth is what popped into mind for me.
- tzs 4y agoSubterranean termites are an interesting case. They usually live in a big colony that is not in your home, and just work in your home. And unless you live in a very sparsely populated area, that same colony is probably working from your neighbor's homes too. When a pest control company deals with them in your home the poison they use is designed to not kill right away. It is defined to get on the ones in your home and be carried back to the colony with them where it spreads to all of them. Then when it kills it takes out the whole colony. Note this means that even though they might be in several houses in the neighborhood whoever first discovers them in their house usually ends up paying to remove them from the whole neighborhood. That can cost a couple thousand dollars or more. I wonder if anyone ever tries to take advantage of that? For example if you find you have subterranean termites give a neighbor or two gift certificates for a termite inspection, in the hope that one of them also has them and pays to get rid of them.
- OJFord 4y agoWhat's the incentive for the pest company to do it that way, vs just kill the current ones/make the house unattractive (and thus expect probably to get business from some neighbours soon)?
- canadiantim 4y agoOptimism.
- iambateman 4y agoI think the parent was joking.
- dclowd9901 4y agoOne might perform “preventative” measures like spraying for pests. This would be operationally different from killing them only when seen.
- sand500 4y agoI figure the spider is preferable to what ever it is eating in my house.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- paxys 4y agoAnything (and anyone) is allowed to live in your house if they can stay unseen.
- EGreg 4y agoNot skunks!!
- chrisweekly 4y agonor rodents
- cleanchit 4y agoNor people.
- doctor_eval 4y agoLike this person? “Experience: a stranger secretly lived in my home” https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/sep/10/experience-a-stranger-secretly-lived-in-my-home https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/sep/10/experie...
- yesenadam 4y agoCheck out this wonderful, unforgettable spanish movie on that theme, much better than any plot summary could suggest (and also I don't want to give spoilers) : The Uninvited Guest (El habitante incierto) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0436374/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0436374/ Taking the theme to a fantastic extreme is the amazing french miniseries Beyond the Walls (Au-delà des murs), which has a whole bizarre world secretly living in your house. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4999820/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4999820/
- zamadatix 4y agoI can't leave this set of foreign movie recommendations on the topic without a mention of the South Korean movie Parasite which won Best Picture in 2020 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6751668/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6751668/
- dclowd9901 4y agoMine get anywhere but the living area, then there’s some calculus around whether my partner sees it first and how many spiders I see in the house in a given period of time. Generally though I make efforts to put them outside unharmed.
- eyelidlessness 4y agoMy rule is that they’re free wherever they roam but if they’re on my body I’m also free to be irrationally afraid until I get them somewhere safer. When I live with other humans, I try to encourage being similarly comfortable with their proximity, because I know they don’t much want contact with us either. With my pup, I just hope they stay off the floor because I know their only hope is being faster than her attention and her curious mouth.
- kmstout 4y agoWe usually try to capture the ones we encounter and send them outside. If we find ourselves doing that again soon after for the same part of the house, we'll give that room an extra thorough cleaning, on the theory that the spiders have food because the spider food has food because of us.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Stratoscope 4y agohttps://archive.is/vxx3Y https://archive.is/vxx3Y
- jehb 4y agoI don't know about my attic and garage. I have a zero tolerance policy for widow spiders in/on the house, although I leave their predators alone to have a natural deterrent. But living in the south, I have noticed brown widows winning the battle for my wood piles. I'm not sure I realized they were a different species until recently. I just assumed they were a natural variation in color, perhaps related to age. Now that I've realized the difference, I'm definitely realizing most of the widows I encounter are the brown variety.
- harshreality 4y agoThey have a distinct hourglass of some color on the underside of their abdomens, while their abdomens are mostly brown or patterned (and not pretty much solid black aside from the hourglass)?
- jehb 4y agoThe hourglass is not always as clear as pictures would have you believe. Once you get to know the body shape, true widows pretty distinctive among spiders around here. (The false widow to me isn't a real lookalike because of the leg shape, but there are other bulbous dark spiders.) The distinction I see most commonly here is the leg banding. True black widows almost always have solid, glossy black legs, without any coloration along them along them. Brown widows do seem to have a lot of difference in coloration along the abdomen, but sometimes look rather plain with abdomens more like some other species, which is why I'd look to the leg colors and body shape as well. I'd welcome advice from an actual arachnologist on this, though!
- pitaj 4y agoNot an archnologist, but I've found one each tell if that their webs are way stretchier than most other spiders. You'll pull one and it will just keep going like a rubber band.
- legohead 4y agoWhen I lived in the south there were black widows everywhere, some browns. Now in CA, it's mostly browns. They both have extremely predictable hiding spots, so I've never really feared them. It's not like they jump out at you, they retreat first into their hidey holes.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> This isn’t a case of one species outcompeting another for food or habitat. In research published Monday in the Annals of the Entomological Society of America, biologists found that young brown widow spiders have a dramatic tendency to seek out and kill their American cousins. That sounds like... a case of one species outcompeting another for habitat. What does Asher Elbein think territorial competition normally looks like? I'll call the tree, and you call the tree, and whoever it goes to gets to live in it?
- PebblesRox 4y agoI would assume it means having more babies and getting eaten less often by predators relative the competitor.
- klyrs 4y agoI would assume so too, but according to the article, the brown widow youth are predating specifically on black widows.
- thaumasiotes 4y agoHaving more babies can't produce the effect that the competitor's population goes down over time. You have to do something to hurt them. That might be eating their food, or leading predators to them, or killing them yourself, but unless you do something to hurt them, the territory they hold is going to grow over time, not shrink.
- tomtheelder 4y agoIt’s outright predation, which is a little different. The idea here is that the Brown Widows aren’t eating the Black Widows’ food sources, or otherwise infringing on their niche- they are just straight up eating them. Like you wouldn’t describe us as “outcompeting” Bluefin Tuna, but we are doing our best to drive them to extinction by eating them.
- thaumasiotes 4y agoIf one Maori tribe wins a battle with another tribe, occupies its territory, and eats the slain losers, would we describe that as "competition" or "predation"? We don't describe ourselves as "outcompeting" tuna because they don't have anything we want. But the brown widows are infringing on the black widows' niche; they are specifically described as occupying the territory they're removing the black widows from and it's a safe bet that, with their webs in the same places, they're eating the same things. The human population of the ocean remains at zero.
- favaq 4y ago[flagged]
- canadiantim 4y agoDam, I thought this article was going to be about the benefits of brown windows for your attic and garage.
- senorrib 4y agoLol same!
- canadiantim 4y agoIt's funny cause Brown Widows is literally the first two words but I swear my brain saw attic and garage at the same time and thought contextually Brown Windows makes more sense. It's interesting how the other words in the sentence shape your expectations for even the first two words.
- bombcar 4y agoIt wasn’t until this comment that I went back and checked. I would have bet money on it being windows - and some energy saving trick.
- IgorPartola 4y agoI think it has less to do with the words they follow and much more to do with the fact that Brown Windows is more common word combo than Brown Widows. Also for me I have been in the process of doing some home construction so windows are much more on my mind than spiders.
- wrycoder 4y agoAnd then my first thought after realizing it was “widows” was how awful the housing market must be to cause this level of degradation.
- malkia 4y agoSame - lool
- bandyaboot 4y ago
- silisili 4y agoThe article only mentions it in passing, but the Brown Widow bite is much, much less dangerous. No medical attention required, just clean it and apply itch cream, if you want. Compared to the black widow bite, I think I'm rooting for these guys.
- NotYourLawyer 4y agoYeah this is the best news I’ve heard today. And I’m certainly not going to go easy on the black widows I do find just because they’re having a hard time. I hope they get eradicated.
- naikrovek 4y agohealthy adults have nothing to fear from a black widow spider. only the extremely young and old will have a hard time with a black widow bite, and black widow bites kill about 6 people a year.
- CyberDildonics 4y agoI don't think just being able to survive a bite means there is "nothing to fear".
- naikrovek 4y agomost will categorize a black widow bite near a bee-sting. I have been bitten by black widows multiple times, because I liked to stick my hands inside piles of cut wood looking for bugs as a child. yes, these were verified black widow bites. the only time I had any sickness or wound to show was when I had a small wound that took two weeks to heal instead of less than one, and it was very tender the whole time, which was unusual. maybe black widow bites just don't bother me, but I doubt it. every other bite from every other bug always hurt a lot and left a mark, at best.
- CyberDildonics 4y ago
- hackitup7 4y agoTangentially related: Does anyone know the reason that both species have that frightening red hourglass / gang tattoo situation? Really adds to the general horror show of the situation.
- jjtheblunt 4y agothey're in the same genus: as such, they essentially derive their DNA from a shared base class (so to speak), and perhaps they share the red tattoo dna.
- ceejayoz 4y agoThese are usually a "don't eat me, you'll regret it" signal to birds. https://today.duke.edu/2016/02/blackwidows https://today.duke.edu/2016/02/blackwidows
- Dalewyn 4y agoNot just birds, they're a universal "fuck with me and you will regret it" indicator in nature. Other examples include poisonous frogs, fish, etc. Basically anything that has bright colors in flashy styling, you stay the hell away from.
- hackitup7 4y agoAh, that makes sense. I sympathize with the birds on this one.
- zoratu 4y agoThey tend to position themselves with the hourglass facing where birds would see it and be frightened away. The red is just for females. Male black widows are grayish brown with a bright yellow hourglass marking. Have not seen a male brown widow.
- imglorp 4y agoI don't get the horror thing. If you live in North America, chances are they're all around you in woodpiles, rafters, wherever. You never see them because they run and hide. I view them like perfectly engineered, self replicating, insect exterminators we might someday soon buy (with a cloud app): they work for you day and night keeping pests at bay and they do their darnedest to stay out of sight.
- zabzonk 4y agoi actually like spiders - come and live with me, you little eight-legged creatures. for those that do (or perhaps don't) can i suggest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Time_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Time_(novel)
- andrewflnr 4y agoOh, sure, I'm on board with Portia sp. too. But not widow spiders, absolutely not spiders that can kill me or make me wish they had.
- paranoidrobot 4y agoA ~4-5 foot tall Portia is going to make you wish you had. It's the one reason why I think those books are just never going to be adapted to TV/Film.
- stanac 4y agoquick google search leads to a page titled: "Sci-Fi Novel ‘Children of Time’ to Be Adapted by Colby Day for Lionsgate"
- paranoidrobot 4y agoWell, that's interesting. I honestly don't know how they're going to adapt it. A significant portion of the story is told from the perspective of the spiders. Just having giant spiders is going to make people freak out, let alone some of the scenes I remember from the book. That doesn't even include the second book, which has even more.
- stanac 4y agoI love Tchaikovsky and his (SF) books. They could use subtitles for communication between spiders. > Just having giant spiders is going to make people freak out This could be a real problem... maybe they can make them look cute, or something. Still not going to be helpful for people with arachnophobia.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- todd3834 4y agoI’m the summer I had a ton of brown widows and some black widows on my property. After reading up on it I wanted to let the brown widows hang around but honestly I started finding way too many everywhere. If you do have these, beware they reproduce in the summer at a very fast pace. Once it got cold I haven seen any of them. I did have to take care of some I found on things my toddler frequents.
- 01100011 4y agoIn San Diego in... 2010? I remember seeing the population change. At first I thought the brown widows were just immature black widows, since they basically looked the same with lighter color and an alternating pattern. Read about the brown widows a few years later and it made sense. FWIW, I fought them for years and finally gave up. I easily had over a hundred at any given time on my 6800 sq ft lot. Every night they'd spin webs between any vertical surface(i.e. my house, the fence, block walls) and the ground. In 16 years I never had an issue with bites to either me or my pets. I would clean the ones out that took residence under deck chairs, but that was about it. I never saw them inside the structure of my house, with the exception of < 1' from the garage door because there were gaps around it. I had a healthy collection of daddy longlegs inside the garage. Not sure if they kept the widows in check. The #1 enemy of widows is other widows, and they spread fast, so fighting them is often a losing battle.
- interfixus 4y agoI live in a part of the world unblessed with deadly or even dangerous spiders. But no way I'm at ease with them. Daddy longlegs have had free run af the house since the first time I saw one making short shrift of a spider much more massive than itself. A smal resident population now keeps most of the scary stuff away.
- TurkishPoptart 4y agoI hope I'm not the only one who read the headline and thought this was going to be about women being discriminated in the housing market.
- WalterBright 4y agoFor years I had a plague of brown spiders on my deck. I finally called an exterminator. He laughed, and said I didn't have a plague of spiders. I had a plague of carpenter ants in the deck, and the spiders were there to eat the ants. I pushed a screwdriver into one of the support beams, which looked perfectly fine. To my horror the screwdriver went all the way through the beam! The carpenter ants had completely eaten away the interior, it was just a painted shell. I had no idea why it had not collapsed. So came the job of sawing off the old deck to replace it. Instead of falling down into a pile of lumber, it fell down into a pile of dust. It was loaded into a truck with a shovel. Years later, when I decided to build a custom house, it had a concrete deck with an iron railing. Moral: if you've got a lot of spiders, they're there for a reason. The real problem is hidden.
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoIt's why I try not to kill spiders I find in my home and just throw them outside. They're nature's exterminators. Though it's easy for me since in my country we don't have such dangerous spiders.
- masklinn 4y agoHouse centipedes as well, while they look creepy as hell they’re discreet and efficient bug hunters. Including silverfishes, which are bad and should feel bad.
- yetanotherloser 4y agoSilverfish are beautiful! In my floorboards, or my bookcase, they are not a good sign... but they're so cute! And so ancient - primeval, even. Providing they stick to the back yard I can appreciate them.
- masklinn 4y agoSilverfishes eat books. There can be no peace between my house and theirs, it’s a blood feud.
- panny 4y ago>The shy, retiring black widows generally tried to escape, fighting back only as a last resort. Cool, so this will drive evolutionary pressure to create aggressive black widows. Awesome. That's exactly what the world needed.
- FromTheSteppe 4y agoI guess I'm not going to sleep until I forget about this in a few days...
- jokoon 4y agoSouth of France, I saw several false widow. They're beautiful, I guess I got bit at one point because my whole arm was red and swollen.
- linker3000 4y agoI was bitten on the leg by one three years ago in the UK. At first I only had a small, raised bite mark, which went away after a week of applying some antiseptic cream. Then, one morning a few weeks later, I woke up with an *extremely* painful leg and could not put any weight on it. My wife took me to the local hospital and I was admitted with an infected wound and put straight onto IV antibiotics and a heart monitor. I spent a month in intensive care while the doctors worked to find an antibiotic that was effective against the infection, all the time I was on Oxycontin for the pain. The leg suffered nerve and muscle damage and I had a large ulcer that took a year to heal. At one point there was talk of plastic surgery. I was never told directly I might need an amputation, but looking at the pictures, that could well have been the outcome if the damage got worse. My leg was in bandages for a year and was cleaned & redressed 2-3 times a week at a local clinic. I had to learn to walk again, starting with a frame and then onto crutches. My leg is now healed, but looks like it has had chunks carved out of it in both the upper and lower sections, and I can sometimes be unsteady on my feet due to the effects of the nerve and muscle damage. Several other people in the UK have also reacted badly to false widow bites and lost fingers or needed skin grafts. Pro tip: If you think you have been bitten by a false widow, have it checked out.
- jokoon 4y agoIt was 3 years ago, I went to see a doctor and it was not that bad. Now that I read you, I guess I might not have been bitten by a false widow. But in your case, it seems it was because of the infection, not the venom.
- salad-tycoon 4y agoPublic Service Anecdote: my wife worked in HR, a worker sat on a portable toilet in a job site. Bit by a spider, major damage developed in the resulting weeks, necrosis and all that. Big worker’s compensation. Pro tip? Don’t sit down. Sorry to hear about your leg. Good reminder that the facade of our security and routine we so highly value in modern society can come crashing down for the seemingly smallest of reasons.
- havblue 4y agoIn related news, joro spiders are taking over the state of Georgia. They're huge and look creepy, but on the plus side they apparently don't bite humans so you can just leave their horrific gold webs in place in your yard. Granted, I did walk into the bottom of a web when I went to take out the trash last year. It didn't fall on me but the thought of it doing so was alarming...
- DeathArrow 4y agoThe article is about spiders in case you wonder. :D
- lordzsolt 4y agoI read the title as "windows" :/
- TexanFeller 4y agoAs a Texan this sounds like fantastic news! One of the terrifying things about our state is black widows are EVERYWHERE. In the part where I'm from every barn, every water well, and any other outdoor structure you put your hands in has a black widow in it somewhere.
- cm2012 4y agoThis is classic evolution. Brown widows don't waste as much energy on making poison.