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i bought one of those cattle watering tanks to make a swimming pool ( wife's idea ). When it was delivered it had some very large black widows happily living in

i bought one of those cattle watering tanks to make a swimming pool ( wife's idea ). When it was delivered it had some very large black widows happily living inside. I wanted to leave them be but they were so big, i'm probably exaggerating but i swear they were as big as your fist, and I have kids so an executive decision was made.

lbotos 4y ago
Where in the world? Northeast US I’ve never seen a black widow larger than say an American quarter. They are smaller spiders as I know them
prmoustache 4y ago
black widows are much smaller. Either you were high or you saw something else.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  There's an interesting phenomena where the brains of people with arachnophobia will enlarge the perceived size of spiders. People with an irrational fear of spiders literally perceive spiders to be bigger than other people. The sample size wasn't exactly huge (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0887618511001447 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088761851...) but the science seems to resonate with other research in the field. All of this is to say that it's possible that someone may perceive a spider to be much bigger than it really is, through no fault of their own.
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    That's really curious, do you know where else this is the case? Other phobias?
    - jeroenhd 4y ago
      I'm no doctor, nor am I a psychologist, so I can't easily pick out good sources for this topic. All I remember is this particular story hitting the news and really resonating with me (mostly because I have an irrational reaction to spiders myself, though "fear" may not be the right term). There are 83 works on Google Scholar citing the paper I linked above: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=15254216166904174230 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1525421616690417423... I'm not qualified to judge these papers nor their journals, but some of them may serve as a jumping off point for your own research if you're interested! Some papers seem to revolve around general state-of-mind biases ("Human safety and risk management"), while others focus on more concrete links such as biases in perception of "interpersonal distance".

lbotos 4y ago

Where in the world? Northeast US I’ve never seen a black widow larger than say an American quarter. They are smaller spiders as I know them

prmoustache 4y ago

black widows are much smaller. Either you were high or you saw something else.

jeroenhd 4y ago
There's an interesting phenomena where the brains of people with arachnophobia will enlarge the perceived size of spiders. People with an irrational fear of spiders literally perceive spiders to be bigger than other people. The sample size wasn't exactly huge (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0887618511001447 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088761851...) but the science seems to resonate with other research in the field. All of this is to say that it's possible that someone may perceive a spider to be much bigger than it really is, through no fault of their own.
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  That's really curious, do you know where else this is the case? Other phobias?
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    I'm no doctor, nor am I a psychologist, so I can't easily pick out good sources for this topic. All I remember is this particular story hitting the news and really resonating with me (mostly because I have an irrational reaction to spiders myself, though "fear" may not be the right term). There are 83 works on Google Scholar citing the paper I linked above: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=15254216166904174230 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1525421616690417423... I'm not qualified to judge these papers nor their journals, but some of them may serve as a jumping off point for your own research if you're interested! Some papers seem to revolve around general state-of-mind biases ("Human safety and risk management"), while others focus on more concrete links such as biases in perception of "interpersonal distance".