[2Wycked]

Saw this story in the USA Today this afternoon, straight out of Rowlett, Texas:

Quote:

If you take a stroll through one particular street in the Dallas suburb of Rowlett, you might get stumble upon a 40-foot spider web created by thousands of spiders.

C A Roan Drive near Lakeside Park South is the location of the stunning yet slightly intimidating collection of large webs, connecting tree branches together in a cottony hue of white.

“The spiders have been taking over,” said Texas A&M University’s urban entomologist Mike Merchant, “Glistening webs are draping the trees like shrouds.”

Merchant said anyone going by the webs will see thousands of “lanky spiders darting among the webs,” providing a surreal quality to the extensive webbing.

Quote:

These types of webs indicate that the particular spider species is willing to work together with other spiders to make a communal nest for numerous spiders to use, Merchant said.

This isn't the first time in Texas arachnids have taken over parks with their web spinning. In 2007, in Lake Tawakoni State Park, spiders constructed more elaborate webs:

Quote:

“When I first saw it,” said Park Superintendent Donna Garde, “I was totally amazed. What ran through my mind was that this looked like something out of a low-budget horror movie, but I was looking at something five times as big as what you’d see on a Hollywood set.”

Stumped as to the web’s origin, the initial consensus of arachnologists and entomologists who saw an online photo of the web sent by Texas Parks and Wildlife Department biologist Mike Quinn was that it may have resulted from a “mass dispersal” event. In such an event, millions of tiny spiders or spiderlings spin out silk filaments to ride air currents in a phenomenon known as “ballooning.”

Quinn collected a sample of spiders Aug. 31 from in and around the gigantic web and took them to Texas A&M University in College Station for analyses. Entomology Department researcher Allen Dean identified 11 spider families from the sample. The most prevalent species was the Tetragnatha guatemalensis, or what Quinn dubbed the Guatemalan long-jawed spider, since this species didn’t have a common name. Guatemala was the country in which it was first documented.

“I drove 50 to 100 spiders to A&M on Saturday,” Quinn said. “Spider experts tend to specialize in one or few families of spiders. There are nearly 900 species of spiders known from Texas, so no one is an expert on all the species.”

Quinn described the Lake Tawakoni web as “sheet webbing” since it covers a large area of trees, which is more typical of a web spun by a funnel web spider rather than the classic Charlotte’s web, or orb web, like that produced by long-jawed spiders. He speculates that the park’s spider population exploded due to wet conditions this summer that resulted in an abundance of midges and other a small insects upon which the spiders feed.

The Guatemalan long-jawed spider ranges from Canada to Panama, and even the islands of the Caribbean. According to Quinn, the spider is about an inch in length with a reddish-orange head- and-thorax. Spiders, like mites and scorpions, are arachnids, a group of arthropods with four pairs of legs, saclike lungs and a body divided into two segments.

Pretty fucking boss, eh?

More reading here about the world's largest arachnid.

[iamdegaussed]

1/10 WB (would burn)

[rocksteady]

1/10 WNCTA (would not click thread again)

[TonySandos]

   

[CactusCat589]

2Wycked noticing this abomination:

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

It's impressive, but now that we've seen can we all purchase some flamethrowers and move on?

[Professor Fox]

[Foolsgo1d]

And people moan about British weather. I'd take a wet summers day thanks and I'm not even afraid of bugs or spiders.

I've seen one of these in Brazil along telegraph poles and they were full of poisonous spiders. Fuck that.

[Mentavious]

Perfect park to get the bang

[Conscious Pirate]

^
Creepy

[TravelerKai]

The hotter it gets here the more difficult it gets to control the spiders. I had to treat my house multiple times this summer, something I usually do once or twice. This year had record heat and reminds me of some previous years spider problems. If some guys from pest control companies start knocking on every door in the neighborhood to ask you if you would like service for spiders, just because your neighbor called them, that's another way to know it's going to be a rough summer dealing with them.

[MKDAWUSS]

Spiders... If you leave them alone, they'll leave you alone.

[Dr. Howard]

(08-14-2015 07:40 AM)MKDAWUSS Wrote:  

Spiders... If you leave them alone, they'll leave you alone.

spiders...if you leave them alone they will will take up residence in your shoes and blankets.

[TravelerKai]

(08-14-2015 08:23 AM)Dr. Howard Wrote:  

(08-14-2015 07:40 AM)MKDAWUSS Wrote:  

Spiders... If you leave them alone, they'll leave you alone.

spiders...if you leave them alone they will will take up residence in your shoes and blankets.

I always shake my shoes before putting them on. One of my biggest fears is putting my foot into a black widow spider inside a shoe. I have zero interest in knowing if I am allergic to those spiders or even their anti-venom.

I have only seen maybe 3 of them in my whole life and every time I did, I instantly heard symphonic music playing and my life flashes before my eyes.

I have stepped on a Cottonmouth and almost walked on 2 more before and that effect does not happen. I guess the black widow bothers me more because I am cognizant of the fact that they are 15 times more venomous than a rattlesnake and not everyone is a candidate for their anti-venom at the hospital. So fuck that. Spiders get two big thumbs down from me.

[Dr. Howard]

(08-14-2015 09:01 AM)TravelerKai Wrote:  

(08-14-2015 08:23 AM)Dr. Howard Wrote:  

(08-14-2015 07:40 AM)MKDAWUSS Wrote:  

Spiders... If you leave them alone, they'll leave you alone.

spiders...if you leave them alone they will will take up residence in your shoes and blankets.

I always shake my shoes before putting them on. One of my biggest fears is putting my foot into a black widow spider inside a shoe. I have zero interest in knowing if I am allergic to those spiders or even their anti-venom.

I have only seen maybe 3 of them in my whole life and every time I did, I instantly heard symphonic music playing and my life flashes before my eyes.

I have stepped on a Cottonmouth and almost walked on 2 more before and that effect does not happen. I guess the black widow bothers me more because I am cognizant of the fact that they are 15 times more venomous than a rattlesnake and not everyone is a candidate for their anti-venom at the hospital. So fuck that. Spiders get two big thumbs down from me.

prepare to be terrified.

I moved into a rental house and was concerned to find 3 separate black widows, in webs around the outside of the house. I burned them up with an aerosol flamethower. I later found one in the bathroom and didn't really sleep again until winter. I had never seen more than 1 before that so I was perplexed.

The house next to us was a foreclosure, and one day the county put up a bunch of notices on the door. I walked over one day to read the notices and slowly looked up..and around the porch. It was cobweb/spiderweb central with black dots sitting in all of the webs. I counted about 12 black widows just there, with one's web sitting almost right over the doorbell. Walking around the house I could see them everywere...it was so bad that when people, realtors etc would come to see the foreclosure I'd yell at them to look up before opening the door and you'd see their eyes bug out when they did.

Once new owners bought it, and an exterminator chemically nuked the house the migration to my house stopped.

[swiss rabbit]

Looks like what feminists have done to Canada and America

[Samseau]

I think we all know the real story here.

[TheWastelander]

As long as they are genociding mosquitoes I'm all for it, but I wouldn't want to be anywhere near this hellish colony.

[HonantheBarbarian]

I have black widows all over my garage and backyard. I've been bitten numerous times, their really not that terrifying. Only children, pets and the elderly are at any serious risk from them.

[TravelerKai]

Barbarian you cannot be serious. Are you certain those were black widows? Post a pic of them so we know you are not just bullshitting us. A bite should be an automatic trip to the emergency room. Age doesn't matter. These are not brown recluse or something else like a hobo spider or false widow.

[TravelerKai]

On second thought after looking at mayo clinc online the cottonmouth snake is more of a medical emergency than the spider in most cases. All the Web sources say to get medical attention right away though.

[Mentavious]

Yup,^^^

I'll take a black widow bite any day over a rattlesnake. A full grown healthy man can "wait" out a snack bite under medical car and have no side effects. Try that with a rattlesnake bite and you might get gangrene and loose a limb. Even with antivenin theres still a chance of that along with getting an infection.

Taipans on the other hand will leave you in the hospital for weeks. Supposedly lethality rate is not 100% but I'm not willing to be a case study for that

[Foolsgo1d]

Would you rather A) Get bitten by a cottonmouth or Black Widow or B) Argue with a group of feminists?

[Belgrano]

(08-14-2015 05:31 PM)TravelerKai Wrote:  

Barbarian you cannot be serious. Are you certain those were black widows? Post a pic of them so we know you are not just bullshitting us. A bite should be an automatic trip to the emergency room. Age doesn't matter. These are not brown recluse or something else like a hobo spider or false widow.

From wikipedia:

Quote:

The bite frequently is not felt initially and may not be immediately painful, but it can be serious. The brown recluse bears a potentially deadly hemotoxic venom. Most bites are minor with no necrosis. However, a small number of brown recluse bites do produce severe dermonecrotic lesions (i.e. necrosis); an even smaller number produce severe cutaneous (skin) or viscerocutaneous (systemic) symptoms.

While the majority of brown recluse spider bites do not result in any symptoms, cutaneous symptoms occur more frequently than systemic symptoms. In such instances, the bite forms a necrotizing ulcer that destroys soft tissue and may take months to heal, leaving deep scars. These bites usually become painful and itchy within 2 to 8 hours. Pain and other local effects worsen 12 to 36 hours after the bite, and the necrosis develops over the next few days. Over time, the wound may grow to as large as 25 cm (10 inches). The damaged tissue becomes gangrenous and eventually sloughs away.

Yeah, why would anyone be worried about those brown recluse spiders.

[TravelerKai]

(08-14-2015 06:58 PM)Mentavious Wrote:  

Yup,^^^

I'll take a black widow bite any day over a rattlesnake. A full grown healthy man can "wait" out a snack bite under medical car and have no side effects. Try that with a rattlesnake bite and you might get gangrene and loose a limb. Even with antivenin theres still a chance of that along with getting an infection.

Taipans on the other hand will leave you in the hospital for weeks. Supposedly lethality rate is not 100% but I'm not willing to be a case study for that

Apparently, the amount of venom injected is the difference maker. Drop for drop the spider is worse than the rattlesnake by a factor of 15, but a rattlesnake would drop in alot more volume wise. Sometimes the spiders make dry bites like some rattlesnakes do from what I just read.

Snakes outside of the US never concerned me until I went into remote areas of China. I could not find any information in English hardly. Chinese people were calling the snakes all kinds of strange names like "Sleep Snake". Apparently if it bites you, you will go to sleep. Yuck. I stayed nervous and paranoid walking out there. Wiki said King Cobras were out where I was, but no one I spoke to ever saw one before in the rice fields or mountainsides. I still had nightmares that I was going to turn around and see one standing up right in my face. lol