The Energon Pub

Anyone know what kind of spider this is? I live in the Chicago, IL area. It was big enough that I saw it moving in the dark. Bigger than a penny. Not what you want to see in your basement or in a house with a 13 month old baby.

Thanks in advance!

Looks similar to the Running Spider but there are differences between the rear leg colors and the abdomen color.

http://www.insectidentification.org/ins ... ing-Spider

Your's kinda looks like this fella:

http://bugguide.net/node/view/132812/bgimage

It states its a running spider, so the colour differences might be due to its age or something.

However, because I'm bored I went and found this, if you scroll down about half way there's a spider that looks a lot more like the little fella you got there:

http://pestcontrolcanada.com/Questions/ ... os_201.htm

Almost resembles a brown recluse.


Be careful,
If its true, then this spider is quite dangerous.
i could be wrong though,

Use Caution.

I think what you have there is a Woodlouse Hunter. They'll bite if threatened, but generally they're not harmful. He's just looking for a warm place to hide out for the winter.

Skyfire77 wrote:I think what you have there is a Woodlouse Hunter. They'll bite if threatened, but generally they're not harmful. He's just looking for a warm place to hide out for the winter.

I agree that they are woodlouses. Except it was back in June that it was in the house, though I usually see a couple a month downstairs in my basement bathroom.

Thanks for all of the advice everyone.

Don't worry Ryan, it really does look like those red spiders in my garden that eat woodlice. They actually hurt when they bite too, because they have to puncture woodlice's hard shells.

I have frickin' loads of these living in my house, under the skirting boards, under the floorboards, in the bath, under the bed....ect. They're pretty shy things, though - and luckily, pretty tasty according to my cats.

They're bloody vile things.

Novawave wrote:Almost resembles a brown recluse.


Be careful,
If its true, then this spider is quite dangerous.
i could be wrong though,

Use Caution.

Naa it's not a brown recluse, those have a violin shaped mark on their backs and longer legs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brown ... n-edit.jpg

Evil_the_Nub wrote:

Novawave wrote:Almost resembles a brown recluse.


Be careful,
If its true, then this spider is quite dangerous.
i could be wrong though,

Use Caution.

Naa it's not a brown recluse, those have a violin shaped mark on their backs and longer legs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brown ... n-edit.jpg

And brown recluses are solid. This thing looks almost translucent!

I love spiders. There was one in a bush in front of my house a few weeks ago, it made a tunnel-shaped web. I would shake the web gently and it would coming running out. I try to catch them when I find them in my house and release them outside, but sometimes the foot has to come down.

Years and years ago, I had a couple wild spiders as "pets". They had built big webs in a corner of the window in my dad's garage. I would catch flies with my hand and throw them against the wall to stun them, then drop them in the web. The spider would come running out and pounce on it. Sometimes it would just grab the struggling, buzzing fly and drag it away into the gap between the window and its frame, other times it would roll it around right there in the open, biting it and wrapping it up. Awesome, I hate houseflies.

BTW Ryan, I'm impressed that you were able to slide a penny that close to it for the pic. Yer like a ninja.

Hip-Hoptimus Rime wrote:I love spiders. There was one in a bush in front of my house a few weeks ago, it made a tunnel-shaped web. I would shake the web gently and it would coming running out. I try to catch them when I find them in my house and release them outside, but sometimes the foot has to come down.

Years and years ago, I had a couple wild spiders as "pets". They had built big webs in a corner of the window in my dad's garage. I would catch flies with my hand and throw them against the wall to stun them, then drop them in the web. The spider would come running out and pounce on it. Sometimes it would just grab the struggling, buzzing fly and drag it away into the gap between the window and its frame, other times it would roll it around right there in the open, biting it and wrapping it up. Awesome, I hate houseflies.

BTW Ryan, I'm impressed that you were able to slide a penny that close to it for the pic. Yer like a ninja.

This was my buddy for a while:

He liked to hang from the ceiling in the middle of the room, then he just stopped showing up.