Spider...This thing bit me twice- what is it?? (hotels, scorpions)

[BeBe Blazfemi]

I was only in LA for 2 days before I noticed a painless bite- pretty big one, too, on my stomach and you could see where TWO punctures were, then a day later, another on the back of my leg near my knee. We're staying in a hotel, and I was surprised to find, as I was wiping what I thought was just dust and some fuzz off a darker area of the bathroom floor, a pretty good size spider! Luckily, it seemed barely alive, or playing dead, and wasn't aggressive, but I feel pretty sure that this thing was the culprit.
Anyone know what it is? From what I've looked up, it seems to have been a "trapdoor spider," but that seems odd since there's nowhere I can think of in this rather small room that I clean myself, (we have a couple, ehem, "service animals" with us so we tell the maids they don't need to clean it, we just get fresh towels etc from them,) and I'm very thorough- we have a "Shark" and I make sure no corner is left un-vacuumed. However, this happened right after we got here.
Anyway, they aren't known to be aggressive and I just sort of found the bites- and I've looked and taken precautions against bed bugs, so I'm sure it's not that- and they'd have to be pretty damn big- the second bite was even bigger and left two 1/8 holes that looked like the fangs had "dragged" along the skin.
I've had no ill effects from it, either, (though my arthritis was astonishingly better right after we arrived in LA! )

This spider was dark brown and looked VERY much like a small tarantula, but the lower part of its body was covered in silvery hair. He also had 10 "legs" PLUS two BIG hairy fangs. I don't know what the shorter legs next to the fangs were...
The closest thing he resembles are wolf spiders and tarantulas, and was lethargic until I poked it a bit, then he kind of half rose up.

I imagine he was in the bathroom to eat the trail of Argentine ants that had come streaming in through the plumbing and hung out at the tub. I assumed they were Pharoah ants at first so we got bait traps- the sugary kind that they take back to the nest, and then found out what they really were. We had a CONSTANT stream of them then, confined to the wall side corner of the tub, for about 2 weeks...then they just stopped even sending "scouts" and are no more! I thought they were hard to get rid of! Of course, I also had used MY "all purpose cleaner and insecticide" which is white vinegar and water 3:1 ratio on the walls when the SECOND wave of scouts started coming in and apparently, it ruined their scent trails- and kills them on the spot, but we wanted to make sure a bunch got back to the nest first.

So does anyone know what my spider was? You can't see his fangs too well here, or his eyes, but two of them were really close together on top of his head. It wasn't a jumping spider, either. If his legs were stretched out, he'd be about the size of something between a nickel and a quarter.
http://twitpic.com/2qa5ls/full

[BRinSM]

nasty. the most common spiders i run into are daddy longlegs and other tiny guys that are indiscernable. there's also plenty of black widows, but that's not something you would probably find in a hotel room. i've seen anything like you had in your picture. i'd be pretty freaked out though if i found out that thing was biting me.

[priapism]

Looks like a tarantula! EeeewwwW!!!!!

I think their bites are painful, and suck, and they may leave teeth in your skin which fall out after the swelling drops down. If it was poisonous you'd know it by now for sure!

[Fontucky]

"priapism"

My new favorite screen name.

[Lovehound]

Originally Posted by BeBe Blazfemi

Anyway, they aren't known to be aggressive and I just sort of found the bites- and I've looked and taken precautions against bed bugs, so I'm sure it's not that- and they'd have to be pretty damn big- the second bite was even bigger and left two 1/8 holes that looked like the fangs had "dragged" along the skin. I've had no ill effects from it, either, (though my arthritis was astonishingly better right after we arrived in LA! )

This spider was dark brown and looked VERY much like a small tarantula, but the lower part of its body was covered in silvery hair. He also had 10 "legs" PLUS two BIG hairy fangs. I don't know what the shorter legs next to the fangs were...

Spiders always have 8 legs, not 10, not 6.

Poisonousness and aggression are not necessarily related or correlated.

Either forget it or seek medical treatment. It would also be a good idea to change rooms or hotels.

Originally Posted by BRinSM

nasty. the most common spiders i run into are daddy longlegs and ...

Daddy longlegs are insects, not spiders. They are harmless.

Originally Posted by priapism

Looks like a tarantula! EeeewwwW!!!!!

I think their bites are painful, and suck, and they may leave teeth in your skin which fall out after the swelling drops down. If it was poisonous you'd know it by now for sure!

No, you might not know it for quite some time. For example a violin spider's wound can take several days to develop.

Originally Posted by Fontucky

"priapism"

My new favorite screen name.

You're confusing screen names with your favorite activity.

[BeBe Blazfemi]

Originally Posted by Lovehound

Spiders always have 8 legs, not 10, not 6.

Poisonousness and aggression are not necessarily related or correlated.

Either forget it or seek medical treatment. It would also be a good idea to change rooms or hotels.

For the record, I only posted to see if anyone knew what KIND of spider that was- I DO know spiders have only 8 legs, hence my putting quotations around the word "legs," because there are types of spiders, male trapdoor spiders, among them, that have these leg-like appendages that apparently have to do with breeding. If you look at the joint of each area where a leg is joined to the body in that photo, you can clearly count more than 8 appendages, be they legs or something else, PLUS the two large, inwardly curve fangs- the on on the bottom part of the screen might be more visible, but you can see the shadow of the other on the upper part of the spider. (since it's facing east-west, that would be the "north" side.)

It's been about a month since it happened so I think I'll live.

And I will certainly make a habit out of vacuuming undisturbed corners and routinely rotating clothing, etc., ESPECIALLY since, about 3 months before we moved, we'd gotten a cloth moth infestation in Philly. Luckily, I caught onto it before they even had a chance to damage our clothes, and we took EVERY measure known to man to get rid of them. We still keep our clothing bagged!
We were moth, egg and larvae free for the last month of our residency there.

[JerZ]

He doesn't look like a tarantula to me. For the record, or maybe you already know this, basically all spiders will bite, and all have at least a small amount of venom. It's just that most of the time, the spiders are so small and/or the amount of venom is so little in comparison to the size of a human that we don't react to their bites and may never know we've been bitten.

In this case, the spider was big enough to leave fang marks but I don't think that's a tarantula or a trapdoor. It just doesn't look hairy/big/substantial enough to me.

Scroll down here to "False Tarantula," could that be it? For the record, my son has been bitten once by a black widow, and I've been bitten twice, and although we both got ill from it, we were fine. My son was five years old and about 40 pounds at the time. The illness came in the form of nausea. My son was on antibiotics and Benadryl. The other dudes to be scared of out here are the brown recluse and, I think, the violin spider (or are those the same thing?) as they can cause necrosis (death) of the tissue surrounding the bite, which then needs to be cut away in order to keep it from spreading across the body. I myself have never seen this type of spider; they truly are reclusive AFAIK.

[MIKEETC]

The "Twice Bitten, Thrice Shy Spider". Rare and very dangerous...!










Just kidding...I don't know.

[miyu]

Since you mentioned the ants... maybe they were antbites. Though those usually leave only one mark. You might have inadvertently scratched the other hole into your own skin with the "dragging" marks being nail marks?

Ant bites and fleabites can be pretty nasty. The nastiness of the bite just depends on what you are allergic to.

[Vary]

The two "legs" by the fangs are called maxillipeds, they're like little pseudo-legs on arthropods designed to shove food into the mouth.

Against my better judgment, I looked at the picture (see: thread on wind scorpions and me looking at creepy pictures, lol). It looks like any number of run-of-the-mill wolf spider-type critters, so it's kind of hard to call.