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I often encounter garden spiders across trails. The females are 3" - 4" in size.
I've never seen garden spiders that big. 3-4"? 2 maybe. Tarantulas are 3-4 (and bigger sometimes) inches. Think about it. That's BIG. Get out a measuring tape and look close at those dimensions. A spider 3-4 inches across at the legs would be able to wrap those legs halfway around my forearm. And I'm not a diminutive guy. A garden spider couldn't do that. Not even close. We're talking a tarantula sized web spinner here. I've never seen anything hanging in a web that big.
Spiders I've encountered that size were hunter type critters. And tarantulas are the only species of that type I've ever seen. They don't spin webs and hang in them off the ground.
Ummm. sorry, nothing 3-4" there in either video I watched. the second video was not a web spinner but some sort of hunter critter. Moved to fast on the ground to be a web spinner. Good sized but not that big. N American webspinners just don't get that big. Either the OP encountered an invasive species or he overestimates the size of the critter in the web.
Ummm. sorry, nothing 3-4" there in either video I watched. the second video was not a web spinner but some sort of hunter critter. Moved to fast on the ground to be a web spinner. Good sized but not that big. N American webspinners just don't get that big. Either the OP encountered an invasive species or he overestimates the size of the critter in the web.
lol. Fair enough. That first video was a really pretty garden spider. I've never seen one colored like that. But they can come in some really wild color schemes. Green and white and black and orange are the most common combinations I run across. I suppose a garden spider could dish out a painful bite if pushed, but they have a long fuse like tarantulas do. I do wish the OP had some pics.
Haha. Hate when people see me eating! In reality, most N American spiders are pretty harmless. The big exceptions being the Fiddleback and Black Widow. There is another that hangs out in the Southeast (Hobo spider) that can become a real nuisance and delivers a nasty bite. Though nowhere near the toxicity of a Black Widow, they have been known to just take over a place and bite with no provocation. The bite is painful and delivered multiple times by different spiders has some bad effects.
Watched a show a while back on Sci channel about a family that was invaded by these beasties, and they made life plumb miserable. However, we are pretty lucky here in N America as to nasty spiders. At least native ones. Unlike Australia. South America and Africa have some nasty species of tarantula. Some pretty wicked athropods (centipedes and scorpions) as well.
But up here in the US spider wise we have it pretty good.
Most spiders are absolutely harmless to humans. In fact, of the over 20,000 different species of spiders that inhabit the Americas, only 60 are capable of biting humans. Within that small group, only four are known to be dangerous to humans: the brown recluse, the black widow, the hobo or aggressive house spider, and the yellow sac spider. Within this select group, only the brown recluse and the black widow spider have ever been associated with significant disease and very rare reports of death.
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