RE: Melany- Dangerous Spiders

[Will Hayward]

"The way webs are made can be a clue as to which spider was the resident of said web." - Will

I loath spiders! But non the less this is a cool fact. Makes sense that all different kinds of spiders weave different webs. Any spiders that you watch out for in Burlington? I imagine we have them here in Guelph too...

Melany,

There are few dangerous spiders in our area. Though, there are always possibilities of the spiders being transported to us, and these possibilities are possible enough to at least educate yourself about the species. This often happens in food shipments or shipments that come from warehouses or factories.

The Brown Recluse Spider (Loxosceles reclusa) and also The Black Widow (Latrodectus spp.) ARE found in Ontario though encounters with this species are usually reported towards the far South West of the province.

This site is a non official for "pest in Canada": http://www.pestcontrolcanada.com/INSECTS/spiders.htm
They have decent info, but unfortunately they consider EVERY bug a pest, and they don't really speak much about the pros of these bugs and they truly focus on the cons.

 

[Jewel]

Thanks for the info Will. I hate spiders with a passion. We live near Lake Erie and we have these really big harry black spiders up here, I don't know what they are called but they remind me of trantulas and they can get really big too, whenever I see one I run for the vacume to suck it up because they are to big to kill, do you know what kind they are Will? I would hate for one of them to get into one of the chameleons cages.
Also one day at work when I was on cash a customer put some bananas on the belt and a huge spider came out of it, we think it was a trantula, one of the girls took a newspaer and killed it, me and the customer almost puked, we made her clean it up because I couldn't handle it.

 

[Will Hayward]

Those would be wolf spiders. There are many species and the largest can reach nearly 4.5 inches.

Tarantuals and larger harmless tropical spiders can come from banana crates, but are almost always weeded out in the fruit/vegi distribution warehouses and would be a very rare sight to see at grocery stores. Additionally only a very small percentage of that small percentage that do find their way into crates, survive the cross country shipping of the fruits.

Thank you past employment at a grocery center for the info. Talk to the fruit delivery guys if you want to know more.

 

[Jewel]

Thanks Will, I just looked it up and they are wolf spiders, are they dangerous to chameleons?
I work in the produce department of a grocery store and we were told to watch when opening the boxes of bananas up because they have found several live trantulas in them in the last few years in the grocery store, that is why we are not aloud to let customers reach into the box to get them out, we have to do it.

 

[Will Hayward]

At their largest, Wolf spiders might have a nasty double bee sting bite, but no more. I've never experienced one, as they are runners and will flee 9 times out of 10. Only when they feel trapped (like in clothes) would they bit.