Notes on the False Black Widow (In Praise of Spiders)

A female false widow spider 

(SA/2022)

 

 

I'm not an arachnologist, but I think that the creature pictured above that I discovered hiding in the bottom of a garden waste sack, is commonly known as a cupboard spider or, more intriguingly, a false widow spider, due to a superficial resemblance to its more venomous and darker cousin. 

 

Like black widows, the female cupboard spider is usually around a centimetre in length and has a round, bulbous abdomen that is typically reddish-bown in colour (like a conker), with distinctive markings. 

 

Providing they have access to water, they can go several months without feeding and live up to six years, laying three or more egg sacs annually, each containing between 40-100 eggs from which tiny but fully independent spiderlings will usually emerge within a month. 

 

A cosmopolitan spider, i.e., one found in many parts of the world, the species known as Steatoda nobilis is thought to have  arrived in the UK relatively recently; as a stowaway on ships transporting bananas from tropical lands. 

 

Now, however, thanks to a warming climate, numbers are booming and reports of people being bitten by these spiders - painful, but not deadly and with no long-lasting effects - are often found in the newspapers, written in predictably sensational style: 

 

Traumatised mum warns other parents to be alert after her baby was bitten multiple times by an invasive arachnid 250 times more poisonous than native species... 

 

Such reports often fail to note that the spiders are not aggressive and generally don't bite people unless provoked to react in a defensive manner. 

 

So, my advice is, should you come across such a lovely spider, leave it alone and learn to live in wonder, like a philosopher, rather than in fear or contempt for these marvels of evolution which have been around for hundreds of millions of years before us and will probably still be spinning webs long after humanity has vanished from the face of the earth.       

   

Two legs good, eight legs better ...