With fall鈥檚 arrival, Victorians start to see their homes invaded by those enormous, scary spiders, the ones many of us call 鈥渨olf spiders.鈥�
But Claudia Copley, entomology collection manager at the Royal sa国际传媒 Museum, takes umbrage on behalf of these eight-legged visitors, insisting they are not that enormous, nothing to be scared of and technically aren鈥檛 even wolf spiders.
鈥淭he fall season is when Victorians all start to freak out about these giant, hairy, house spiders they see coming in,鈥� Copley said. 鈥淧eople always think of them as 鈥榳olf spiders,鈥� but they are actually three species introduced from Europe.鈥�
The three species are:
鈥� The giant house spider, Eratigena atrica, the biggest and most likely to spread fear.
鈥� The hobo spider, Eratigena agrestis, the most unfortunately mislabelled because Copley said in 鈥渢he Internet world of crazy鈥� the word agrestis, Latin for 鈥渙f grass,鈥� became mis-translated to 鈥渁ggressive鈥�.
鈥� The house spider, Tegenaria domestica, also called the barn funnel weaver.
Copley said all three appear similar. They are all harmless to people. They don鈥檛 sting, they can鈥檛 break a person鈥檚 skin and don鈥檛 carry any harmful bacteria.
鈥淭hey are not aggressive and they don鈥檛 have a venom that is any danger to us,鈥� Copley said.
鈥淎ll of them can bite because they are animals with jaws, like a beetle or an ant,鈥� she said. 鈥淏ut the bite doesn鈥檛 hurt, and I鈥檝e聽never even been bitten.鈥�
To demonstrate, she tips a live specimen of the hobo spider from a jar into her hands. She pins its struggling legs with fingers and thumbs and still manages to give the creature a little belly rub as it were a co-operative hamster.
鈥淚鈥檝e handled hundreds and hundreds of spiders,鈥� she said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not dangerous.鈥�
Copley said all three of the spiders that invade Victoria homes this time of year produce horizontal sheet webs on the ground. These small mats are often seen in backyard grass or in or under sheds. They also build funnel-shaped retreats into which they hustle any prey unlucky enough to be trapped in the sheet web.
But at this time of year, these spiders reach sexual maturity, and the males, in particular, fall victim to their own reproductive biology. They leave their little funnel homes and go looking for females, who don鈥檛 move. In their wanderings, the males will often slip inside a human abode.
鈥淭hey are all just lost and they are all just looking for love,鈥� Copley said. 鈥淭hey just find their way under our doors and they wander around and can鈥檛 find a mate until they die.鈥�
Even the sexual organs of these males, two appendages on the sides of their heads, called pedipalps, work against them in their relations with people.
At this time of year, they swell up, become noticeable to the human eye and are misconstrued by the human brain as biting jaws. But in reality they are used to transfer sperm to a willing female.
Again, Copley said it鈥檚 unfortunate for the male spiders鈥� reputations among humans to have their 鈥渘aughty bits鈥� misidentified as fearsome weapons.
She said in another respect, the spiders are victims of West Coast humans鈥� relaxed attitudes to winter. Unlike Canadians everywhere else, the typical Victorian doesn鈥檛 work very hard to weatherproof the home. Even a simple sweep strip under a door will keep out most spiders.
鈥淧eople in places away from the coast will do a better job of energy efficiency because they live in a colder climate,鈥� Copley said. 鈥淲e are pretty lazy here, so we end up with a lot of big spiders in the house.鈥�
鈥淲e don鈥檛 do that little bit of energy-efficiency that we should.鈥� she said. 鈥淲e could be saving money and saving spiders if we would just put a sweep under the door.鈥�
