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I won't be able to get a pic, but lets see how good I can describe it. First, it was found inside, in the middle of my office, in Southwest Ohio. It's body is about 1/3" long, and each leg is 1.25 to 1.5 inches long (yes, very long legs!). Body is dark brown with light brown trim. No markings on the body that I can see. Legs are striped with dark and light brown. Its front arms are big and bulky.

I googled as best I could and I found a picture of a hobo spider however, i found that Hobo Spiders only live in Northwest US. However, the body and front arms are very similar to that picture, but the legs are way too short.

Any idea on what I have or where I can go?

Could it be some sort of House Spider? They are closely related to Hobo Spiders and are found throughout most of temperate North America.

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=house%20spider&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

A wolfie? They've pretty damn common and come to mind when I think of leg banding.

Wolf spider is always my first guess when I see a fairly large spider in the middle of a room. You probably see a few hundred a year if you live in the midwest. But ours are usually short legged like this http://www.aqualandpetsplus.com/Bug,%20T42.jpg Then again this monster is listed on Iowa States pest management page as a wolf spider: http://www.timart.be/Npaginas/foto/wolf_spider.jpg

If you want conclusive identification of a spider tro species level, it's a job for an expert. Usually involving dissection.

If you find a spider that you want identifying, the usual procedure among professionals is to bottle it in isopropyl alcohol. However, if you're unable to obtain such materials or can only obtain them with difficulty, vodka will do instead.

By the way, that second spider Sham linked looks like a Dolomedes species. We have one native to the UK, Dolomedes fimbriatus, known as the Raft Spider or Fishing Spider, because a large adult is capable of plucking a stickleback from out of the water and eating it!

I've had otherwise ordinary Tegenaria house spiders here in the UK turn up with 4 inch leg spans, though they're more creepy from the appearance standpoint than harmful in any way. One of our smaller spiders, Scotophaeus blackwalli, on the other hand, has chelicerae capable of penetrating human skin and delivering a bite. However, it only usually does that under extreme provocation, and prefers to use its fast running speed to get it out of trouble.

American spiders, on the other hand, well they can be troublesome. Basically if you suspect that you're dealing with ANY member of the Family Loxoscelidae, treat it with considerable respect and caution, because Loxoscelids are capable of delivering necrotising bites to humans. The infamous Violin Spider or Brown Recluse, Loxosceles reclusa, is one of these, and its venom contains a unique flesh digesting enzyme called Sphingomyelinase, making it unique among venomous creatures the world over. Then of course there is the Family Theridiidae - this Family should be treated with respect also, not least because its most famous members are the Widow Spiders, including Latrodectes mactans, the Black Widow, whose close relation Latrodectes hasselti, the Red Back, is one of Australia's most notorious denizens. Cue spider in the dunny jokes ...

Still, at least North America doesn't have any large, venomous Ctenid spiders ... Phoneutria fera and Phoneutria nigriventer from South America are even more dangerous than the Widow Spiders and the Sydney Funnel-Web. They have a neurotoxic venom, evolved over time to kill cockroaches instantly (these spiders prey upon cockroaches) and the venom acts as an acetylcholine inhibitor, making it a kind of natural nerve agent. So you have in the case of a Phoneutria spider, a creature armed with a venom that's as potent as a battlefield nerve agent, with the ability to run up a vertical wall as fast as you or I can walk across a room, with both excellent vision and directional vibration sensing, and absolutely NO knowldege of the meaning of the word 'fear'. You can have some fun watching this video clip featuring a chef here in the UK who was bitten by one of these spiders, complete with some nice footage from National Geographic, whose cameramen got up close and personal with Phoneutria fera. Basically, if you get one of these turning up in your bananas, don't try picking it up in your hand because it's extremely aggressive ...

[Edited to fix link]



Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002