unknown deceased spider

September 9, 2006 11:48 PM

Please help me identify this spider found in Kanagawa, Japan.

I just found this on the outside of a screen door. I don't usually kill spiders but this one made all the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

pic of dead spider

It doesn't appear to be a black house or jumping spider as far as I can tell. Pre-death, the back end was quite bulbous and had little points at the end just underneath (the web spinning thingies?) The body (not including legs) was about 3cms long. The web it had been constructing was quite messy (although there is quite a strong breeze today and it was building it on a screen door).

Any ideas?

posted by gomichild to science & nature (11 comments total)

From the shape of the abdomen and the markings of the back it looks like an Orb Weaver - one of the most common spiders and found all over the world. Can't narrow it down more than that.
posted by vacapinta at 12:22 AM on September 10, 2006

Yikes...how did you kill it?
posted by invisible ink at 12:40 AM on September 10, 2006

Several squirts of bug spray through the screen door. Just in case it lunged at me in it's death throes...

(I have way too vivid an imagination....)
posted by gomichild at 12:46 AM on September 10, 2006

that does look scary
posted by sophist at 1:15 AM on September 10, 2006

Ummm... this website I found on identifying spiders does not bode well for your search my friend:

http://www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/spidermyth/myths/easy.html

an excert:
"Laypersons often assume that there are only a few spider species around, and all they'd need to identify them would be a few pictures. In reality, the world holds over 50,000 species of spiders classified into over 100 families. In your local area, there are likely at least 30 families and a few hundred species."
"At species level, one needs an expensive microscope, a library of hundreds of separate books, monographs and articles, and a few years of experience to understand the many microscopic details that identify a spider, their similarities, differences, and variation."
posted by Summer1158 at 2:54 AM on September 10, 2006

Damn I was hoping someone would easily recognize it and tell me how rabidly insane and poisonous it was so I wouldn't feel so guilty about exterminating it....

I didn't think to keep the body either but flushed it down the drain.
posted by gomichild at 3:06 AM on September 10, 2006

gomichild- you can also use this site: whatisthatbug.com
posted by gen at 5:44 AM on September 10, 2006

thanks gen!
posted by gomichild at 5:49 AM on September 10, 2006

hmmm it seems it might be an オニグモ (onigumo) [be careful - geocities link], which is known by the name Araneus ventricosus, and is common across Korea and most of Japan.

Odd to find it web building in the open on a hot sunny day - apprently this spider is more nocturnal.
posted by gomichild at 7:04 AM on September 10, 2006

*trivia: "onigumo" translates literally to "demon spider"
posted by gomichild at 7:26 AM on September 10, 2006

My first reaction is the same as vacapinta's -- it looks like an Orb Weaver. Orb Weavers are the spiders that make the intricate beautiful round webs that we think of when we think of spider webs. Was its web one of those?

I am a recovering arachnophobe and have killed more than one spider because it looked like IT WAS TRYING TO GET ME. It was Orb Weavers that first helped me to fight the tendency to kill spiders on sight. Now I only kill the brown recluses and yellow sac spiders that get in the house, because both my brother and I have been bitten by them and got nasty painful rotting pits where they bit.
posted by Katravax at 3:49 PM on September 10, 2006