Might wake up tomorrow with radioactive blood.
July 5, 2013 2:29 PM   Subscribe

What is this spider and will it kill me?

Here is the spider.

I killed this one with a shoe. I found a second spider, already dead. I discarded both spiders. I have been told that possibly the already dead one was the male?

Really, I just want to know if there is a chance this thing's offspring will kill me in the night. I AM CURRENTLY TERRIFIED.
posted by chainsofreedom to Science & Nature (9 answers total)
 
USA? If it's not this or this, you're in the clear.
posted by j_curiouser at 2:35 PM on July 5, 2013 [2 favorites]


Best answer: Yeah you're fine, I had these in my house and similarly freaked out and after hours of research determined they weren't deadly.

Note that I'm in Ohio, USA though so if you're somewhere else YMMV.
posted by Autumn at 2:44 PM on July 5, 2013


Best answer: Looks like a wolf spider to me. They're benign.
posted by mattu at 3:02 PM on July 5, 2013 [3 favorites]


Your location is a key piece of information here.

That said, yeah, it looks like a nice little spider friend. It ain't a black widow and it ain't a brown recluse.
posted by Justinian at 3:03 PM on July 5, 2013


Best answer: Looks like a wolf spider.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 3:04 PM on July 5, 2013


Response by poster: Oh, duh. I am in North Carolina, USA.

I am now reasonably certain that I won't die. Hopefully there won't be any more spider friends anyway - they clearly freaked me out.

Thanks everyone!
posted by chainsofreedom at 3:55 PM on July 5, 2013


I vote for nursery web spider. I was similarly freaked out by one once.
posted by ellenaim at 4:36 PM on July 5, 2013


Spiders are your friends. They eat nasty bugs that are gross. They only bite if threatened (even if that is a threat you aren't aware of) and most are less painful than a mosquito bite.

That looks like wolf spider. Nursery web spiders have much longer legs relative to their bodies than that.

Wolf spider bites are very mild unless you are allergic. Most of the scary images that show up online are of unrelated, south american species called by the same name.
posted by strixus at 4:58 PM on July 5, 2013 [5 favorites]


This is, as others have pointed out, a benign wolf spider. I actually welcome the sight of them as they may keep out the black widow spiders which live around us here in the west.
posted by ragtimepiano at 4:29 PM on July 8, 2013


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