3 replies to this topic

[savoche]

I've never gotten around to find out what kind of spider this is. Every morning during our stay in Windhoek she'd sit on the bedroom wall looking down at us, but would be gone again in the afternoon. This was in late September. I'd estimate the body to be 2-3 cm long.

I know nothing at all about spiders, but maybe somebody else here does?

[armchair bushman]

Hi Savoche,

your spider is a Flattie or a Wall Crab Spider from the family Selenopidae. The most definitive way to identify any spider is by looking at its eye pattern. Its difficult to see the eye pattern clearly from these pictures, but it looks like its from the genus Selenops. The only other genus from selenopidae that occurs in Africa is Anyphops.

Selenopidae are completely harmless to humans and are completely non-aggressive. They like hiding in flat spaces between curtains, small gaps in walls, etc. and create disk shaped papery sacs for their eggs. They are not the only ones that create this kind of papery sac, so don't automatically assume if you find one of these that it belongs to this girl.

hope this helps.

[savoche]

Thanks, that certainly helps! Except the one in our bedroom was waaay bigger than what the Selenops can be! Nah, I'm just not used to spiders, and she's bigger than anything I've seen at home.

Well, she didn't bother us, so we didn't bother her. I know most spiders are harmless, and even the nasty ones aren't that nasty.

Thanks again for the info, it's much appreciated!

[whorty1970]

The 'sac' comment from Armchair Bushman is a good comment. We came across Sac Spiders in South Africa - very nasty criters. A painless bite, but very cytotoxic. One of our trainers got bitten by one whilst asleep in bed - she didn't know about it until a few days later when the bite mark went from red, to purple to black.

In the end the flesh at the bite site died and she had to have a chunk of her skin on her shoulder cut away. For those Brits on the board, the amount cut away was about the size of the old 50p coin (5-6cm?), and about 2-3mm deep.

Very nasty are some spiders.