RED HOURGLASS SERIES

'Bites from this spider very rarely result in death,' Sewlal said. Black widow venom is reported to be 15 times stronger than a rattlesnake's, but because spiders deliver far less venom than snakes do, their bites - though painful - are a serious risk only to the very young and the very old, according to Smithsonian Magazine. How toxic is the black widow's bite?īecause female black widows are so much bigger than males, their bites are more dangerous to people. However, Latrodectus mactans black widows have been known to live as long as three years in the wild and up to four years in captivity, according to the University of Michigan's Animal Diversity Web. Spiderlings are whitish or pale yellow after hatching and darken with each molt females reach maturity in about 90 days and live for about 180 days after that, while males mature after approximately 70 days and then live for another 30 days, ISU says. The female then creates papery egg sacs that may contain many hundreds of eggs, which hatch after about 30 days, according to NCC. When they find a receptive female, they insert their sperm-coated palps into her reproductive opening, Live Science previously reported. Males that are ready to mate begin by spinning silk that they soak with sperm and then wrap around appendages called palps near their heads. (Image credit: Biology Department of the University of California, Riverside)Īccording to Canadian Geographic, black widows are primarily solitary, with the exception of late spring when mating occurs. There are also red widows and brown widows in the Latrodectus genus.Ī black widow spider spinning egg case silk.

This is used to drape the silk over the prey when the spider is wrapping it.'

RED HOURGLASS SERIES

'Black widow spiders belong to the family Theridiidae, commonly referred to as comb-footed spiders,' Sewlal said, adding that comb-footed spiders get their name 'because they have a series of stiff, short hairs on the last segment of their fourth pair of legs that resemble the teeth of a comb. Three North American spider species go by the common name black widow: the western species, Latrodectus hesperus the northern species, Latrodectus variolus and the southern species, Latrodectus mactans, according to Smithsonian Magazine. There are 31 species of so-called widow spiders in the Latrodectus genus of those, five species are black widows, the St. This is Northern back widow spider ( Latrodectus variolus) and was found in maple tree leaves.

Red hourglass