Dreaded redback spider's NEMESIS: Forgotten Captain Cook wasps A species of Australian wasp discovered by Captain Cook but forgotten until modern times has turned out to be officially as hard as nails, as it makes a habit of eating the dreaded down-under redback spider ALIVE. A nigricornis was having killed a redback spider. Credit: Florian and Peter Irwin Call that a poisonous bite? …
"Maybe both" just means you don't remember the definitions, and are hedging your bets. Venomous, not poisonous.
There's some poisonous snakes (at least 2 species), and many toads and frogs... Venom can be used both for attack and defence, but poison practically only for defence: it works when entering the opponents' digestive system. Which is far too late for your own good, usually, but the lesson helps your relatives survive.
The spider being a predator and clearly the human victims not eating them, the evidence is clearly for a highly-venomous spider --- so why would it waste energy on developing a poison as well? [So it's "maybe both" in the sense that maybe there were pink crocodiles roaming Antarctica 5 million years ago.]
Why would they bother? Red Backs aren't especially aggressive. My Mum grew up in Sydney, and they found them under the house all the time, especially in the tin bath they used for the dog. They'd flip it up and they Red Backs would scuttle off. There also hasn't been a recorded death from a Red Back since the 50's in Australia, they are hardly a menace worth worrying about.
Sydney Funnel Webs on the other hand, if you see one, leg it. Highly aggressive, can bite through a shoe... if it raises up and you, it means it's defensive and will attack. My Nan opened the door and a spider raised up like that. She left the house. Much more deadly, but again no one has died from a Funnel Web after the anti venom was developed. The one I don't like the look of is the White Tail, it was thought it could provoke a necrotic reaction some though that is disputed.
Sydney Funnel Webs are nasty buggers. Very difficult to main or kill too; they have the consistency of a piece of uncooked beef. You can hit them multiple times with solid objects (usually the first thing you grab - in my Dad's case a tennis racquet) and it pretty much just makes them angrier. Unlike most spiders, the male is the deadlier, as they are slightly smaller than the females but highly migratory as they explore to find a mate. They are all completely barmy and do not fear anything. They can survive for days on the bottom of chlorinated swimming pools - our neighbour's pool used to get SFWs in it regularly. We (the local gang of kids) once fished one out with the net (a SFW could net you serious pocket money - in the days before the antivenom the Sydney Reptile Park would pay cash for live Funnel Web Spiders - they went on to develop the antivenom in the early eighties). The SFW we found in the pool had been there about three days - on removal it appeared lifeless, but after a few minutes in the air it came too - mad as hell as usual - at which point we all realised we were in bare feet. Cue noisy exodus!
"Sydney Funnel Webs on the other hand, if you see one, leg it. Highly aggressive, can bite through a shoe..."
Er, not too sure about that one. I've read many times that they can bite through a child's fingernail - I think a leather shoe is a rather different proposition. One quick look at my simple office shoes can see that the leather is many times thicker than the length of spider's fangs so biting through them seems rather unlikely. The odds of one ever getting close enough to my shoe to find out however are VERY small.
If you have a cat, let it play keep the spider occupied as I understand cats (and dogs) are largely unaffected by the venom. I don't suppose they'd enjoy the actual bite that much but the venom won't have much of an effect (or so I read). It seems to be primates that react really badly to it.
I was with you until you got to "vampire koalas".
That's going too far even for us.
Don't mess with the drop-bears, mate. No way would we want those bastards breeding out of control. A fully-grown drop-bear will kill a Rottweiler in under 5 seconds, and they put more Aussies in hospital each year than all the redbacks, funnelwebs, blue-ringies, box jellies, taipans and king browns combined. BTW, don't forget to stick forks upright in your hat if you go walking in the outback - that'll discourage the koalas from attacking.
Trust me, mate. Don't be fooled by all the "cute cuddly koala" bullshit spouted by the tourist ads - that's just the tame domesticated ones in the zoos that have been bred from cubs to be around humans. The wild ones are dangerous fuckers in the best of tempers!
That's the most poisonous wasp eating spider in this entire region! So what I'm gonna do, is sneak up on him, and jam my thumb in his butthole! Cranky! Boy this wasp eating spider is really pissed! I'm gonna jam my thumb in his butthole now! Oh yeah, that pissed it off alright!
That's what Matt Irwin will be up to next decade, clearly.
Red-back spiders aren't really considered that dangerous down under and there have been no deaths since an anti-venom was developed. Sydney Funnel-Web on the other hand has killed a small child in under 15 minutes.
Rumours abound that the White-tailed spider bites cause ulcers and necrosis, but research in 2003 failed to support this.
Isnt that the common brown / recluse or violin spider that causes necrosis....In some cases more dangerous than the funnel web as the risk of infection from these wounds that take months to heal is massivley higher than the short, sharp (undoubtedly toxic) bite of a funnel web!!
Yeah, brown recluse have a nasty bite but not dangerous as in a threat to a healthy adult. I've been bitten, and took the better part of a year to fully heal, but didn't cause so much as a fever. This is another spider that is thankfully not aggressive. They are common hose spiders in places (NE Arkansas among others) but seldom bite. I owe mine to brushing against a bunch of webs when restoring a car that had been sitting for a few years.
I've been bitten twice by the damned things visiting in the general area you mention. Both times the bite produced the ugliest of weeping sores at the bite site -- my calf in both instances, which makes sense given how I sleep when I do sleep. The timeline for me was a large pustule in the middle of red ring of rock-hard swollen skin, followed soon by little pimple-like nodules growing randomly on and around the swollen ring. The central pustule was weeping within hours of discovery and during the day it and its smaller companions had ruptured and the following two days were perpetual changing out Gauss bandaging, wiping up weeping liquid, removing dried up fluid (really not dry, more like a tree-sap,) and general cleaning to prevent infection.
Within a couple of weeks the weeping had all but stopped and was being held back by a scab just barely capable of holding in fluids, and barely capable of staying in place. Meanwhile the swelling had spread out more but the protrusion from the leg was reduced. About a month after the bite the site had no more swelling, no more oozing, and was just a thick scab about 1/3 inch across. This one remained more resilient to transient abrasions and annoyances, and stayed in place for about another two weeks.
In short, spider bites suck even if they don't kill you. Oh, and did I mention that for an entire month the damned thing itched like nothing I had ever felt before? (Except for the second bite, since I had obviously experienced similar itching the first time.) Oh, God, how it itched, but I experienced no illness associated with the bites. And for the curious who are still here, I did seek advice from my physician who said that so long as I wasn't getting sick, the only thing to do would be an optional course of antibiotics to help prevent infection. The first time I opted for a short course to be on the cautious side, the second I flew solo with no adverse results.
Paris, oh, God, the itching!
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"Red-back spiders aren't really considered that dangerous down under and there have been no deaths since an anti-venom was developed."
As a general rule of thumb, I, personally, would consider any creature, for the bite of which there is an anti-venom, to be dangerous. But that's just me.
Nah, if you want your boy to be tough name him Sue :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1BJfDvSITY&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Sing along now...
http://youtu.be/TjDAiq2-xeU?t=15s
There was a redback on the toilet seat, When I was there last night.
I didn't see him in the dark, But boy I felt his bite.
I jumped high up into the air, And when I hit the ground.
That crafty redback spider, Wasn't nowhere to be found.
I rushed into the Missus, Told her just where I'd been bit.
She grabbed a cutthroat razor blade, And I nearly took a fit.
I said 'Just forget what's on your mind, And call a doctor please.
Cause I've got a feeling that your cure, Is worse than the disease.'
There was a redback on the toilet seat, When I was there last night.
I didn't see him in the dark, But boy I felt his bite.
And now I'm here in hospital, A sad and sorry plight.
And I curse the redback spider, On the toilet seat last night.
I can't lie down, I can't sit up I don't know what to do. And all the nurses think it's funny but that's not my point of view.
I tell you it's embarrassing and that's to say the least, For I'm too sick to eat a bite, While that spider had a feast.
And when I get back home again, I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll make that Redback suffer for the pain I'm going through.
I've had so many needles, that I'm looking like a sieve. I promise you that redback hasn't very long to live.
There was a redback on the toilet seat, When I was there last night.
I didn't see him in the dark, But boy I felt his bite.
And now I'm here in hospital, A sad and sorry plight.
And I curse the redback spider, On the toilet seat last night.
"A nigricornis was having killed a redback spider. And doesn't afraid of anything. Credit: Florian and Peter Irwin".
Once again I find myself called up to restore the part of the quote that was, somehow, omitted when the mouseover for the picture was being written.
Decent logic. IIRC the Hawaiians didn't have names for some things, some fish spring to mind, because they didn't need them. If they didn't bite you (mano, sharks) or weren't tasty (i.e. moi) they didn't all need a name beyond a generic ia (fish). It's not conclusive, it could have been lumped under a different more generic word for 'shit you should run from'. Or nobody survived long enough to name one?
Exactly :-) He would fall under the more generic term, haole (meaning no breath, either because he wouldn't exchange breath as a greeting or becaue the paler skin resembles corpses \ dead people tend not to breathe much).
There are actually things in Hawai'i that don't have specific Hawaiian names, most likely because they weren't worth eating :-)
The redback is related to the less venomous and much shyer and non house invading New Zealand katipo with which invading redbacks have been interbreeding proving a very close genetic relationship. The katipo is definitely native and as the name suggests was first named by the Maori who arrived c1200ACE. Long before the First Fleet hove into Sydney cove or Captain Cook made landfall or Abel Tasman sailed past or the Portugese ship supposedly wrecked of Northland hit trouble.
And finally of course the existence of a specialised predator in Australia clinches the native thing. The article doesn't state if the wasp is specialised on redbacks though it's 'rediscovery' would imply it doesn't prey generally on spiders.
You Ockers need to suck up and celebrate the fact that you have the most venomous and nasty fauna in the world. Not content with the land being dangerous to inhabit you have stonefish. People who have stepped on them and been stung have been known to blow their brains out the pain is so bad. Then there's the box jellyfish, too small and clear to see yet very, very nasty.
Yet apart from the katipo which lives in some coastal forest and doesn't go into houses NZ has none. No snakes, venomous or otherwise. Which land do you think truly is godzone? Buffy got it wrong the Hellmouth is in the Outback somewhere, spawning ever more venomous creatures.
as the Jack Spaniard wasp that eats much more scary looking Donkey Spiders in the Caribbean.
The wasp is about 3 inches long with iridescent blue and white wings and the spider is orange and 7 or 8 inches across. I'd show you a picture but it didn't come out due to red shift.
We encountered hornets at least 1.5inches long at a beach in Turkey (south of Kusadasi). They were flying around at waist height in quite dense accumulations. We had been hoping for a swim but decided otherwise.
I once found a dead dragonfly in the gutter in West Auckland, New Zealand. It was easily 6 inches long and the abdomen was a good half inch in diameter. That patch was surrounded by dense bush and the stream ran under it in a culvert, explaining the dragonfly. I never saw one that big at the bottom of our garden further down that stream. Doesn't mean they weren't there. On an island off the coast of Auckland there's a giant snail that eats giant earthworms. Islands, they make some things very big and others very small.
Jack Spaniards are NOT 3 inches long. Nor do they have blue and white wings. They're local subspecies of Polistes annularis, a _very_ common Western Hemisphere wasp, and have dark brown to black wings... and are mostly red and yellow. They do sing like hell if you annoy them, and they are easily annoyed. They also don't usually chase spiders, or not specifically; they hunt small invertebrates and some small vertebrates. As they're social wasps (see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polistes_annularis>) they don't do the lay-eggs-on-paralyzed-spider thing. There isn't enough space in their paper nests to put paralyzed spiders, anyway.
There are, however, several wasps endemic the to Caribbean which are two or more inches long, and which do hunt spiders. They're all solitary wasps, though, not social ones. And the local ones in the Caribbean are usually bright electric blue with red wings. They also have nasty stings. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potter_wasp> for general info on the type.
I'd say that the odds are excellent that the Aussie wasp in question is either a potter wasp or a mud dauber wasp, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mud_dauber>, probably a potter given the shape of its abdomen.
The locals referred to them as Jack Spaniards - as I said I didn't get a picture of it (them) as I'm allergic to normal wasps and the approach made it 'sing' as you put it and me and my macro lens learned to levitate and reach warp factor pretty quickly.
Saw several of the wasps but cant find a picture of them online - definitely something vibrant blue with white spots (on ~orange~ wings?)
Must go back and have another look before they're developed out of existence.
You can do depth of field but you have to take several shots at different focal points then stitch them together digitally. Your subjects have to hold still enough for that to work though and that wasp looks like it's being as dynamic as it can be dragging a spider along.
Another way is to go binocular as in a stereo dissecting microscope.
Otherwise of course you are correct, depth of field reduces rapidly when you go macro. One day I'll afford a ring flash, one day.
"You remind me of the Siberian hunting spider, which adopts a highly convincing limp in three of its eight legs in order to attract its main prey, the so-called Samaritan squirrel, which takes pity on the spider, and then the spider jumps on it and injects the paralyzing venom, while the squirrel remains bafflingly philosophical about the whole thing. Not to be confused with the Ukrainian hunting spider, which actually has got a limp and is, as such, completely harmless, and a little bit bitter about the whole thing."
What are these wasps like to non-spider organisms? Here in Kansas, we have several species of wasp, many that feed on spiders. Some of them are downright the skinheads on crack of the insect kingdom, and will attack you for being within some wasp-defined radius of their nest, even if you aren't threatening it directly.
So, while these 'strine wasps may be good at killing redblack spiders, are you just trading one BAMF for another? Will these wasps sting people?
A redback bite is unlikely to kill you, but you will wish you were dead. It makes you rather I'll.
The wonderful paper wasp will attack for merely walking by, one of my pommie mates had a number of orrible stings when mowing the lawn. I asked if he was sure it wasn't a dropbear attack, as thats what it looked like to me.
And MOST sheep are not dangerous if you buy them a drink first.
500KV in the form of a convenient hand held Tesla Coil?
If so then I have a cunning marketing opportunity for some nice investor.
Especially if it also works on the Eurowasp and those nasty little wasp spiders which
are resistant to most pesticides.
AC/AC because DC sucks.
I grew up in West Auckland, NZ which has a large hunting spider locally known as Avondales but known to Australians as Hunstman spiders. The science teacher at my Intermediate School put one in a fumigation chamber and hit it with formalin. Left it in there for 48 hours. Took it out and it woke up and ran about. The males come into houses in the autumn looking for mates. I got up one morning and was about to put my bare foot in my slipper and there was an Avondale/Huntsman in there practically filling the slipper.
Not funnelweb dangerous or anything but will give you a nasty bite and they are aggressive. Not as crazy as a bush weta (giant cricket, big jaws) which will happily bite you but wetas are not venomous. Paradoxically the much scarier looking giant cave wetas are peaceable creatures. The mountain variety can survive being frozen solid, I've seen them taken down to Liquid Nitrogen (sloooowly) then revived successfully. The guy doing the research also proved they freeze solid in the wild.
I have a photo of a daddy long legs devouring a big female redback on the ceiling of my house (the females are the big black ones with the red bits, the males are boring brown)
My sister's ex fiancée was pretty much immune to redback bites, having been bitten around 20 times. He used to just walk up and squish them with his finger. He wasn't that smart though, one of the reason's he's my sisters ex fiancée, not her current husband.
As for funnel webs, living in Sydney I've come across them occasionally, one (angry male) decided to come strolling in to the house and stand on the kitchen floor, right in front of the cupboard with the flyspray in it. Cue much stretching to retrieve said flyspray with approaching the spider. Half a can of the stuff and it still took 30 minutes for the thing to look anything other than annoyed.
We have a spray for dealing with wasp nests that foams which might make a better anti funnel web weapon than flyspray. The foam gums wasps up wonderfully. Every spring they try and build nests in our shed and have to be evicted. Couple of years ago I was dealing with the obvious nest hanging from the ceiling and had failed to notice the two nests behind me in the gable end over the door. Probably why there has been no attempt to recolonise that area, the amount of spray I put in there in a panic . . .
Mind you I think a shotgun would be the ideal weapon against a funnelweb. Or maybe a flamethrower. You can always get a new kitchen floor.
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