European House Spider – Tegenaria domestica
Also known as “Barn Funnel Weavers”, “Sink Spiders” and “Those Monster Hairy Spiders That Run Like The Wind”.
OK, here’s one I’m sure you’ve all been waiting for[1]: the European House Spider, Tegenaria domestica.
Let’s start with the nice semi-action shot that Michelle [2] took in her apartment[3]:
This is clearly a female, because she has thin, tapered pedipalps and is pretty good-sized. Now, as it turns out, we have the same ones in our house – this next one I caught in our sink, and it looks an awful lot like the one Michelle photographed. This time it is photographed from above, so you can see the patterning on the abdomen:
I would warn that the abdomen pattern is not a good ID feature, because sometimes these spiders are dark enough that you can’t see the pattern. The main thing is that they have short spinnerets compared to most other funnel-weavers, and they have smaller eyes than wolf spiders.
I mean, if this was a wolf spider, then zooming in on the face like this we’d see a pair of huge, intent eyes staring back at us, not just these little myopic things:
As you might guess from the name, these are not native to North America. They evidently hitch-hiked over with the colonists coming here from Europe[4], and are now a widespread cosmopolitan species[5]. They look similar to the so-called “Hobo Spider”, which is also an import, but that one doesn’t live here (yet), and it doesn’t have the striping on the legs that this one does.
European house spiders are adapted to your house, so throwing them outside isn’t doing them a kindness – they didn’t come in from the outside, and throwing them out just means they’ll probably die when it gets cold. They look big and mean and hairy, but it takes a lot of effort to persuade one to bite (to the point that I’ve never successfully goaded one into biting me). One thing that they do do, is eat other vermin in the house (roaches, carpet beetles, flies, crickets, ants[6], you name it).
Supposedly, the immatures and females build funnel-shaped webs in the corners and pretty much stick with them, while the mature males roam around from web to web looking for mates. That’s what I keep reading, but that’s not so much what I’m seeing. The immature spiders and female spiders seem to roam around a lot too. I find them in webs sometimes, but a large part of their population seems to have become more free-living, actively hunting the way that wolf spiders do. Which is why people frequently mistake them for wolf spiders, even though they aren’t that closely related. I think what is happening, is they are speciating. They are adapting to our household environment, and radiating into new niches. Building a web is a great strategy in a barn or in the grass, but in the house it just calls attention to yourself, and then the brooms and vacuum cleaners come out, and whoosh! Gone! I think there is a lot of selective pressure driving these spiders to minimize their use of webs, and over time I think they are going to get more and more like wolf spiders.
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[1] Actually, I already had a picture of one of these. But, it was only my second posting, and it really wasn’t a very good picture or writeup. Since this is one of the spiders that lives in practically everybody’s house, I figured it warranted a more thorough treatment.
[2] I don’t think this one is on her print sales site, but don’t let that stop you from seeing what else she has there.
[3] Michelle also mentioned that this picture was taken just shortly before her cat pounced on the spider and ate it. So, for all the people who want to know how to get rid of spiders in the house, there you are – get a cat.
[4] Come to think of it, they probably came over on the Mayflower. I should have posted this on Thanksgiving! (smacks self on head)
[5] I’ve been throwing around the term “cosmopolitan”, and I’d probably better clarify what I mean by it, and how it is different from just “non-native” or “invasive”. Non-native species are anything that came in and has managed to carve out a niche in the local ecosystem, however tenuous. Invasive species are the non-native species that, for whatever reason, are unusually successful and start displacing other species. Cosmopolitan species are a bit different – they aren’t taking over a niche in the local ecosystem. Rather, they are depending on us to create a niche for them, by building houses and other structures that they can move into, or by cutting down the forests to make lawns, or plowing up the prairies to make fields. They live everywhere, but only because we live everywhere. If for some reason people stop living in an area, and abandon everything to revert back to what it was before, then in most parts of the world these cosmopolitan species will then find themselves in an uncongenial environment and die off. Similarly, they don’t move into an area until we do. I expect that a lot of cosmopolitan species live in Antarctica, but only for as long as we maintain the bases there. If we ever shut them down, then pffft! they’re gone.
[6] Way back when I was an undergraduate, my housemates had a tendency to leave dirty dishes with food on them scattered around the house. And, of course, the house was an old, decrepit structure that didn’t so much keep out the wildlife, as give it shelter. This of course lead to a tremendous ant problem in the spring, plates and bowls were sometimes completely black with ants within a few minutes. Then, along about June, there was a massive population explosion of European House Spiders, and within a couple of weeks – no more ants. Of course, then we had these big, fat spiders scurrying around, which freaked out my housemates much more than the ants had. Suited me fine, though.
Good tip about the eyes.
I wonder about the change in the webs. I had one, this summer, that had the funnel web, but mostly I see them running out from underneath the fridge or along the wall by the desk. No webs in sight.
Another outstanding post. I learned quite a bit from it, including the bit about not throwing them outside. I’m not sure this applies in San Diego, however, as the weather here is rarely cold enough to kill anything.
The speciation speculation was fascinating. Vacuums and brooms as predators!
On the topic of vacuum cleaners as predators: “Long ago, there lived a creature with a voice like a vacuum cleaner. We know little about it, but we do know that it ate cats.” -Anonymous
Hello,
First of all I would like to thank the author of this opus for pointing out ways to understand and treat different kinds of spiders. Among them, the Tegenaria.
Second, the point of my comment is the following. I live in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and I often ran into these critters in my house generally starting with the Summer, but a lot more between August and October. While Wikipedia says that males look for maters during this season, what I have personally noted is that it’s the first hatch of their young that just goes around places, probably to “see the World” lol
I would also like to point out some things that are however not mentioned in this article, or complete those already mentioned.
1) You mention cats. I have a cat of myself. Okay, this might be a bad case because mine got castrated and does not eat anything beside chemical food. But occasionally it does catch some flies and moths (well, not that it succeeds, but at least the instinct is there). But never the spiders. Especially not Agelenids. I have seen many times my cat follow and maul some Salticidae, even Araneus diadematus once. But not Tegenaria. There must be a reason to that.
2) You say that house spiders are hard to provoke and are generally fugitive. While this is true on the account of females and young (first – second mold), many adults may actually turn out to be very agressive. If you poke their web with a small object (stick, pencil, etc.), what they do is run, pumping those little legs, straight on you and try to get ON the stick and then RUN it all the way to your hand. What they actually do NOT do if you poke the web keeping certain distance (broom or just a longer stick). So they seem to understand distances between objects and might take into account smaller ones being separate (for example, they would not see yourself behind your hand so they would think that your hand is you). And God help you if you poke them with your bare finger! Never tried it myself actually, I prefer the “Safety first principle” =)
You may note that Wikipedia states that house spiders rarely bite. I am prone to think the complete opposite. They must bite and pretty damn hard, because they compensate it with their speed of movement. That is, if a spidey cannot get too far away on its legs, it will do the “hedgehog” and warn the attacker that it is not to be messed with. Of course, the bite would unlikely be venomous, but who knows what it just ate before it sticks those fangs into your flesh, you know…
3) About worldwideness (here ya go, the simpler word to your “cosmopolitan” =) ) of these spiders, you have a very interesting point. I might even add that since these spiders were almost the same branch of Agelenidae back in Europe in 17 – 18 centuries, it spread here very fast. And not because conditions were prospective. Well, yes, that too. But mainly because of all spiders in its order, these two (agrestis and domestica) and the most tenous, and most adaptive. It may even occur to me that they own a superiour intellect than many others, even in the widespead Aranea order. They are simply succeeding their fellowers, that’s what I think. And I also think that it might become of concern to us, humans, not to let many species get too loose before a virus or a lethal venom to Hominidae, second to Latradectus, gets in our way again. We must be wary of things we do to the spiders we have in our homes, because one day they might develop this trait as a potential defense against their new enemy – us.
That is all. Hope this info would prove interesting to read and somehow useful to complete what you have said before.
Good luck in your findings =)
Sincerely,
Shadiac
im 15 years old and ive had this spider in my house 6 times this week , unless its breeded in my house everyone is petrified of spiders in my house so thats not really a good thing so my dad catches them and yeahh they go out the back we hade one in a glass this night before we put it out thee back we took a good look at it and now my dad dont like them becuase he saw how big the fangs were its really scarey i hardly touch the floor now
Wonderful writeup, I’ve got one of these “monster hairy spiders that run like the wind” trapped in a salsa jar in my basement as I write this, and now I’ll head downstairs and let it go in a dark corner.