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Unskilledlaborer

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It's actually a Sydney funnel-web spider (Atrax robustus), which is about as far from an Orb Weaver as it is possible to get while still being a spider. I guess I should really replace it with one of my own pictures.

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Nice! Did you need special camera objectives for those? A friend discovered an orb weaver I want to ID in a flower pot, and I would like to take some pictures.

 

Very small (3-4mm), white brown, abdomen with two humps and keeps her legs in pairs of two, I guess it might be a Gea, but I'm not sure. One pair of legs has strange upper segments, very distinctive looking.

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Eek. Spiders! :o

 

...don't mind me, it's late and I'm waiting for DarkRadiant to build. :)

My games | Public Service Announcement: TDM is not set in the Thief universe. The city in which it takes place is not the City from Thief. The player character is not called Garrett. Any person who contradicts these facts will be subjected to disapproving stares.
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Eek! A.. fractal... blob..... .... I guess o_O

:laugh:

 

Actually it's a picture of a fire, taken by this guy (who I don't know, I just found it): http://flickr.com/photos/trussmonkey/

My games | Public Service Announcement: TDM is not set in the Thief universe. The city in which it takes place is not the City from Thief. The player character is not called Garrett. Any person who contradicts these facts will be subjected to disapproving stares.
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Nice! Did you need special camera objectives for those? A friend discovered an orb weaver I want to ID in a flower pot, and I would like to take some pictures.

 

I used a Konica Minolta DiMage Z3, which has very good zoom (12x) and macro facilities. Given that my primary reason for wanting a camera was for photographing spiders and making textures, this was an ideal choice. Of course KM no longer make any digital cameras.

 

Very small (3-4mm), white brown, abdomen with two humps and keeps her legs in pairs of two, I guess it might be a Gea, but I'm not sure. One pair of legs has strange upper segments, very distinctive looking.

 

Interesting, is this in Germany? I've certainly never seen one in the UK.

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If you change your avatar to this I'll fuckin ban you personally! * screams and runs away in terror *

 

..

 

Now that I've studied it for some time (why do I torture myself?) it kinda looks like the facehugger from Alien. God I hate spiders. :) Just hand me a slimey snake any day. Oh, nice pics btw, seems like a nice camera.

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That one would never scale down to 32x32 and still be visible. It is interesting that you find it scarier than the more bulky Tegenaria, although since Pholcus will eat most other house spiders, perhaps you just possess an intuitive grasp of the arachnid food chain.

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I get a little freaked out by spiders, but not by daddy long legs because they were so freakin common in my house growing up that I just got used to them. To me it's like they're one thing, and all other spiders are another thing.

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Interesting, is this in Germany? I've certainly never seen one in the UK.

 

Yeah. I'm pretty sure she came with the plant, never seen one here either. We have a lot of Cross Spiders and the odd Wasp Spider as far as orbies go.

 

Unskilledlaborer: That is one beautiful picture!

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I get a little freaked out by spiders, but not by daddy long legs because they were so freakin common in my house growing up that I just got used to them. To me it's like they're one thing, and all other spiders are another thing.

 

There are actually three different things termed "daddy long legs": Pholcus Phalangioides, a type of non-spider arachnid called the Opiliones, and the cranefly which is a winged insect. The chances are that two people discussing daddy long-legs aren't even talking about the same species.

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a type of non-spider arachnid called the Opiliones

 

Hehe, the german nickname for Opiliones is "Weberknecht", (roughly) meaning "weaver-menial", which is quite confusing, seeing as they don't have any silk glands. I can't imagine how they earned the "Harvestmen" nickname in english though.

 

Edit: also, when do you use "cobweb" instead of "spiderweb"?

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Yeah, I've always thought the thin-legged ones are creepier than the fat, hairy ones. It's just those loong thin legs that.. aach

 

Though I'm fairly used to the non-spider daddy long legs (cranefly). They're common in these parts too. (something tells me they're common everywhere.. heh)

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According to this, Knecht can be translated as "farm labourer" which is very similar to "harvestman" in meaning.

 

Cobweb generally refers to random strands of web that you find on your ceiling, it would never refer to an orb web or any obviously regular spider creation. A tangled spider web in the corner of a room could be referred to with either term.

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According to this, Knecht can be translated as "farm labourer" which is very similar to "harvestman" in meaning.

 

True, but this would only apply if Knecht would stand alone. It's an old word for a hired hand, usually used for servants that lived with and worked for a family, mostly for the length of the harvest season.

So "farm labourer" is kinda the default meaning, but you can put a profession to it (like "weaver" or "smith").

You're right though that both names are close in that regard.

 

Cobweb generally refers to random strands of web that you find on your ceiling, it would never refer to an orb web or any obviously regular spider creation. A tangled spider web in the corner of a room could be referred to with either term.

 

Thanks. English is such a specific language... you have so many words for different types of the same kind of something.

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Yah. In Australia, if you see webs with leafy crap hanging in them, usually in a dark corner somewhere... well, just be careful where you put your hands. Getting bitten by a redback spider is not fun. :P

 

Funnelwebs are worse, but thankfully we don't tend to get them where I live (Canberra).

 

The "daddy long legs" I know doesn't really look like any of those. I guess it's closest to the Pholcus Phalangioides, since it looks nothing like the Opiliones and it doesn't have wings.

 

Rule of thumb in our house: If you see a spider indoors, and it's not a daddy long legs or one of the tiny jumping house spiders or a huntsman (all of which are relatively harmless), take it outside, and kill it. Just to be safe. We get white-tails really often; they aren't deadly but they are nasty.

 

Huntsmen still get put outside but they're too darn BIG to kill. :o It sucks when they get into our windows (still outside, but between the glass bit, which opens, and the screen, which doesn't) - they like to hide up right near the top, in the hinges. So you start closing it and this huntsman sort of flails around, trapped in the hinge by several of its legs. And then when you open it again to let it out, it huddles itself even deeper in the hinge... stupid spiders. <_< Usually takes some prodding with a broom handle before they'll let you close the damn window.

 

I haven't liked spiders ever since I woke up as a child one morning, and the first thing I saw was a GREAT BIG HUGE huntsman on my wall. Scared the crap out of me. :(

My games | Public Service Announcement: TDM is not set in the Thief universe. The city in which it takes place is not the City from Thief. The player character is not called Garrett. Any person who contradicts these facts will be subjected to disapproving stares.
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...where I live (Canberra).

 

Lucky bastards! You get to use fireworks....I'm in Sydney and no fireworks *cries*

 

Yeah, I actually have a daddy long legs right in the corner of my ceiling right now, but since they're harmless to us and pets bigger then a friggin fly I let it live. It gets rid of flies and the like, so why not eh. But a huntsman? Outside right then and there. Anything poisonous like a redback etc? Dead. A quick one though, it's cruel to let things suffer imo.

 

I think one of the freakiest things that's happened to me recently was hornets. Yes, those bigass motherfucker bee-like monsters. I was sitting at my comp replying to something and it whizzed past my eyes - 8cm long (FUGGIN GIGANTIC). I immediately moved out of it's way of course - those things are nasty, not poisonous, but they sting you again and again until you leave, and their stinger is BIG. So I caught it and let it go outside (not with my hands of course). About 3 hours later the fuggin idiot appears in my room AGAIN. So this time I give him a quick death. I did'nt want to, but I did'nt want him coming in and eventually stinging me or max, my dog. Then, 2 days later, ANOTHER one flies in. By this time I was more pissed then concerned about staying out of it's flight path. So I hit it with a newspaper. The thing got up UNDAMAGED (I was like WTF?) and flew at me lol. So I hit it again and must have paralyzed it for a sec, cos I had enough time to put my CD cover (the spindle pack type) over it. I felt bad for injuring it so I wnet ouside and let it free. Have'nt seen a hornet again since then.

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I hate hornets, too. I knocked one to our brick patio once and stepped on it, but evidently didn't do a very good job because 5 minutes later, it had risen again and was preparing to fly away! It was stunned at its ability to survive what surely would've killed any normal insect. I've seen hornets surprise other people, too, in much the same way.

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Funnelwebs are worse, but thankfully we don't tend to get them where I live (Canberra).

 

 

Actually we (I too am a Canberra resident) do, but they aren't the dreaded Sydney funnelwebs, they are smaller, longer and less agressive, though still almost as deadly if you get bitten (the Kosciusko funnelweb, Hadronyche sp).

 

There is also the white tail spider (Lampona cylindrata, Lampona murina)which is fairly common in Canberra, which has been implicated in causing ulcerative lesions and necrotising arachnidism, however a fairly exhaustive study by the CSIRO found no evidence that white tails are harmful, other than causing a painful bite. Nevertheless, many people still perceive these spiders as dangerous (well, unless you are allergic to them, all you will get is a very painful bite that lasts for weeks)

 

 

We also have mouse spiders, Missulena bradleyi, which are nearly as deadly as funnelwebs, although much harder to get bitten by, and mouse spider bites are treated in the same way as funnelweb bites. They are quite large.

 

Black house spiders are known to eat redback spiders, so if you want to keep the redbacks away, don't kill black house spiders, which are fairly harmless, albeit much meaner looking than redbacks.

 

By the way, redbacks (Latrodectus hasselti)are basically the same as the Black Widow (Latrodectus sp)in America.

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I'm so glad I live in Oregon. We don't have much poisonous stuff over here. About the only scary spider is the brown recluse. Its bite causes large necrotic lesions but it's not usually deadly. (actually, we do have black widows, scorpions and rattlesnakes, but only in the desert half of the state)

 

The other day, I was washing my hands, and when I went to dry them it felt like my hand was rubbing against a wad of threads tucked in the towel. When I pulled my hand out a big brown spider was climbing up it. That gave me quite a shock, but fortunately despite the agitation of being rubbed against my hand, the spider never bit me. I shook it to the floor and then promptly ignored it. ;)

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