Last night whilst about to step into my shower, there was the biggest spider I have ever seen in the UK on my bath mat, probably the size of my hand. I completely freaked and by my screams the neighbours must have thought I was dying. It led me to ask two questions about spiders. Firstly, how in the UK do they reach such large measurements?
And two what is it about spiders, harmless as they are, that leads to them being one of the most feared creatures by us?

Sunshine I hate to tell you this but thay can give you a bite. My friend had a bite on her leg from a little house spider which mnade her quite ill, so they are not entirely harmless.
I would think that they can grow to that size because they over-winter but I could be wrong.
Skip says it could be racial memory..from the days when we lived in caves & survival meant being fearful to ensure that.
I have to ask though, what happened to your camera , now that would have been a good pic!!!

Spiders are like anything else, there are always going to be some exceptionally large ones amongst the large majority that are medium sized.
Most spiders in the UK don't have the strength to bite through a humans skin anyway so you don't have to worry about them too much and you'd have to be very unlucky if a bite had any effect anyway. Tibbar's friend sounds like they had very bad luck, perhaps it could have been stowaway foreign spider?

I agree with tibber, we need a picture!

I got home after a week away to be greeted with two very large house spiders sitting in the bath, much larger than I normally see around.

I agree with tibbar a lot of our seemingly irrational responses to things like a fear of spiders comes from mental reflex programming from our more primitive past. Although I think a lot also comes from our own childhood as well, if your parent feared spiders then the child picks this up. I am sure my own dislike of spiders came from my mothers over reactions when being confronted with a spider.

I am much better now though (it's taken 40 years mind ) so now although I won't handle them I will get a glass or somthing and some paper and catch them and drop them outside rather than my old way of dealing with them which was something long but heavy and squish em!

The silly thing is I don't like crabs either.... I think it must be the legs thing... they are sea spiders to me!

Actually I was so scared of the thing there's no way I could have stayed in the same room as it let alone taken a picture. Fortunately my brother was there with his mobile and snapped up a shot. Not sure how well it turned out but I'll go and have a look and see if I can download it here for you all

p.s its great to know that spiders not only look scary, they can bite us too

This post was last modified: 06-09-2007 04:20 PM by sunshine.

I'm not the greatest fan of spiders, but I have to say that I've come across a few wasp spiders this summer (I've never seen them before now) and found their colouring absolutely fascinating.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~ednieuw/Spiders/Ar.../D1104.jpg

Apparently, the female is approx 4x the size of the male (which is rarely seen).

Only one word for that Timberwolf & that is *******WOW******!!!
I certainly wouldn't go near THAT!!!!!! I am not surprised the male is rarely seen I would assume that he is usually eaten...........

This post was last modified: 06-09-2007 06:07 PM by tibbar.

Makes the spider on my bath mat look like a money spider. The colouring would have made me thought it was from another country

Quite fearsome Timberwolf! I wouldn't go near it either. Are they dangerous at all or just scary looking?

As far as I'm aware they're not dangerous to humans (although I had no intention of putting it to the test with the ones I came across ). As far as the males are concerned, that's another matter. Apparently, if they're lucky they get away with just losing a couple of limbs during mating. (I know quite a few women who want to come back as a spider ).

From what I found out about them, they arrived in this country in the 40s and have been working their way north from the south coast and have reached as far as Norfolk. They inhabit grassland, where they build their webs amongst the tall grass. I don't know whether it's common but the ones I saw all built their webs in depressions amongst the grass so were easily spotted.

There's no doubt that the world of spiders is definitely a female dominated one

That's reassuring that they are not dangerous to humans though. It is surprising that more poisonous spiders haven't found there way to Britain. I know that a whole nest of dangerous ones was found quite recently living beneath a castle that was being renovated. Work had to be stopped when they were found.

Now Timberwolf has suggested it , perhaps I might come back as a spider. I'd never thought of that before!!!!!!!!!!!!

This post was last modified: 10-09-2007 07:04 PM by tibbar.

Ok as promised here is the picture of the spider that began this thread. It doesn't quite capture the size of it in the photo, but I don't think many of you would fancy coming across him [attachment=204]

I had a spider a number of months ago that looked exactly like that one! 'Twas before I got the digitial camera, or I'd have taken a photo also.

Mind you, I spotted mine here in the US, so I don't know if it would be exactly the same, but it certainly was similar.

Kingfisher

That's definitely a big one. Not quite as big as wild canons one, but still big!