This article is about venomous spiders in California. Hopefully if you searched for “Poisonous spiders in California” then you found this article anyway. I was called to task over this in previous spider articles I have written. Poisonous means something ingested, venomous means you were bitten or stung by some critter. Thus the correct title of this article is venomous spiders in California.
Like most states in America California has only two types of venomous spiders, the widow and recluse. There are variations of the breeds but both types of venomous spiders native to California are of those species.
Recluse Spiders in California
California sports the Arizona Recluse (must be trying to avoid that immigration law) the Baja Recluse, the Chilean Recluse, the Desert Recluse, Martha’s Recluse and the Russell’s Recluse according to Venombyte.com.
All of these are of the Brown recluse family of spiders and some are brown and some are not. Also all of these types of venomous recluse spiders in California do not have the typical violin shaped markings on them. The sure way to tell if a spider is a recluse is to count its eyes; if it has 6 then it’s probably a recluse. If it has 8 eyes then it is a look alike spider and harmless.
Recluse spiders are thus named because they prefer to stay hidden away in dark places and are seldom seen by humans. Interaction and bites occur by accident in most cases when a person steps on a brown recluse or puts on clothes the spider was hiding in. Brown recluse spiders are nocturnal and would have to be disturbed to come out during the day.
If you want to avoid these spiders then clean up your house! Don’t leave clothes laying on the floor and shake out clothes before putting them on. Outside the home don’t reach for anything on the ground without checking it out first, and you will avoid most spider bites.
Western Black Widow
Western Black Widows females are black and have the red hour glass markings. The males are brown to orange colored. Black Widows don’t always eat the male after mating, in the wild. He often gets away to mate another day! The male is harmless for the most part and the female is the venomous California spider.
As far as I know the Western Black Widow does not wear a cowboy hat and spurs but I don’t want to get close enough to find out. The Black Widows would rather run than fight unless they have eggs to protect on their web.
I urge you please don’t kill random spiders or even venomous ones you know are dangerous. Spiders have an important part in nature’s scheme of things. If you are also interested in venomous snakes in California then click this link.
Sources
http://nathistoc.bio.uci.edu/spiders/Latrodectus%20hesperus.htm go here for great photos of the Western Black Widow
