A Ring-tailed Lemur mum and bub give me their full attention, just for a moment. Berenty Forest, Madagascar.
Ring-tailed lemurs spend a lot of time on the ground, which is unusual among lemur species. They forage for fruit, which makes up the greater part of their diet, but also eat leaves, flowers, tree bark, and sap.
I am 100% sure that she is not a brown recluse, or even related to a brown recluse!
The misidentification of spiders is so common, and the misinformation spread about them by the media, hearsay, etc. all ends up with so many innocent spiders- who are totally harmless to humans and pets, being killed on the spot.
Unless you are an entomologist, keep spiders as a hobby, or have a special interest in spiders and their biology, you will probably be 100% wrong 100% of the time if you try to identify a spider.
Superficially, many spiders look the same. Similar colors, patterns, and they all have 8 legs right? But if you look closer there are many, many subtle signs that tell the species apart.
Leg shape, size, and how they hold them. Size of the cephalathorax relative to the abdomen can indicate gender as well as species. The size, shape, and arrangement of the eyes (which can sometimes only be seen with the help of a magnifying glass!). Where the spider was found is another helpful indicator.
So there are all these subtle things to help you identify a species, and unless you are really into spiders like I said… you’re probably wrong.
And I’d really like to address this whole “brown recluses are highly venomous” thing. Yes, their venom is hemotoxic. But bites that actually cause any medical symptoms are rare (yes, you can be bitten and NEVER KNOW IT) and ones that do actually tend to heal by themselves in a few days. And over 80% of problems that medical doctors diagnose as “brown recluse bites” are actually something else. Staph infections, herpes, lyme disease, etc. are all misdiagnosed by actually doctors as brown recluse bites, sometimes despite brown recluses not even living in that state (looking at you, California).
Most bites from brown recluse spiders (Loxosceles reclusa) are “dry” bites, meaning they don’t inject venom. Venom takes energy to create, and a spider might not want to spend energy creating more venom when they can just run away. Which they will try to do. They are not a particularly aggressive or defensive spider, and rarely bite humans. If they do, it is because they are pushed against the skin and feel threatened. And even then, they aren’t likely to inject any venom at all.
I’m not saying that no one has been harmed by them, I’m just saying that their danger has been greatly exaggerated by pretty much everybody.
SO onto my spider! I was looking around at work and now that I’m home I’m not 100% sure because the species I think she is is pretty variable with their pattern, but I’m almost certain that she is Pisaurina mira, a species of Nursery Web Spider. Why do I know for a fact that she isn’t a brown recluse and most likely a Pisaurina sp.? Because of her eyes!
These are the eyes of Loxosceles reclusa. There are three pairs of eyes, with 6 eyes total.
My spider has 8 eyes, in two rows. Unfortunately there is a peice of coco coir in front of half her face of the first picture, but you can clearly see there are not three pairs, and in the second photo you can see the entire top row.
And even just looking at the spider itself, they are pretty different in shape and pattern!
I’d kind of want to live in a house with 2,000 brown recluse spiders. Maybe black widows too. They’d be a great way to scare off door-to-door salespeople!
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