Bug Facts - Spiders
Physical
Characteristics
Spiders are predators paralyzing or killing their prey
with venom. They typically feed by injecting a predigestive
fluid into the body of their prey and then suck out the
digested food.
Spiders can survive for long periods of time without food
and also have been known to survive even whole house
fumigation.
There are anywhere from 500 to 800 species of spiders in
the United States.
Spiders have only 2 body regions, no antennae, no
compound eyes and have 4 pairs of legs. The female lays her
eggs either in a dark place or in egg sacs depending on the
species.
Most spiders can climb and hang by silk webs, and some
can even jump.
Many spiders, especially young spiders, move long
distances by spinning a web and letting the wind carry them
and their web. This is called ballooning. The spider climbs
to the top of a roof or fence post and releases a strand of
silk into an air current. Some spiders are known to have
been carried in this manner for distances of 60 miles and
upwards to 5,000 feet.
Some spiders do not spin webs.
Males are usually smaller than females of the same
species.
The most common spider found in the eaves of homes in
California is the cellar spider.
While all spiders have poison glands containing venom,
there are two kinds of spiders that bite and can cause
painful poisoning in humans. They are the black widow spider
and the brown recluse spider.
Black Widow Spider
 Female black widows are black
with a red or orange hour glass shape on the underside of
the abdomen.
Black widows are present in every state in the United
States as well as other countries with similar or warmer
climates.
A female may produce four to nine egg sacs during a
summer. Egg sacs contain 300 to 400 eggs which will hatch in
about 8 to 10 days. Egg sacs appear white in color, but
after a while turn pale brown.
After laying eggs the female is hungry and more likely to
bite a human.
A bite may cause pain at the site of the bite, general
aching of the body, headache and nausea but in most cases
symptoms disappear in 2 to 3 days. In some instances bites
can be fatal.
The black widow web is an irregular, tangled, crisscross
web woven of a coarse silk. Strand for strand it is stronger
than steel, and is used for cross hairs in large telescopes
in observatories.
Brown Recluse
Spider
 Brown recluse spiders can be
identified by the violin shape on the back of the thorax.
Also they have six eyes while the majority of spiders have
eight.
"Fiddleback spider" and "Violin spider" are other names
of the brown recluse spider.
People are most commonly bitten in bed, dressing or
cleaning storage areas.
Adult male and female brown recluse and immature
spiderlings are capable of injecting venom which may result
in serious lesion formation. If damage is severe, a skin
graft is sometimes required.
Prevention &
Treatment
Not only only does the Burge Pest Control's Residential
Power Protection Plan treatment provide a residual barrier
for the control of insects and spiders, we also physically
sweep down all accessible spider webs. This helps control
reinfestation in 2 ways:
- It kills any visible spiders in the process of
removing the actual web.
- It removes the harborage of the spider.
- It forces the new spiders to contact the residual
barrier in order to get to the home.
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