So, I have a question.

[conuly]

I saw a spider in the garden the other day, and I like spiders, but this one had an hourglass so we squished it because nobody likes critters smaller than they are that can kill them, right?

But now I'm googling "black widow spider" and all the images I see have red hourglasses. Can black widows have white hourglasses on their backs? I worry that I got my mother to kill an innocent arachnid!

Comments

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

http://www.sdnhm.org/fieldguide/inverts/latr-hes.html

What little I've gleaned from other sites may indicate that a white hourglass means a male spider.

[conuly]

And males are harmless-ish. Well, darn it.

But then, fewer males means fewer females in the future, and that matters too.

[catnip13.livejournal.com]

Sometimes they are orange, and young ones often have red or orange markings on their backs as well as their abdomens (the reasons for that are kind of interesting. Adult females tend to stake out a spot and stay there while the young ones are more transient and need the bright 'don't eat me, I will make you sick' markings where they are visible when they aren't hanging in a web). A spider that looks like a black widow but has white or tan markings might be a 'cupboard spider,' a less poisonous cousin of the Latrodectus spiders. What did the web look like?

[conuly]

Didn't see a web, just the spider.

[sayga.livejournal.com]

I thought black widows had hourglasses on their underside, not their backs at all. I can't really remember though. I don't know about white hourglasses. I hate killing spiders too, but even if it was not a deadly spider, better safe than sorry, especially when the girls might be running around back there.

Oops, forgot to use my SPIDERS icon. It fits so perfectly right now!