This site aims to show the common spiders of Australia by means of color photos and some informative text.
All the pages together contain over 600 pictures with 240 species of spiders that were photographed in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Northern-Territory and Western Australia.
Pictures of spiders from NW-Europe and several links to venomous spiders and much more information can be found on the spider site of European spiders.
This page is the main entry to more informative texts about spiders and their behaviour.
Spiders (class Arachnida) are eight-legged creatures belonging to a group (phylum) called Arthropoda that are different from insects (class Hexapoda) on several easy to see characteristics. They have no antennae, their eyes are like ours and not segmented, and they have four pairs of legs. More general spider information can be found on these pages: Spider information.
Wolf spider, Lycosa bicolor (by Robert Read)
Australian animals are made very dangerous by documentaries featuring sharks, box yellyfish, crocodiles, snakes and spiders, most of the time killing ferociously other creatures. Sometimes they are caught by fearless hunters in four-wheel drives or +2000 hp boats. It is true, bites of crocodiles, sharks and black mambas are to be avoided.
It is also suggested that bites of spiders will almost kill you instantly or can cause the affected limb falling off by ulceration and necrotic lesions. Luckily for us that is not true.
Two spiders should be avoided, the Sydney Funnel-web (Atrax robustus)
and the Redback (Latrodectus hasselti) because their bites can be painful for some days.
Are those two to be worried about? Since 1956 nobody died from a Redback bite and since 1980 nobody from a Sydney Funnel-web bite, mainly because of the development of an antivenom. A recent study by Isbister and Gray showed that the White-tail (Lampona species) spider bite is most probably harmless.
A review of the toxicity of several Australian spiders can be read here.
But if in doubt, leave the spider where it is and walk away. And, a bee sting is often more painful than most spider bites. And if bitten? look here.
Click on a picture to read more or for a thumbnail overview here for a small picture of all pictures on this site .
