eww eww eww not exactly field herping

[gsarchie]

It's a wolf spider. When they end up in your house they messed up and accidentally wandered in there. They generally stay outside and make webs that look like the funnel webs that funnel web spiders make in bushes and crevices. They are all over the place by me. Mostly outside around my house and where I work but sometimes I find one inside and they freak out and run away when I go near them.

They are big and creepy but they shouldn't harm you. They are not aggressive.

If they were found roaming in the house then they are undoubtedly not members of the family Agelenidae, or sheet web (not funnel web) spiders. I've kept sheet web spiders in the past and every one that escaped from an enclosure was found at most 3 feet away from the enclosure with a new sheet web and attached funnel. No self-respecting agelenid would roam about a house and not stop to make a web. I would say that it is a wolf spider, family Lycosidae, which do not build webs for the purpose of prey capture. The only thing that wolf spiders use silk for is to make egg sacs; they are hunters as opposed to being a sit and wait (web) predator.