Brown Recluse

The Brown recluse is a highly poisonous spider that is native to the United States. There are a few other species elsewhere in the world.

The Brown Recluse has a very distinctive pattern of a violin on its abdomen, which is dark in color, with the neck aspect of the violin pointing toward the spiders stomach.

The spider is colored from a light beige tan, to deep chocolate brown and will have some fine thin hairs that coat most of it, and provide it with a quite lovely velvet look to it.

Brown Recluse

The legs are also covered with hair, and the leg span of an adult recluse is about the size of a quarter.

A brown recluse is about half inch long, and their bodies will be about a quarter inch wide, perhaps a bit larger.

The males are smaller in size than their female counterparts, and both sexes are highly toxic in their bite.

Males, although smaller have longer legs than the female of this species.

Most spiders have eight eyes, however the brown recluse, and in fact other recluses have just six that are set up in pairs.

The female will mate during May and June, and will lay about fifty eggs wrapped in a silky sac that is about 2/3 an inch around.

Each female many produce several sacs over the course of a few days egg laying.

In a month the young spiders come out of the egg sac and begin to feed.

It takes as much as a year for spiders to become mature enough to breed on their own accord.

Adults can go for very long periods, sometimes as much as 6 months or more with no food or water.

The Brown recluse is a nocturnal spider and will roam at nighttime searching for prey, while resting in the daylight hours in his web.

The web is a loose, very irregular sticky set of threads that are colored an off white color.

Brown Recluse

It is built in a corner which is largely undisturbed by outsiders. Brown recluses often hide in human environments, such as an attack basement, crawl space of cellar. They can be found in wood piles or stacks of lumber.

If you live in an area prone to brown recluse, do not reach into a wood pile or burrow in the ground without gloves. Many bites occur in this way or by putting on clothing or stored shoes without wiping the inside of them.

Find out more about the Brown Recluse over at Wikipedia »