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Do Spiders Die in Vacuum Cleaners?

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LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Do Spiders Die in Vacuum Cleaners?
Posted: Wed 22 Nov , 2006 5:12 am
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I'd really like to know. I'm getting conflicting answers online, and, the truth is, I'm a total wuss when it comes to spiders. Not much else gets to me, but I'm a complete coward about spiders. :scared:

On the bright side, I did find a funny website about spiders.

http://www.angelfire.com/sc2/goodspiders/dont.htm

LOL!!!

(The dark side being I just vacuumed up a spider that decided to perch above my head while I'm IMing. And now the vacuum is nearby, and I'm wondering if he's plotting revenge.)
:help:

Lali

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TheMary
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Posted: Wed 22 Nov , 2006 6:00 am
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That website was great Lali :damnfunny:

I'm not sure if they live in vacuums. I'd think they would die from lack of oxygen but I could be wrong.

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elfshadow
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Posted: Wed 22 Nov , 2006 6:07 am
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I sure hope spiders die in vaccuums. :scarey: :help: Hate the devilish little buggers. The website was great though. :LMAO:


I know that spiders are useful because they have to kill other, unwanted bugs--but why in the name of crap do we have to have the other, unwanted bugs in the first place?? :P


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Elian
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Posted: Wed 22 Nov , 2006 6:23 am
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Even if they don't die, I'm pretty sure they're not getting back out of there. ;)


Then again, I always flush them after I squash them, even when they're obviously dead and not coming back, so. :D

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LalaithUrwen
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Posted: Wed 22 Nov , 2006 6:32 am
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I loved that website, too. :D

But I will leave the spider alone if it's outside. If they're inside, and if I can muster the courage or convince my daughter to do the job, I'll capture them and let them go outside.

Otherwise, I smash them and flush them or vacuum them. I can't smash the big ones. I can't stand the popping sound and the feeling of the squishing! <shudder> I also vacuum them when they're on the ceiling or wall because I hate it when you whack at them and they fall to WHO KNOWS WHERE!!!! Maybe your hair! Maybe they just ran off and hid and you didn't get them at all and they will come crawl on your face while you're sleeping!

:help:

I have serious spider issues. I make Freddy kill them whenever possible.

:scarey:


Lali

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Dave_LF
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Posted: Wed 22 Nov , 2006 6:37 am
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elfshadow wrote:
I know that spiders are useful because they have to kill other, unwanted bugs--but why in the name of crap do we have to have the other, unwanted bugs in the first place?? :P
They probably think similar things about you. :D


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elfshadow
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Posted: Wed 22 Nov , 2006 6:45 am
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I'm sure they do. :LMAO: But I'm bigger than they are, even if I am scared of them... :devil:


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vison
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Posted: Wed 22 Nov , 2006 6:59 am
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My husband had a charming piece of information for me the other day.

"Say," he says, "do you happen to know what spider's venom is the most poisonous?"

"No," I answer. And, like the sweet and dutiful wife I am, I said further, "Do tell me, honeykins."

"It is the spider that makes those cobwebs in the corners of the living rooms? Daddy longlegs." And he indicates, with a graceful but masculine gesture, the cobwebs hanging from one of OUR living room corners.

Apparently 'tis true. They seldom bite, though.

Still.

I had been sorta planning to spray those webs with silver paint and say they were early Christmas decorations, but I guess now I won't. :(

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Dave_LF
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Posted: Wed 22 Nov , 2006 8:12 am
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Never fear; it's an urban legend (unless Canadians have yet another definition for daddy long-legs).


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ToshoftheWuffingas
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Posted: Wed 22 Nov , 2006 11:15 am
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*remembers waking up in the middle of the night in complete darkness in another house once and hearing the scratching on the wallpaper behind my head and knowing exactly what it was.*

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Dindraug
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Posted: Wed 22 Nov , 2006 1:15 pm
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Was it an alian?

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Jude
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Posted: Wed 22 Nov , 2006 2:18 pm
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There's over ten posts in this thread, and yet not one of you has mentioned Shelob or Ungoliant!!! What the Udûn is wrong with you people????? :rage:

Even a cursory reference to the wimpy Mirkwood spiders would have been better than nothing.

*flounces out. Trips over a dustbin on the way out, thereby totally ruining the effect*

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MariaHobbit
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Posted: Wed 22 Nov , 2006 2:53 pm
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If vaccuuming doesn't kill them, I imagine it severely hurts them. :( Poor things.

If they annoy me, I catch them and throw them out. Otherwise I just leave them be. I have no bug phobias at all. They just *are*.

I really got to hating grasshoppers one year when they were swarming all over the place and denuding my newly planted fruit trees. The next year we got chickens, though, and with them freely ranging, they decimated the grasshopper population the next year. We didn't have hardly any at all this year.

But spiders don't bother me at all. :shrug:

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Axordil
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Posted: Wed 22 Nov , 2006 3:48 pm
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My sister in law is phobic about spiders. I told her once that research "proved" that the average adult human eats 2 spiders a year during their sleep, since they naturally seek warm, moist places to lay their eggs.

She didn't speak to me for a week. :D


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LalaithUrwen
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Posted: Wed 22 Nov , 2006 3:59 pm
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:Q That's just plain evil, Ax.

:LMAO:

vison, it is an urban legend, unless Canadians do call some other spider Daddy-longlegs.

Okay, looked it up at snopes. The long-legged cellar spider, which I suspect is the one you're referring to, can be called a Daddy-longlegs. Here's the article:

http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/longlegs.htm

The "spider" Americans refer to as Daddy-longlegs is technically not a spider at all, though it is an Arachnid. And then you have the European daddy-longlegs, which are crane flies.

But here's a good article:

Daddy-longlegs (Opiliones) - these arachnids make their living by eating decomposing vegetative and animal matter although are opportunist predators if they can get away with it. They do not have venom glands, fangs or any other mechanism for chemically subduing their food. Therefore, they do not have poison and, by the powers of logic, cannot be poisonous from venom. Some have defensive secretions that might be poisonous to small animals if ingested. So, for these daddy-long-legs, the tale is clearly false.

vison's spider?Daddy-longlegs spiders (Pholcidae) - Here, the myth is incorrect at least in making claims that have no basis in known facts. There is no reference to any pholcid spider biting a human and causing any detrimental reaction. If these spiders were indeed deadly poisonous but couldn't bite humans, then the only way we would know that they are poisonous is by milking them and injecting the venom into humans. For a variety of reasons including Amnesty International and a humanitarian code of ethics, this research has never been done. Furthermore, there are no toxicological studies testing the lethality of pholcid venom on any mammalian system (this is usually done with mice). Therefore, no information is available on the likely toxic effects of their venom in humans, so the part of the myth about their being especially poisonous is just that: a myth. There is no scientific basis for the supposition that they are deadly poisonous and there is no reason to assume that it is true.

What about their fangs being too short to penetrate human skin? Pholcids do indeed have short fangs, which in arachnological terms is called "uncate" because they have a secondary tooth which meets the fang like the way the two grabbing parts of a pair of tongs come together. Brown recluse spiders similarly have uncate fang structure and they obviously are able to bite humans. There may be a difference in the musculature that houses the fang such that recluses have stronger muscles for penetration because they are hunting spiders needing to subdue prey whereas pholcid spiders are able to wrap their prey and don't need as strong a musculature. So, again, the myth states as fact something about which there is no scientific basis.

In summary
For true daddy-long-legs, the opilionids, the myth is certainly false, and for the daddy-long-legs spiders it is certainly not based on known facts.


(Should I point out that Americans are the ones who have it right when we talk about Daddy-longlegs? :whistle:)


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Sidonzo
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Posted: Wed 22 Nov , 2006 4:05 pm
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LMAO at this thread!!

Lalaith I am sorry that I can't help you with your vacuum problem, but I do remember VERY distinctly watching a video in junior high life science about spiders. It showed someone rinsing a spider down a drain and that same spider slowly but surely climbing back up the drain to come out into the shower again. :scarey:

How long do spiders live anyway? I ask because there is this one spider that lives next to my crocheting chair that has lived for two years. I only let it live because it is not very scary and I am intersted to see just how long it lives. I think I might actually be a little sad when it goes.

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Anthriel
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Posted: Wed 22 Nov , 2006 4:44 pm
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vison calls her husband "honeykins"?

:suspicious:


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The Watcher
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Posted: Wed 22 Nov , 2006 4:46 pm
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This thread is just bizarre.....

:D:D

Lali, I think the vacuum cleaner will do the poor little spider in, between the sucking, mangling, and drowning in dust and pet dander and hair. Now that you have mercilessly snuffed out the life of one of God's beneficial creatures, you may go to bed feeling better knowing that Charlotte has been destroyed.

Now, do you feel better? ;):D

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LalaithUrwen
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Posted: Wed 22 Nov , 2006 5:05 pm
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Yes, actually I do, because God's creature should not have decided to walk on the ceiling over my head while I was IMing. Since it is also in an unnatural environment, I figure that I was only serving in the capacity of a natural predator, such as a bird or something. <huff>

Besides, if it had stayed still and not waved its front legs at me, I would've let it live, even though it was making me incredibly nervous. Once it started moving and wiggling creepily, it was doomed for death. Sad but true.

I am also thinking the vacuum cleaner probably kills spiders. I've heard, though, that fleas and mites can escape.

Sid, I have a few spiders like that in my house--ones that are tucked away in hidden corners that I let live because I figure they're doing some kind of business if they're still alive. That's a good thing, in my book, since I'm not fond of any kind of insect/arachnid in my house. So I have rules. They must stay out of sight, they must be in a place visitors won't see, and they must not scare me in way, shape, or form. (See above statements above waving front legs and walking on the ceiling over my head.)

Some spiders can live for 2-3 years, given good conditions (like by your crocheting chair). I guess some species of tarantulas and stuff can live for 20-30 years. :Q Wow.

I think spiders are fascinating, and I do not go out of my way to kill them. But they just can't do things like drop down from the ceiling in front of my nose, or walk up my leg, or perch on my steering wheel while I'm driving, or wave their legs at me.

There are rules, after all.

Lali

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The Watcher
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Posted: Wed 22 Nov , 2006 5:35 pm
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Oh, I know. I am equally bad. I remember the one time there was a spider on the ceiling of the shower. I had to go get my portable car vac and suck the thing down before I could take a shower. And, then there was the one time when I woke up in the morning and found a crushed spider on my pillow - I think I sort of like scrubbed every inch of me, all of the bedding, etc. before I got done freaking out. :D

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