Subject: Tube? Spider in UK
Location: London, UK
November 28, 2013 6:01 am
Hi, I got home last night to find this guy in the kitchen. I haven’t seen anything like it before. It was black/very dark brown, hairy and seemed to have quite large ’fangs’.
I prodded him with a pencil and he aggressively raised his front legs.
Looking at the photo now I can see his fangs are slightly green. I’ve done a little searching online and think it looks very similar to the tube spider which is non native to the UK.
Signature: Nick Mumby
Tube Web Spider
Hi Nick,
We believe you have correctly identified this spider as a Tube Web Spider, Segestria florentina. We began our search for the answer by finding this amusing BBC News story entitled Spider found in Noel Gallagher’s guitar case. Though unidentified, that spider also appears to be a Tube Web Spider. We added “green fangs” to the web search and found a Daily Mail Online article from October 2010 entitled An arachnophobe’s worst nightmare: Girl finds eight green-fanged spiders in her house (and yes, they do have a nasty bite). Those spiders were identified as Segestria florentina and the article states: “The spiders – part of the funnel web family – are said to be the second largest species in the UK.” According to Nick’s Spiders of Britain and Europe: “The first three pairs of legs on this spider face forward.” Your photo illustrates that anatomical trait. The Spider and Harvestman Recording Scheme website has some helpful information.
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