Comments

• Hi Martyn
  I have seen little baby white tails before. They have the same shape, they are fast but they have red legs. They are too small to see the white dot, but believe me no other spider looks like that here. Now I need to just find the eggs and get rid of them... do you think they would be in the roof or under weedmat?
• Oh isn't this interesting, another one came in now at 11:50pm, same size. I said to my hubby that I normally find them when the weather is going to change. They are hunting spiders but maybe they also come inside before heavy rain. We shall see, heavy rain predicted for Auckland for the next 4 days. I will make note of this pattern because they don't come every night
• Hello, I am terrified of these spiders and am in New Zealand so I decided today to observe them from a distance. This is what I found. They love my house and regularly come inside. We don't have any other poisonous spiders so its easy to blame the White tail for bite related illness. My uncle was bitten by an 11mm body white tail, we think it was female because of its behavior and size. We got it in a jar, My uncle's arm went numb and he got a red line going from the bite up toward his heart. he started to have a problem with speech but they sorted him out at hospital - apparently the reaction to the bite here, depends on what the spider has been eating. The trick is to be aware of what spiders you have at home and in your garden. If you can get rid of them, the White tail will have no food and leave.
  Today: 11pm - 1 on kitchen wall about 9mm body, another opposite wall - they seem to like coming in pairs. The bigger one raised her abdomen like a scorpion in defense as I tried to kill it. Too scary - the smaller one was faster, both produce web strings that allow them to float off the wall. They can feel you coming through their legs so even if they can't see, they still feel you. I think the bigger one was female because that would make sense for a spider. They raised their front legs and charged toward me on the carpet... like mini tarantulas. I felt really bad for killing them but I did not want to get bitten.