Comments

• @ technicolour.segways........I have the same spiders around my clothes line, in Sydney. I dropped a beetle on the outside and it came out. From my reading it is not dangerous. I have 3 of them in close proximity, I initially thought they were ant holes. Look around, I acutally found the lids of the trapdoors around 2 of the burrows......dont know why they dont work cause they are never on the holes but are definately there.
• Can someone please help me identify a spider, I believe it to be either a funnel web or a brown trapdoor spider as pictured on this page. I had a fair look at it and was not 100% sure it was a funnel web like I have been in the past. * I was building a garden bed and removed a rock from the dirt and it came out from under the rock.....Funnel webs are found under rocks, are trapdoor spiders always in a burrow or could they be under rocks as well? Rock was within a meter of a large mature gum tree.
  * It is the 2nd day in a row in the high 30°'s and was very humid, happened today 23rd jan in Sydneys suburd of illawong (west outscurts of the Sutherland Shire).
  * Are trap door spiders usually passive even when provoked? It did not rear up at all and was not agreesive at all even as I poked and proded it with a stick to try and get a look at it. I flipped it over and it had a decent set of fangs on it. Previous funnel webs I have encouted are very agreesive and attack the sticks like a bull seeing red.
  * I also have 3 trapdoor spiders about 10m away near the clothes line, they are in distinctive circular burrows, are noticebly smaller than the spider I found today and look nothing at all like it (or like the trapdoor spider in the picture on this page)so I know it is not whatever those trapdoor spiders are (they are a lighter colour and have spots on the abdomen).
  * The colour didnt seem as jet black as your funnel web pictures and thebody was darker (blacker) than the abdomen.
  * It would be easy to identify now had I kept it, however with a 2 and 3 year old running barefoot and naked in the back yard, the parental instinct kicked in and it met an untimely death with the bottom of my shoe.
  I am leaning towards a funnel web but am unsure, it was definately NOT a mouse spider - have had many of those, no spot on the abdomen for the male and not stocky/fat enough for the female.
  Thanks for any help.