Spider ID

[MethenyFan]

I found this in my garage this morning... What kind of spider is it? Does this spider pose any threat to my family (I have a young daughter and a geriatric dog)? Any help would be appreciated, thanks in advance.

[Beetle]

You need to give some more information, like where do you live, how big is that spider?

[MethenyFan]

I live in League City, which is in Galveston County, TX. I'm a few miles from Galveston Bay. As for scale, it's about 2"... maybe 2-1/2", including legs (what is the right way to measure a soider? Body length or leg raidus?). Here's another shot; the leaf in this shot is 2-1/4" (excluding the bit of stem on it):

[Beetle]

I cant say much about american spiders but it looks to me like it belongs to fam. Lycosidae (wolf spiders). As all spiders they are venomous but not deadly although cause of they size bite can be painful.

[Poison]

All spider are poisonous. The fact is thet they usually don't give much harm to people as they are small. But I advise you to kill it. That's better.

[rg]

there are only 2 such spiders in the world which can kill human by their venom...they are "BLACK WIDOW" and "TARANTULA"....the 1st one is black with a large abdomen and the 2nd one is hairy type....other spiders neednt be afraid of as they may harm not disastrously...but better be beware of every spider and keep away from them....prevention is better than cure..

[February Beetle]

Some spiders that wouldn't cause harm to a human could kill a child, though. Is that right? You may want to find out about the poisionous spiders that are in your area, if it isn't then I wouldn't kill it because some spiders are helpful for killing other annoying insects.

[Poison]

As I said before all spider carry poison. But some don't harm people, that's all. That's why I said the best would be to kill that.

[Beetle]

As I said before all spider carry poison. But some don't harm people, that's all. That's why I said the best would be to kill that.

I stongly opose to that! Do NOT kill it! Spiders have very important role in every ekosystem. Kill it only if there is no other way to elimenate it from your home (and there is always some, especialy in USA where you have all kind of animal`s help/protect/rescue organisations).
How can you be a biologist and have such attitude?! We are obligated to spread positiv way of thinking towards the animals among common people. Saying "Just kill it" is like saying that animal is evil.

@rg

What did you mean that there are only 2 spiders that are deadly? Black widow is, although not always to grown and healthy man, but tarantulas are not deadly. And there are many more speacies that are dealdy all around the world especialy in tropic regions and in Australia.

[Poison]

People and their family are much more important than A spider.

[Beetle]

Of course that they are but you cannot say to ordinary nonbiology people that if some animal bothers them thay should just kill it. One dead spider is not a problem but one bad attidude like this IS, cause it leads to general fobia of insects and spiders. It takes years of work to make positiv public attitude towards enviroment and it takes only few sentances spoken from wrong people to make it back to negativ.

What should in this case MethenyFan do is capture spider in some jar, go to local biology institution and get some informaton form professionals. That way he can know wheather he should next time when they see that spider kill it, throw it out of house or just ignore it.

We are biologists and we have duty to educate public (or at least try) about natural world around them, so we must be very carefull what we say and do cause it is hard to gain trust of public but easy to loose it.

Stay openminded to macro world. Molecular biology is not everything.

[Poison]

Ok then let him/her go to a "local bio institution" or whatever, we don't have in our country...
I accept, I'm more a micro kind of biologist (well, not a biologist yet but I'm working for it.)