Wolf spiders are not considered dangerous to people. The Australian Museum's wolf spider page says a bite usually causes only local pain or itchiness, and less often swelling, lasting pain, dizziness, a fast pulse or nausea. The bigger risk is mistaking a large dark one for a funnel-web, or the other way round, so it pays to know what you are looking at.
What does a wolf spider look like?
Wolf spiders are ground hunters. They range from about 1 cm to 8 cm across and are usually drab, patterned in brown with yellow, grey, black or white. Most have lines radiating across the front of the body and a scroll-like pattern on the abdomen, and the sides of the jaws can show a small orange spot.
The eyes give them away. A wolf spider has eight eyes in three rows, with four small eyes along the front and four larger ones arranged in a square on top of a high, rounded head.
The other giveaway is how a female looks after her young. She carries a ball-shaped egg sac of white papery silk attached to her spinnerets, and once the spiderlings hatch they ride on her back until they are ready to leave. A spider dragging a white ball, or covered in tiny spiderlings, is almost certainly a wolf spider.
Why do wolf spiders turn up in the yard and the house?
They live in lawns, gardens and leaf litter, and the Australian Museum names two species, Tasmanicosa godeffroyi and Venatrix furcillata, as common in suburban gardens. Most wolf spiders wander rather than build webs, hunting insects and other small ground animals at night.
A wolf spider hunting along the edge of a lawn can walk straight under a door with a worn seal, into a garage left open after dark or into shoes left by the back step. Males also wander at night looking for females.
Engadine is bounded by the Royal National Park on one side and Heathcote National Park on the other, with native trees through the suburb. An Engadine household finding large, striped brown spiders on the laundry floor most nights, after they come in under the back door from the garden beds, can book spider control in Engadine to have the entry points and the yard checked together.
What happens if a wolf spider bites you?
An Australian study of 45 definite wolf spider bites, where each spider was collected and identified by an arachnologist, found pain in every case. It was severe in about a quarter of bites, with a median duration of 10 minutes. Redness occurred in 67% of cases, puncture marks or bleeding in 33%, swelling in 20% and itchiness in 13%. Three people had minor general effects such as nausea or a headache, and there were no necrotic ulcers.
Most bites were on the hands, feet and lower limbs. Seven of the 45 people were bitten while swimming in or cleaning a pool, and bites happened in every season, not just summer.
Healthdirect's spider bite advice says to see a doctor if the pain is bad, if the bite hasn't settled within a few hours, if swelling or itching gets worse after 24 to 48 hours, or if you are worried. It also notes that some people can have a severe allergic reaction to a spider bite, which needs an ambulance on triple zero (000).
Oyster Bay sits on the southern bank of the Georges River, with mangroves around the bay and its oval. An Oyster Bay family who keep scooping big brown spiders out of the pool skimmer, and whose children swim most afternoons, would do well to arrange quick spider control in Oyster Bay around the pool fence, paving and garden edges.
Could it be a funnel-web instead?
This is the question that matters. Healthdirect says a bite from a funnel-web or any other big black spider should be treated as a medical emergency, with a call to triple zero (000). If you can't tell what bit you, treat it that way.
Funnel-webs are glossy and dark, with a shiny, sparsely haired front body and no pattern, and their eyes sit close together. Wolf spiders are patterned in browns and greys, with those large eyes on top of the head. Burrows differ as well. Funnel-web burrows sit in shaded, sheltered spots and have silk lines running out from the entrance, while wolf spider holes are often in open lawn and may have no silk at all.
This matters in the Shire, because the Australian Museum says suburban funnel-webs are mostly found on the Hornsby and Woronora plateaus. Waterfall, at the southern edge of the Shire, has only seven streets and bushland on all sides, with walking tracks into the national parks. A Waterfall resident who keeps finding large dark spiders near the back door and can't tell whether they are wolf spiders or funnel-webs should book spider control in Waterfall rather than getting close enough to check the eyes.
Do you need to treat for wolf spiders?
Out in the garden, wolf spiders eat insects. Treatment makes sense when they keep getting inside, when they gather where children play or swim, or when you can't rule out funnel-webs sharing the same yard.
A technician will look at where the spiders are hunting and how they get in, such as door seals, weep holes, garage doors and gaps under screens, and treat the areas where they are active. Shop sprays aimed at one spider leave the rest of the yard untouched and put chemicals where children and pets walk.
A Menai home with a lawn that runs right up to sliding doors, where the kids keep finding wolf spiders on the playroom carpet, is a good case for spider control service in Menai covering both the lawn edge and the doors.
Before you book
Note these details so the technician knows what to look for:
- what the spiders look like, ideally with a photo taken from a safe distance
- where you find them: lawn, pool, garage, laundry or bedrooms
- whether you have seen holes in the lawn or burrows near paths
- whether anyone has been bitten, and what the bite did
- whether you have children, pets or a pool at home
Send those details when you contact us for pest control around the Sutherland Shire: call Sutherland Shire Pest Control Pro on 02 8360 3033 or email [email protected].