Help Identify a Spider

Two fanged spider shown up-close.Need help identifying a spider? If so, then take a look at our collection of spider pictures to see if it looks like yours.

You can also look through the comments below to see if any of the images match your spider.

Don’t see your spider? feel free to upload your photo here and we’ll attempt to id it, and if we can’t, then perhaps one of the visitors can after we post it.

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  1. Rico says:

    Found this climbing the wall of our garage in Corona, California. It’s actually smaller than another one we found in the pool last week that looked the same. Two kids under five so your help is especially appreciated. Thanks!!!

    grey spider

  2. Ron Hinchley says:

    I have what Sarah #21 has under a roll of tape with a card on top. It looks big but I think it is a coward. It plays dead also. Not at all aggressive but too big to let wonder about the house. Northern California. Should I nix it or show mercy?

    Sarah
    #21. September 21st, 2007 at 8:17 am

  3. jane wyman says:

    I just sent in a photo of a small white spider(ling)? in a glass which was probably dime sized measuring with legs extended. I am guessing an orb weaver of some sort. big white butt. I turned it loose. just wondered what kink it was. Also, can you recommend a good spider identification book?

    thanks, Jane in SLC

    white spider

  4. trenton says:

    i just got bit by a spider…..
    it was very tiny… mostly black but had like a sheil on the very back that was white with black spikes

  5. Cindy Stiles says:

    I caught a spider that looks like chirsy’s white with yellow stripes with minor black ones and the legs are banded and i kinow it not a Saint Andrews Cross spider. Please help me

  6. Johan A says:

    Today I killed a spider that looked quite similar to #911, But I’m not sure whether it was exactly the same, the only thing I’m certain about is the legs which looked exactly the same. And I think the body had quite that shape. and the colours were pretty much the same.

    I found it in a shipment from the US (I live in Sweden). It’s interesting to know whether it was dangerous, and how to know.

  7. lonnie says:

    what kind of spider is this its just like # 95 picture please tell me asap (as soon as possible)

  8. leah says:

    #72 – that’s a wolf spider. it is venemous, but non-agressive. if bitten it does require medical treatment.

  9. Barbara says:

    I found a large spider in my yard making huge spider webs it looks like the pictures belonging to # 7 and # 67 and need to know if they are poisonous or not. I have very small children and I want to know if there may be more around.
    Thanks, Barbara

  10. JoAnne says:

    This big momma was found by the lake house in Pensacola fl. is it a biter?
    Please let me know!

    black spider

  11. Emma says:

    I found this spider in my friend’s back garden, right by the back door. Even though the spider fascinates me, it makes me nervous as she has a 13 month old who plays right by the spider!! Is it dangerous?

    Thank you for any info!

    spider with green legs

  12. Anthony says:

    This spider along with 3 others that look almost like it where found on my patio outside my apartment in Madison, AL. TY! I hope i zoomed in enough for you to identify it. Thanks again

    white spider

  13. Eric says:

    Anybody know what the spider is in Tiffay’s post (1157)? I found three of them recently, I live in Flagstaff AZ, can’t seem to ID it. I have another macro picture if one is needed.

  14. Ed says:

    I keep finding this particular spider in my basement, its has a white abdomen, bright red legs and head, and its fangs look more like mandibles. Its about 1 inch or more in length. Is it poisonus? Aggressive? PLEASE HELP

  15. Toni says:

    Jeff (#220) and Stacey (#222),

    These pictures appear to be from the family Steatoda, or false widow spiders. These spiders are harmless.

  16. Toni says:

    Tyler (#239)

    The spider that you are describing sounds like a Daring Jumping Spider. It is black or brownish in color with 3 spots on its abdomen (2 smaller near the point of the abdomen, one larger towards the head). It is harmless, but can be aggressive. I hope that helps!

  17. Toni says:

    Krystal (#147)

    That’s what we southerners affectionally call a Crab Spider. They come in many different colors (my personal favorite one is black and white), and are harmless.

  18. Toni says:

    To #22 and #72 (Rachel and Michelle):

    Please do not panic. Those pictures do NOT look like a Brown Recluse. I don’t see the tell-tale fiddle or violin shape on the cephalothorax (the part right behind the head). Both of these pictures look more like a wolf spider. While venomous, they are non-aggressive spiders that would sooner run then bite. I would not be overly concerned, but if someone does get bitten by one of these spiders, you should notify medical personnel.

  19. Hallie says:

    I can’t send a photo right now because the spider is nestling in a corner of the glass I trapped it in and the lensing affect is defeating my poor camera’s abilities to take a clear picture…

    I am usually quite tolerant of spiders because they eat the real pests that I can’t stand, but this one was skittering across my kitchen floor and sort of rearing up at my cats very aggressively. Since I wasn’t sure if it was poisonous, and I could not keep the two cats off of it, I captured and kept it under the glass rather than my usual catch and release policy.

    The spider is mostly red or a deep brick orange. It has black markings – like short stripes – on its abdomen but the front part is mostly solid. Its legs are black and yellow in bands – its 4 rear legs have many smaller bands but its front 4 legs are only black near the base and then solid yellow to the tips so that the tips are almost invisible against the glass. The front of its “face” – what looks like maybe eyes or pincers or antennae – are black. The stomach has similar coloring to the back, although there seems to be an oval/cyllinder shaped brownish area in the very center of the bottom of the abdomen that is hard to distinguish from the rest of the orange.

    If I can send a picture later I will. The most distinctive feature was not its looks but its aggressiveness – it ran towards my cats and reared rather than running into a dark corner like most of my eight-legged friends….

    Continuation of #1170…I just realized my spider looks a lot like spider #1169 except instead of the white on 1169’s rear legs it is a yellow color. The legs of my spider seem a bit longer and leaner and the abdomen seems shorter but really I was surprised when the page updated and it seemingly pulled a picture of my spider out of thin air.

  20. Lisa says:

    I was wondering if anyone has identified sonda’s spider, #62? I live in Colorado and I have seen two of these in the past two days. One was crawling across the carpet in the basement and the other one crossed the driveway and crawled under some pave-stones. Are they dangerous?

  21. Donnie Swanson says:

    i found the EXACT same spider as Valerie Kolusk #916 . The only problem with this web site is that everyone is posting photos and questions, but I see NO answers.. Am I missing something here? I want to know what this scary spider is and if i need to do anything about them being around the place.. thanks.

  22. emily says:

    I found this spider making a web late one night , the web was very large and the spider is about the size of a dime. can anyone help to identify this spider?

  23. Kate says:

    Hello, I found few spiders identical as the one numbered 62. They were in the living room and kitchen sink of my apartment. I have never seen this kind of spider and had problems identifying it. I have 20 months old doughter and I am very concerned with her safety. Could you please let me know what kind of spider it is. Is there anything I could do to make the apartment less desirable for spiders?
    I appreciate your response.
    Kate

  24. lexie says:

    I live in southern California,and i saw a spider in my bath tub. It was mainly brownish and had like red brown legs but the legs weren’t long. it looked like a black widow just it was reddish color. it was about 1.5 inches. i would have taken a picture but it went down the drain before i could take the photo.

  25. Cory says:

    Kristi
    #1164

    That’s a Nursery Web Spider, they’re big enough to hurt if bitten, but not dangerous. Hope this helps!

  26. Cory says:

    Kristi
    #1164

    That’s a Nursery Web Spider, they are big enough to give a painful bite, but aren’t considered dangerous. Hope that helps!

  27. Duddy says:

    This spider was found in a warehouse in Northeast MS. It is the size of the end of a pencil eraser.

    Thanks,
    Duddy

    tiger spider

  28. Sean Wallace says:

    My daughters discovered a spider making a web outside their bedroom window. It is brown with a bulbous body and a black bell shape on a white field on its belly. Toward its rear is an another dark brown bell shape, not on a white field. Total size with legs splayed is about a quarter.

  29. Rashida says:

    I found a black spider with a white zizgzag on its back. At first it was in the front sitting in his web between the trash can and the house. I moved one of the can to the side of the house and it made its web there.The spider grow in size in about 5 days. I live in Cary, North Carolina. My neighbor had two like that in the back of his house.

  30. Jim C says:

    I live in Central PA and have had two spiders like this in my basement. I have never seen them this huge in this area. They move rather slowly and I only see them at night.

    black spider

  31. dvd says:

    hi there,

    I’m on a vacation in Spain right now, but i’ve seen a very strange spider in our swimming pool today.. i was wondering what kind of spider this could be! the spider has black/dark brown hairy big legs, his body is round and big too (at least i think its his body…) its black and dark red/brown.

    now what i think is its head…. it’s in a shape of a water-drop only much bigger, like the nail of a man’s thumb, with 2 large teeth, the head is black/grey, with 4 yellow dots.

    hope somebody knows what I’m talking about!

    black and grey spider

    greetings…

  32. Kristi says:

    my friend took a picture of this spider she found outside her job in sloatsburg, lower new york. she says it was really big. it has 2 yellow stripes running down the sides of its brown body. its 2 front legs are extended forward and are different colored from its body. can someone identify it for me so i can tell her if its poisonous or not? thanks a lot.

    tan spider

  33. Mary says:

    I found a black spider with red on the back of her abdomen, guarding an egg case, under the lid of my composter. I moved them both nearby, but off of the composter. The descriptions of black widow spiders say the red is UNDER the abdomen, not on the top, right? The spider is about 1.25 in diameter and we live in North Carolina.

  34. kevin fields says:

    i found baby spiders in my room, i was on my laptop and something bit me they are very small and basically translucent appear to babies and appeared out of nowhere its itchy i cant get a picture of the spiders or the bites because they are minuscule i live in NY are they dangerous and what should i do about them im not a spider person

  35. Marabelle says:

    I found this in my kid’s crib a few minutes ago. She has some bites I thought were mosquito bites until I found the spider. We live in Pennsylvania, but my mom just sent us a box of clothes she got at a yard sale in Georgia which I unpacked near her bed. Is it a bad spider? A biter? Poisonous? Kid has been scratching the crap out of her foot for two days. I saved the spider in a vial. (I wouldn’t be concerned, except I was bitten twice by spiders when I was a child, once by a recluse, and once by something unknown that made a mark and black escher.)

  36. Liz says:

    Okay, i don’t have a picture of the spider I saw, sorry about that. This spider was pretty small. It might fit at the end of my fingertip. It was like, a light green and dark green stripped all over its body and on its belly there was an orangish/redish mark that reminded me of the black widow hour-glass shape. I didn’t get a good look at the top of it, because it was in its web up in a corner of a pool that I was swimming in. I’ve never seen one like it before and all of my searches come up with nothing.

    Anyways, thanks for the help! — Liz

  37. Kyle P. says:

    We found this odd spider outside our home in upstate New York. No one we know has ever seen one like this. Sprawled out it’s larger than a quarter. It’s abdomon is a sulfur yellow and its legs are dark brown and clear striped.

  38. nick says:

    i happened to see this spider on the patio today.
    it has tiny hairs and is black and brown with brown stripes on the legs.
    no less than 2 inches wide.
    we live in Vermont.
    appears to be some sort of egg sack being clutched under it. (can we expect to see a bazillion more of these guys around here sometime soon?)

    black and brown spider

  39. Tiffany says:

    i found this spider and I was wondering what kind it is and if it is poisones or not?? I live in Prescott, Az.

    crab spider

  40. sierra says:

    well i don’t have a picture but i will explain to you what i found.

    my sister and i were in our backyard and we found our dogs sniffing at a baby dead mouse or something. my sister went to pick it up with a leaf and an orange spider came out. i think it looks like(the body not the color) the spider Robyn showed. it was bright orange though. we were by a wood pile if that helps. we thought it was a tick at first. my sister was scared for our dog because he rubbed his back on that spot too.

    please help us.

  41. Hannah says:

    Hi there! I found a spider out at my land that I have never seen before! I’ve been searching sites and found nothing simular. It was not hairy, med size (inch and a half or so). It was slightly translucent, and was a yellowish color with redish stripes on it’s legs with a lemon like body. It was on top of some grasses. Any idea? I’d love to know.

    out_of_the_box86@hotmail.com

    Thanks!

  42. Diana says:

    #1138, Bobbi, I live on Camp Pendleton too and we have these spiders all the time in our house. They are just grass spiders, not any danger. Try putting some lemon pledge around doors and windows it should help keep them out.

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