Is there an easy way to tell the two types of banana spiders apart?
In one description of the spider in Tulsa, the store manager said it jumped at him. That is so much more like wandering than the huntsman spiders. Huntsmans back off and then run away sideways really fast. They’re fast, but they’re not aggressive. Huntsmans are big enough [for their bites] to break the skin. I’ve probably been bitten by huntsmans—I work with Australian huntsman spiders—I don’t know, five times? It hurts because it breaks the skin, but their venom is really nothing much, and they’re not really inclined to bite at all. When a wandering spider is threatened, though, it tends to rear up so its front legs go up in the air in a pretty feisty way, often with its fangs open. It’s really scary. So, you’ve got very, very different behaviors. The huntsman spiders are also different in appearance. Most spiders stand up on all eight legs, but the huntsman spider’s legs are rotated so that they’re horizontal to the body. This allows them to get really flat to the ground and to move
