Aussie woman returns from holiday to find 'a million tiny spiders' on her ceiling
The Sydney woman was desperate for help to remove the baby huntsman spider which had taken over her bedroom.
A panicked homeowner made a desperate plea online after returning home from a week away to find "a million tiny spiders" had moved into her bedroom in her absence.
The Sydney woman was desperate for help to remove the little critters, which experts confirmed to Yahoo News Australia were baby huntsman spiders, with photos showing loads of them covering her ceiling.
"Can someone help me? I was gone for a week and came back to a million tiny spiders on my ceiling. I don't think I can even sleep in my room tonight," she wrote on social media this week asking how she to best remove them all.
But according to spider expert Emeritus Professor Dave Rowell, there's "no point in trying to remove them as they will be gone in days," he told Yahoo. Plus, baby huntsman are "completely harmless".
"Huntsman spiders are not considered dangerous, although big ones can give a painful nip. It’s common for huntsman spiders to lay a hundred or more eggs," said the professor and head of biology at ANU.
"Huntsman spiders are usually solitary (there are a few social species, but the one pictured isn’t), so they disperse very quickly," he added. "They won’t hang around and grow into big spiders inside the house."
Very common for spider eggs to hatch inside homes
Many species of spiders lay eggs inside houses, most notably huntsmans, black house spiders and daddy longlegs — so it's pretty common. Scott Johnson, the moderator of Australian Spider Identification Facebook page, previously told Yahoo that spiders like a dry environment for their egg sac.
"They'll look for a nice dry spot, hopefully out of the way, and they usually end up inside away from the weather," he said. In spring and summer, it takes roughly 30 to 60 days for a egg sac to hatch and the process can take twice as long in the colder months. This means the mother spider had already laid her eggs before the Sydney woman went on holiday.
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Depending on the spider and the size of the egg sac, between 60-100 spiders can hatch at one time. "The mortality rate of spiderlings is very high — over 95% mortality has been documented for some species," Rowell said.
'Non-lethal' way to remove spiders
For those who aren't too keen on sharing a bed with a bunch of baby spiders though, Sydney pest control expert Christopher Moschella said to get a pest controller in. But "non-lethal eviction should be done by vacuum cleaner," he told Yahoo reiterating that "a huntsman that size is completely harmless" so homeowners should not be alarmed.
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