These spiders are poisonous and this is how you keep them out of your home

While some people are deeply fascinated by their many eyes and long legs, for others they are reason enough to spend the night in the next room. Spiders are controversial animals that laypeople hardly know anything about.

Spider expert Ambros Hänggi explains to Watson which types of spiders feel comfortable in the house, how best to get them outside again and why poisonous does not necessarily mean dangerous.

“This is a typical phenomenon that you can observe every late summer and early autumn. From a purely objective perspective, there is no evidence that there are more spiders; there is no database for this. However, according to expert Hänggi, there may be two reasons why people think there are more:

The species of spiders that live in and around the house are fully grown at this time of year and are therefore more noticeable. (By the way, spiders shed their skin to grow, what do you mean?) You can often see cross spiders, fat spiders, and trembling spiders these days.

What would also speak for more spiders is the hot and dry summer that is behind us. This climate is conducive to the development of insects. “And when there are more insects, the spiders do well too, because they have more food.” However, spiders are not particularly picky when it comes to their diet; they even eat each other, says Ambros Hänggi.

There are more than 1,000 different species of spiders in Switzerland. In short, any kind of spider can accidentally enter the house. However, if she is used to a more humid climate, she will not feel comfortable in the dry apartment. “However, many species of spiders are only found in homes. Although these species have lived in our homes for centuries, they originally came from other parts of the world and were transported to us along with goods.

Many spiders enter an apartment or house through an open window or cracks in the wall. So the more you have the windows open, the more likely the eight-legged creatures and insects will enter your home.

Mosquito screens on the windows would also help. However, the spider expert has little confidence in insect or spider sprays. Firstly, spiders are quite resistant to external influences, and secondly, the resident of the house must inhale the chemicals themselves.

The expert adds that the spider drives away insects in the living room and thus also does the resident a service.

For this, Ambros Hänggi recommends the classic method that can be applied to all insects: you place a glass over the animal and then slide a sheet of paper or a piece of cardboard under the glass to trap it. This way you can take the animal outside without it getting hurt.

“With the exception of one species of spider – the eating spider, which secretes a sticky secretion from its venom glands – all spider species are poisonous. However, none of them are dangerous in Switzerland.” Of a thousand species, only about ten manage to penetrate the skin with their bite in thin areas. The other spiders would not be able to bite through the relatively thick human skin. And even if the spider bites, the amount of poison is too small to harm the human body. “Of these twelve, only about two to three species of spiders remain, the bite of which is noticeably unpleasant – comparable to a wasp sting.”

According to the former spider curator, allergic reactions are extremely rare. What can happen, however, is that the bite site – like any other skin injury – becomes infected, which in turn can lead to secondary infections.

Spiders are in principle not interested in us, says the expert. «A spider only bites to defend itself when it feels threatened. The animal uses a lot of energy to produce poison, so it uses its weapon carefully.”

In addition to the garden spider (which you can already see above), there are two other species in Switzerland whose bite can be painful:

The water spider is the only spider species that lives underwater instead of on land. It feels most comfortable in clean lakes or slow-flowing lakes. A bite from her is painful, but very unlikely.

The spiny finger spider especially likes to stay in dry fields. Therefore, in the past, farmers were often bitten by it while working in the fields. With the move to mechanized farming, such bites became much rarer.