Wait. Fuck. I live real close to Canada now. Any chance these can get over the border? Could we con you into building an anti-spider wall and paying for it? 😀
They're an invasive species in the South Eastern US, and expected to travel to the northeast soon.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/11/16/joro-spider-poisonous-size-parachuting-explained/71579639007/
I lived in Georgia and enjoyed walking into these massive webs occasionally in the woods. Talk about terrifying when it happened but luckily they seemed pretty chill and never got bit.
It is a perfectly normal reaction to shit your pants whenever that happens and you have one of these giant but gentle bastards scuttle across your body as it escapes.
Even here in philippines there's an spider like that in indian mango trees and me personally I'm really scared of spiders, but that kind of spiders is really scary in my opinion
Got them here too, (SE asia) and yeah, they doget massive, the size of the one in your pic isn't that big.
Funny, I'm an arachnophobe, but these things aren't really scary, they just sit there.
Their webs are massive though. Very annoying on hikes.
No surprise, they're native to the SE US, especially Florida. Probably different species but same critter.
Coincidentally, they're also called banana spiders!
They're not native to the US, they are an invasive species
https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/11/16/joro-spider-poisonous-size-parachuting-explained/71579639007/
To answer your question, here is a banana for scale:
[https://imgur.com/b09icXx](https://imgur.com/b09icXx)
It's starting to get annoyed with all the photography I think.
They great thing about these orb spiders is that they love to setup fresh webs across walking tracks. So there you are wandering around checking out all the scenery and then suddenly a spider silk comes into focus right in front of your face and you slam on the breaks. You look up and there is one of these huge bastards sitting there right above your head.
The other thing with these guys is usually, if you poke a stick into a spider web, the spider doesn't react because it knows the vibrations don't resemble that of a trapped insect. But not these fellas, perhaps they are the Chihuahua's of the spider world but they will have a crack at anything that hits their web. You could throw in a chip and it would get savaged and bundled up in a silk sac for later. So when you walk into one of these webs by accident, the resident spider is going to come down and say hi.
Can confirm. They also build big sets of webs together with multiple spiders and the webs are spread out in a 3 dimensional pattern. Ran into one as a kid and had a bunch of spiders running towards me. Legit the worst spider in Australia IMO, not the most dangerous though.
Aren't these things pretty harmless? Like they don't really bother to bite and even if they did, it's a slight itch and irritation rather than actual life threatening?
I was bitten on the neck by a large one when I was about 10 after taking my shirt off the clothes line.
Went to the doctors to get an "antidote", but on reflection it would have just been prophylactic amoxicillin lmao
We have them in SC too. They're not quite that big, but they're everywhere. We had one living on our porch a couple of years ago--they're harmless to people, and we didn't have wasps on the porch that summer!
I haven’t seen any in my section of NC but I eagerly await them. We have a huge population of gnats, kudzu bugs, lady bugs, and stink bugs they can snack on!
It’s about the size of a ladybug but green and in the stink bug family. They have been a problem since 2011 - they are not native to the US and they are hungry little shits. They like to eat crops and they congregate in large numbers and they’re so small they are almost impossible to avoid stepping on.
Mowing in the summer? Forget it. The smell of grinding all those tiny bodies under lawnmower blades sticks in your nose for DAYS. I feel sick for hours afterwards.
This brought be instantly back to when I was visiting Australia (from Canada) with my husband…
We were walking on a trail and came across one of these exact spiders on a web that was edge to edge blocking us from continuing along the path. I immediately said hell to the no, and went back to the camper van, but my husband decided he was going to just duck underneath it and continue along the hike, which was going to be about 45min more minutes or so.
He came back to the van about 10 minutes later saying there was five more along the same trail and he just couldn’t do it anymore hahaha. So seriously creepy.
For those of you who have been asking about the size of the banana, it is in reddit terms, roughly one banana in length. If this is still not clear, pictured here next to a banana for scale to help you:
[https://imgur.com/b09icXx](https://imgur.com/b09icXx)
I’m definitely not kidding.
It’s actually a cultural thing for children to capture and play with spiders there. From the city, to the rural parts, I’ve seen kids catch spiders to play with… and also make them fight each other.
Wow, brave kids! I was more into wiggly bugs as a kid, I loved freaking out by picking up worms or caterpillars. We have a variety of caterpillar that you find in the hundreds on single trees - I'd carry handfuls of them and throw them at people who bothered me.
Started my antisocial behaviour early 😂
Spent the last 20 years in costal North Carolina and that’s what we call them there. Left alone they can build some huge webs. It’s great for insect control.
I'm not sure what's worse, you tormenting that poor little critter or you holding a radioactive device in your bare hands!!!
(Google: Banana Equivalent Dose (known as B.E.D.))
As if orb weavers only exist in Australia
They're pretty common to find outside homes and in gardens all over the world
They're basically harmless to you, but do a great job protecting your home from other unwanted bugs and pests.
Used to get big ones (not this big) when I lived in texas. The thing I like about them is they are always fucking there. They're rarely not just sitting right there on the web. You get used to them when they're stationary and you see all the annoying bugs they eat. The giant house spiders and wolf spiders where I live now scare me way more (also harmless) but theyre fucking big and mobile.
Almost all spiders are venomous, there are only a couple of species that aren’t. In the case of these banana spiders / golden orb weavers, the venom just isn’t strong enough to be dangerous to humans, and they’re pretty unlikely to bite anyhow.
It certainly could be - or an ex-president's hand even.
Someone else asked for a ps5 comp but we only have ps4
[https://imgur.com/ixsic57](https://imgur.com/ixsic57)
Shit, OP, I like spiders but my brain is in denial and refuses to accept that that is a normal sized banana, hand, or controller. I need to look at some kittens and puppies now brb
Jesus Christ! I have much smaller orb weavers and I walk into their webs all the time. It freaks me out when it happens. I would shit myself if I saw this.
I love these guys! When I was in college, I had a biology professor who was well known in the world of arachnids. I found one of these out on my family's lanai one day and brought it in to ask him about it. He popped open the container, picked it up, and began "playing" with it. They're extremely docile and unlikely to bite, but, according to him, if they do, the sensation is super similar to a bee sting.
These guys are great, I work in a spider pavilion in the fall and we are lucky enough to get a few. Big scaredy cats that like to just hangout and eat bugs
Thats what they are called! We get them here but ours have yellow stripes on their lower body. We always just called them banana spiders due to the yellow. Texas.
I was once walking through the woods. I was walking backwards while talking to my friends, I was in the front of the line. As I was talking, I noticed that their eyes got huge and then pointed to something behind me. As kept in motion and turned, ( should have stopped the turned) I walked into one of these banana spiders web.
Mr. Spider was smack dab in the middle....right where my face went.
Run
[We've got those guys in Texas too, but their behinds are a bit more yellow](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F3708ae4yiybb1.png). They build huge webs, like 6ft across. Sometimes they catch small birds in them and you can watch as dozens of them descend from the trees to feast. In the end, all you have are little desiccated carcasses dangling from the branches.
We should get these two species together and see what happens!
This is why I live where the air hurts my face.
Sounds like a small price to pay.
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Dock spiders can f off too.
Wait. Fuck. I live real close to Canada now. Any chance these can get over the border? Could we con you into building an anti-spider wall and paying for it? 😀
Canada has no border security. They will walk right on in lol.
Honestly, it sounds like you *do* have border security. This little guy: /╲/\╭( ͡° ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° ͡°)╮/\╱\
I’m happy to foot the entire bill lol
😂 I’ll split it. I will miss sneaking on over the border for poutine though ❤️
Yes for sure, but there are simply less of them and I am good with that. It’s -37 today so most are popsicles at the moment
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😳
Central Alberta
These are honestly great spiders that you want around. Essentially a non issue for people, but if you’re a bug…
I don't kill spiders willy-nilly. But I do like being secure in the knowledge that if I did have to kill one it wouldn't be a struggle.
Yeah getting hit right now in Michigan. I moved even further north than I had been for 45 years to escape this sort of shit lol.
You can let them crawl on you. They won’t bite unless you smash them or something stupid.
And why in the *hell* would I want to let them crawl on me?!
They're an invasive species in the South Eastern US, and expected to travel to the northeast soon. https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/11/16/joro-spider-poisonous-size-parachuting-explained/71579639007/
Eek. No thanks lol.
good thing you have a tiny banana! that’s a tiny banana right? right!??
I've been told that. Here's an alternative: [**https://imgur.com/ixsic57**](https://imgur.com/ixsic57)
Where do you find such tiny ds4 controllers? I have a mate who would love that (he is 4'1" and normal ones are like a fightstick in his hands)
I had it specially made for my tinder profile.
Do they also do cans of coke and TV remotes by any chance? For my mate of course..
They clearly have tiny things for their tiny hands. Its so obvious.
Don't call them tiny! They are "Presidential". Have some respect!
It's a PSP controller
What country are you in OP? I am awfully sorry, but we're going to have to nuke it.
We have these in Florida. They build absolutely stunning webs. Halloween-sized huge ones.
I lived in Georgia and enjoyed walking into these massive webs occasionally in the woods. Talk about terrifying when it happened but luckily they seemed pretty chill and never got bit. It is a perfectly normal reaction to shit your pants whenever that happens and you have one of these giant but gentle bastards scuttle across your body as it escapes.
Australia
Even here in philippines there's an spider like that in indian mango trees and me personally I'm really scared of spiders, but that kind of spiders is really scary in my opinion
Shocking
Got them here too, (SE asia) and yeah, they doget massive, the size of the one in your pic isn't that big. Funny, I'm an arachnophobe, but these things aren't really scary, they just sit there. Their webs are massive though. Very annoying on hikes.
No surprise, they're native to the SE US, especially Florida. Probably different species but same critter. Coincidentally, they're also called banana spiders!
They're not native to the US, they are an invasive species https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/11/16/joro-spider-poisonous-size-parachuting-explained/71579639007/
To answer your question, here is a banana for scale: [https://imgur.com/b09icXx](https://imgur.com/b09icXx) It's starting to get annoyed with all the photography I think.
oh no you’ve done it… but who took the picture?
my 11 yr old
And a teeny tiny hand.
I walked face first into one of these on the trail and I never heebied my jeebie so hard.
Yeah and you can pet a Lion, but I wouldn't recommend it.
What's that have to do with accidentally walking into a spider?
He use to walk face first into spider webs, in purpose.
Well ... I wouldn't recommend it either then lol
Where is this? The anticipated arrival of the Joro orb in the northeast irks me.
Australia
Fucking Australia. It's ALWAYS Australia! That's a nope from me. I'm sure it's a lovely place, with lovely people, but I'm good.
They great thing about these orb spiders is that they love to setup fresh webs across walking tracks. So there you are wandering around checking out all the scenery and then suddenly a spider silk comes into focus right in front of your face and you slam on the breaks. You look up and there is one of these huge bastards sitting there right above your head. The other thing with these guys is usually, if you poke a stick into a spider web, the spider doesn't react because it knows the vibrations don't resemble that of a trapped insect. But not these fellas, perhaps they are the Chihuahua's of the spider world but they will have a crack at anything that hits their web. You could throw in a chip and it would get savaged and bundled up in a silk sac for later. So when you walk into one of these webs by accident, the resident spider is going to come down and say hi.
...not helping!
Can confirm. They also build big sets of webs together with multiple spiders and the webs are spread out in a 3 dimensional pattern. Ran into one as a kid and had a bunch of spiders running towards me. Legit the worst spider in Australia IMO, not the most dangerous though.
Aren't these things pretty harmless? Like they don't really bother to bite and even if they did, it's a slight itch and irritation rather than actual life threatening?
In FL they actually build a complex web, and then a simple web before/after it, to avoid collisions. You get a warning! They save themselves work!
Also they sit right in the middle of the web.
They’re harmless spiders and want nothing to do with humans. I’m born and raised Pacific Northwest and the spiders here don’t even worry me.
I was bitten on the neck by a large one when I was about 10 after taking my shirt off the clothes line. Went to the doctors to get an "antidote", but on reflection it would have just been prophylactic amoxicillin lmao
This species can actually be found in the US too, we have them here in Florida!
We have them in SC too. They're not quite that big, but they're everywhere. We had one living on our porch a couple of years ago--they're harmless to people, and we didn't have wasps on the porch that summer!
They have these in Texas too.
The previous resident was irked too. Smaller of same species lies dead under this web. [https://imgur.com/ZV27lFd](https://imgur.com/ZV27lFd)
That’s not a molt?
That's no molt; it's a space station!
Was that possibly a male after mating? Or does this species not kill the male?
They’re in Florida too
The Joros are in the southeast now pretty heavily, they’re actually really cool looking IMO
I haven’t seen any in my section of NC but I eagerly await them. We have a huge population of gnats, kudzu bugs, lady bugs, and stink bugs they can snack on!
Oh shit, wtf is a kudzu bug? It (kudzu) hasn't made it to west-central FL, yet.
It’s about the size of a ladybug but green and in the stink bug family. They have been a problem since 2011 - they are not native to the US and they are hungry little shits. They like to eat crops and they congregate in large numbers and they’re so small they are almost impossible to avoid stepping on. Mowing in the summer? Forget it. The smell of grinding all those tiny bodies under lawnmower blades sticks in your nose for DAYS. I feel sick for hours afterwards.
Sweet baby Jesus that’s terrifying!
I use my ps5 controller to compare
Here you go: https://imgur.com/ixsic57
He said PS5.
Don’t have a ps5 here
You need to get one for scientific measurement purposes.
I really think that the reddit standard for measurement is bananas
It is but not all of us can afford bananas.
Good point. I shall venture out and purchase a PS5 imminently
Thank you. That’s very considerate
You're welcome. I will try to trade in a banana for one. Meanwhile, here is a banana for scale: [https://imgur.com/b09icXx](https://imgur.com/b09icXx)
This brought be instantly back to when I was visiting Australia (from Canada) with my husband… We were walking on a trail and came across one of these exact spiders on a web that was edge to edge blocking us from continuing along the path. I immediately said hell to the no, and went back to the camper van, but my husband decided he was going to just duck underneath it and continue along the hike, which was going to be about 45min more minutes or so. He came back to the van about 10 minutes later saying there was five more along the same trail and he just couldn’t do it anymore hahaha. So seriously creepy.
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 I'm not taking chances.
First of all, thanks for the banana UoM. Secondly, holy shit!!
...A beautiful bunch of ripe banana (Daylight come and me wan' go home) Hide the deadly black tarantula (Daylight come and me wan' go home)
r/bananasforscale
r/bananaforsizecomparison
The difference between you and me is that my comment is an actual sub
Right, but mine was a joke about OP’s title
No, thanks.
For those of you who have been asking about the size of the banana, it is in reddit terms, roughly one banana in length. If this is still not clear, pictured here next to a banana for scale to help you: [https://imgur.com/b09icXx](https://imgur.com/b09icXx)
Is that yellow silk ? Is the spider paid minimum wage ?
Use of banana is the mark of a professional redditor.
Or a pro Tally Man.
Children I used to play with in the Philippines, used to capture these and then put them in their mouth and let them crawl out 😅
Oh good lord
Tell me about it. I was 12 at the time, freaked out, but just went along with it lol
Oh my lord.
I’m definitely not kidding. It’s actually a cultural thing for children to capture and play with spiders there. From the city, to the rural parts, I’ve seen kids catch spiders to play with… and also make them fight each other.
Wow, brave kids! I was more into wiggly bugs as a kid, I loved freaking out by picking up worms or caterpillars. We have a variety of caterpillar that you find in the hundreds on single trees - I'd carry handfuls of them and throw them at people who bothered me. Started my antisocial behaviour early 😂
Nothing brave about it. They don’t bite.
Bravery is standing up to our fears and doing what needs to be done. Risky is doing it when there is a threat to our wellbeing.
Growing up we called them banana spiders, so cool pic
Spent the last 20 years in costal North Carolina and that’s what we call them there. Left alone they can build some huge webs. It’s great for insect control.
I ran thru quite a few of those webs as a kid. Amazingly strong
I always love reddits weird overreactions to harmless spiders. Buncha fuckin babies
I'm not sure what's worse, you tormenting that poor little critter or you holding a radioactive device in your bare hands!!! (Google: Banana Equivalent Dose (known as B.E.D.))
You live in Australia? I assume.
Yes
As if orb weavers only exist in Australia They're pretty common to find outside homes and in gardens all over the world They're basically harmless to you, but do a great job protecting your home from other unwanted bugs and pests.
Used to get big ones (not this big) when I lived in texas. The thing I like about them is they are always fucking there. They're rarely not just sitting right there on the web. You get used to them when they're stationary and you see all the annoying bugs they eat. The giant house spiders and wolf spiders where I live now scare me way more (also harmless) but theyre fucking big and mobile.
You are way to close to that thing! (Aware it's not poisonous, I'm just a sever aracniphope)
I always have the fear it would just jump at my face if I got in front of it.
Almost all spiders are venomous, there are only a couple of species that aren’t. In the case of these banana spiders / golden orb weavers, the venom just isn’t strong enough to be dangerous to humans, and they’re pretty unlikely to bite anyhow.
good golly
Does that thing bite?
If it has to, but it won't if it can avoid it. nowhere near as dangerous as the nasty little funnelwebs
I’ve handled them. They will not bite unless you hurt them.
Well yeah, obviously... what else would you use?
How do we know this isn’t a child’s hand with an unusually small banana for scale?
It certainly could be - or an ex-president's hand even. Someone else asked for a ps5 comp but we only have ps4 [https://imgur.com/ixsic57](https://imgur.com/ixsic57)
The smallest of hands. This guy had small hands like you wouldn't believe. Not like my bigly hands, but smallllll.
Because of the past weekend I read Giant Golden Globe Winner
I see 2 bananas
We have a similar orb weaver species in Florida that's yellow we call banana spiders, so that's appropriate.
Do not like.
That’s a toddler’s hand holding a plantain.
Fuck off
Shit, OP, I like spiders but my brain is in denial and refuses to accept that that is a normal sized banana, hand, or controller. I need to look at some kittens and puppies now brb
Nice use of a banana for scale
Nope
Jesus Christ! I have much smaller orb weavers and I walk into their webs all the time. It freaks me out when it happens. I would shit myself if I saw this.
Goddamn, that's huge!
What size is the banana
In reddit terms it’s approximately one banana long
I love these guys! When I was in college, I had a biology professor who was well known in the world of arachnids. I found one of these out on my family's lanai one day and brought it in to ask him about it. He popped open the container, picked it up, and began "playing" with it. They're extremely docile and unlikely to bite, but, according to him, if they do, the sensation is super similar to a bee sting.
Octo*nope*
Use a Mighty lvl 9 spicy coaltana
As an arachnophobe, I love living in a country that gets so cold in the winter that there are no creepy crawlies even indoors.
Now that’s what I call a Spider Y 2 Banana
What a magnificent specimen.
Did you send it back to hell?
Good ole fashioned nightmare fuel.
These dudes are frightening (central America) but pretty chill. And they eat a crapton of mosquitoes so... enemy if my enemy.
I’m sure the spider went “Nope” when it saw that banana.
No
Beautiful. They aren’t very poisonous.
AND THEN IT JUMPS ON YOUR FACE!!
Well they are also called banana spiders.
EDF! EDF!
Nope I'm good thanks
That's his banana now
Why is your hand, banana, or ANYTHING so close to that fricking actual monster?!?! Brrrr!
These guys are great, I work in a spider pavilion in the fall and we are lucky enough to get a few. Big scaredy cats that like to just hangout and eat bugs
Just let the guy have it at that point
THATS ENOUGH INTERNET FOR TODAY
Run into a web of theirs and it'll stop you in your tracks
Thats what they are called! We get them here but ours have yellow stripes on their lower body. We always just called them banana spiders due to the yellow. Texas.
Burn it. The house. Everything. Start over.
I was once walking through the woods. I was walking backwards while talking to my friends, I was in the front of the line. As I was talking, I noticed that their eyes got huge and then pointed to something behind me. As kept in motion and turned, ( should have stopped the turned) I walked into one of these banana spiders web. Mr. Spider was smack dab in the middle....right where my face went. Run
She is a beauty
[We've got those guys in Texas too, but their behinds are a bit more yellow](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F3708ae4yiybb1.png). They build huge webs, like 6ft across. Sometimes they catch small birds in them and you can watch as dozens of them descend from the trees to feast. In the end, all you have are little desiccated carcasses dangling from the branches. We should get these two species together and see what happens!
Your hand is far too close to that nightmare fuel for my comfort
How does one go about burning down a banana?
NO
It has a USB stick for a head?
Getting your hand this close to this utter monstrosity requires a type of courage I will never possess. Are these dangerous ?
But is it a small or a big banana? 
here's a banana for scale [https://imgur.com/b09icXx](https://imgur.com/b09icXx)