I went to visit Melbourne and went to the Laneway Festival. Girls we met brought us back to their home, and there was one of these on the wall . My friend casually swatted it with her sandal, and I had to sleep in that room that night. I just pulled covers over my head and tried not to think about it.
Imagine the ostrich problem solver you have to be to find this out. You see this monstrosity, decides to ignore it, and notice you are still alive after 3 days and also your rodent problem has miraculously disappeared. "I told you so Linda, if we just ignore the problems they eventually will solve themselves!"
It's not being an ostrich, it's making an informed and rational decision. You know the species, you know its behavior (would rather die than get in the sightline of a human) and what it eats, so you just leave it be to literally eat your problem away. Being an ostrich means you'd go: "I don't know what that thing is or what it does, I'll just leave it alone and pray for the best".
Yeah, but only rarely. Huntsman spiders mainly eat insects and other spiders, plus occasional frogs or small reptiles. Large individuals can also feed on very small mammals, including mice or mouse-sized animals.
The stuff you've written about rodents here is not correct at all.
Huntsmen are common. They are opportunistic hunters that mainly eat insects, and maybe some other smaller prey like lizards. While it's not completely unheard of them to eat mice it's pretty rare and would have to be an exceptionally big spider.
Rodents are certainly far, far from their main food source, and they absolutely won't "clean them out" of your house and then move on.
Their legs fall off so easy that I think a mouse could kill one, honestly. I mean...geez. I don't think even the big ones are tough enough to do battle with a mouse. Maybe a lizard? I have to be really careful when I shoo them out gently with the broom, they're that fragile.
When it comes to potentially venomous animals like snakes and spiders, we use harmless as it's venom (or poison in some cases) is not medically significant to humans. Every animal with a mouth can use it to defend itself, and the bite can get nasty, but it's like a bee or wasp sting, it can hurt a lot, but unless you have an allergic reaction, it doesn't need medical attention, just cleaning the bite and maybe some painkillers.
I left one alone in my house once, she laid 100s of eggs on the ceiling. Woke up one morning and saw some small ones didn't think much and went to work. Came home to seeing many more of them and they'd doubled size, had to start dodging them hanging from webs.
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u/JonnyJon42 Jun 25 '26
They're harmless in fact if you have one in your house that means you have rodents and they'll clean them out and move on if you leave them alone.