House spiders are a source of fear for many people. Of course, as any expert will tell you, your typical house spider is a harmless creature that is simply looking to hold up within a warm and relatively safe environment. The last thing a house spider wants to do is start trouble with a home’s occupants. In addition to securing safe shelter, house spiders, much like their outdoor counterparts, are driven to find mates. And this is why just about every house spider that you have ever encountered is male. At least this is what researchers from the United Kingdom believe.
Back in August of 2013, British researchers with the University of Gloucestershire and the Charles Darwin House created an app called “Spider in da House” which allows house-dwellers to track the number of spiders they encounter indoors. The app users were encouraged to provide a plethora of information concerning their spider encounters. This information included the latitude and longitude of each location where house spiders were found as well as the sex of each spider, which can often be easily determined by examining their body size. While determining the sex of each spider found took a bit of work, the geographical location was easily determined with a GPS feature. Surprisingly, over a four month period, researchers gathered data from nearly ten thousand app users. The resultant data shocked researchers, as a whopping 82 percent of house spiders encountered were male. Although this is a high percentage, this data makes sense in that male spiders must search their territory for female mates. Females were encountered far less often because they tend to stick to one place. These locations include webs, window sills, and the corners of garages and sheds. In addition to the high percentage of male spiders encountered, the data showed that house spiders were most often encountered during the evening hours between 6 PM and 9 PM.
Do you find house spiders often within your home?
