Australians should stop milking spiders

[Marue]

Heard that they were urging people to catch more spiders to milk for anti venom, the average spider gets milked 100 times before being killed!

It just seems very inhumane to do that these days, surely with modern technology they should synthesise this?

Marue

How far does your concern for protecting life go?

I'm presuming you engage in activity in your home to kills bacteria and germs.... But by your logic this would seem to be morally wrong! Why should we only care about preserving life we can see! Isn't cleaning your toilet akin to a massive genocidal chemical warfare campaign against poor defenceless bacteria?! By your logic Surely this is more heinous crime than simply keeping and milking spiders? Perhaps you should start a campaign against Domestos!

Ps i have a wasps nest that I've got someone out to deal with today... Should I cancel and make my children run the gauntlet of being stung each day?

Spiders, wasps etc are NOT little humans trapped in eight-legged bodies... To treat them as such is ridiculous.... And where do you stop!

I grew up in an area with lots of funnelwebs. We wouldn't even try to catch them, just squash them as soon as we saw them. They're very aggressive. I imagine that they don't get that many people trying to catch them.

YY to digger finding spiders tucked under the wheelie bin handles, same here!

I live in Australia and think that all the milked spiders are reasonable payback for the ones that live so comfily in my garden and, quite often, my house. So, OP, YABVU.

I've only ever killed one spider, a whitetail, having been brought up with the superstition that it's bad luck to do it. I put them outside, except for huntsman spiders who are welcome to skitter across the bathroom walls and scare visitors shitless.

if the OP, as vegan is getting exercised about spiders, this might provide a useful corrective:
www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CCgQFjACahUKEwiJmNjn8dLIAhUBKaYKHSmeAco&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2Fradical-conservation%2F2015%2Faug%2F04%2Fplants-intelligent-sentient-book-brilliant-green-internet&usg=AFQjCNGdODkP1FSOX63Dp2_rZDl8j_U2LA

Non-fact checked fact: mosquitoes have killed more people since time began than every other animal put together.

Agreed. More young children die in countries like DRC from Malaria than any other disease. If you had to research it, the figures which probably show that the poorer African countries have less recorded deaths. This is because these children never get any treatment, do not have access to doctors or medication and their deaths go unreported.

We don't get the funnel web here, our nasties are the Violin, Black Widow, and the Sac Spider. The Sac wont kill you, but they are very common, and in the drier months they seek out water. Often, people are bitten when they take a glass of water to bed, grab a glug in the night, and hello, the Sac Spider came along first and it sitting in the glass without you knowing. So, if you holiday in SA, always put the light on before you have a drink in the night Their venom eats away at the tissue, and you only notice the bloody great crater in your skin days later. Very very nasty. There is no anti venom for this one. There is no anti venom for the Violin either. So yes, I agree that research needs to be done, and the only way that this can be done is the capture the spiders. Oh, and we have over 2000 species of spiders here, some harmless (like the rain spider), we would never consider killing one of these, they do more good than bad, as they feed on annoying mosquitoes in the night.

But, the ugliest one, wont kill you, but you might crap yourself if you saw one looking at you.... this is the

Ogre Face

My thinking is that if you live in a country where creatures are living amongst you, you will take more of an interest in them in your daily life. In the UK, there are spiders and snakes yes, but not the amount or variety that we have - so its not something that you need to consider as much as we do. (of course if its a particular interest or your field of course).

So now that I woke you all up with a picture of my friend up there, I can carry on with my day, and hope that I don't get a visit from him....

5Foot5 Tue 20-Oct-15 12:49:13

I bet you need a very low stool.

This has not got nearly enough acknowledgment!

:o

There's nothing like a good spider thread to draw out the Australians.

Shall we do snakes yet? I've got some fab taipan stories.

When I briefly lived in Australia years ago, I was absolutely petrified of Spiders so just got my flat mate to kill most of them (apart from the ones we knew weren't poisonous) To be fair we didn't get an awful lot of poisonous one as we lived in a apartment building in central Sydney.

This is really interesting; I had no idea about the milking etc. I am a firm believer in whatever testing is genuinely needed for pharmaceuticals etc (but not cosmetics) and have been part of a vax trial myself.

I'm intrigued though by the "less sentient" thing - ie invertebrates vs vertebrates that was mentioned above. Can anyone explain? Is there a hierarchy of species or is it more of a perception than that?

Trying not to think of Charlotte's Web...

Don't worry about the spiders, op...it's the kangaroos that the kids ride to school that you need to be concerned about.

All that bouncing in the heat ...

But the drop bears are usually good at spotting the no-marks, so we'll be right!

Interesting article echt.... So plants should be respected as intelligent organisms too! I have heard of extreme vegans who hold this view - called 'fruitarians' and will only eat fruit and the such like.

Ogre Face

Christ alive - I don't know if I'll ever "un-see" that thing!

This is DS leg as necrosis started to set in after a whitetail bite, it got a lot bigger before it was brought under control but he does have quite a chunk missing from his knee.

This is a harmless huntsman sitting on our wall in the garden, since the antivenoms were introduced the only death by spider has apparently been due to car accidents when they have hidden behind the sun visor, I think I'd probably crash if this came scuttling out

I'm not feeling any sympathy to the spiders tbh, especially as a funnel web (will kill you very quickly) will attack and bite just for the hell of it!

different

DD went to school on the bush pig. She kept getting a rash from that dastardly rough hair and skin, but its fine, we will keep applying the paste I made from the leaves of the Boabab tree and she will be fine........

Maybe if spiders stopped biting us we wouldn't havev to use them to make the anti venom. So it's basically their fault, the bitey little fuckers.

Frankly we have a pest spray every year that kills everything that might bite us anyway. So HA.

The posts from the Australians on this thread remind me why I could never live there :)

(I had a fabulous 3 week holiday there and didn't see a single spider though)

To be fair, I've lived here for 8 years and I live on the edge of the bush and I've never seen a funnel web, only seen a couple of redbacks (before the pest spray) and only see the occasional huntsman. Only seen a snake two or three times.

But I do see kookaburras and cockatoos and rainbow lorikeets, parrots and lyre birds in my back garden every day. Huge butterflies, praying mantis, shiny Christmas beetles, cicadas and little lizards regularly visit the garden. The good definitely outweighs the bad!

Stole, my granny got a similar thing from a golden orb weaver or St Andrews Cross spider, can't remember which.

Suspect this info will not make Soup feel better about life in Australia.

Oh and only one of those snakes was in the garden and it was only a non venomous tree snake.

Aw, Ruby, you've made me feel all homesick.

Sorry!

I love living here, love the wildlife and the sunshine and the deep blue sky. Even the torrential rain and huge thunder storms. And since I was a little girl visiting Greece and seeing oranges and lemons growing there I always hoped that I would live in a place where I could have a fruit tree, and now I have three, and am still thrilled when I can cut a lime to go in my drink that I have picked from my own tree.

It is hard living away from our family but I feel like I'm really alive here.

It's very nice reading as I sit in an English city hospital bed with a newborn beside me! It truly is a glorious country.

Op if you can get the spiders to agree not to bite then they wouldn't be milked.

Don't ants milk greenfly? Or is that something my brother made up?

Tough shit for the spiders and snakes for that matter.

I back on to a national park. We have a variety of creepy crawlies who we mostly live in peace with.

If one bites me (or the kids) though you bet your arse I want some fucking anti venom and o don't particularly care how it is obtained.