Not all spiders in Texas are black and brown. Some come in different colors, from white to yellow, and to read too.
This guide reveals seven red spiders that are common in Texas homes and gardens.
You’ll find out where you find these spiders, why they enter homes, and most importantly if they’re poisonous to you.
Keep reading to find out the answers.
List Of 7 Red Spiders In Texas
- Woodlouse hunter spider
- Red dwarf spider
- Red crab spider
- Cardinal jumper spider
- Hacklemesh weaver spider
- Arrow-shaped micrathena
- Red house spider
Let’s dive into each of these spiders to know more about them.
Woodlouse Hunter Spider
Woodlouse hunter spiders are pretty common in Central Texas, especially in Austin.
Woodlouse hunter spiders are red with orangish legs with six eyes and eight legs. Their abdomen is quite prominent, shiny, and yellowish-brown.
Woodlouse hunter spiders primarily hunt and feed on woodlice. That’s how they got their names as woodlouse spiders.
A matured female woodlouse hunter spider is 15-30 mm in size. In contrast, the males are shorter.
Adult male woodlouse hunter spiders are 10-15 mm in length.
Outdoors, you’ll find woodlouse hunter spiders hiding underneath wooden logs, rocks, stones, foliage, and bricks where they can get woodlice to hunt. They prefer warm and dry places to hide over wet and humid areas.
These spiders can enter homes too. And there have been numerous sightings of these spiders in Texas homes.
In your home, cluttered spaces with cracks, gaps, and dark places you don’t visit often are woodlouse hunter spiders’ favorite places to hide.
Woodlouse hunter spiders don’t spin a web to hunt their prey. But they’ll make a silken web in the tight gaps and cracks, which they’ll use as a retreat.
Woodlouse hunter spiders are nocturnal. All their foraging activities occur at night. During the day, these spiders will remain idle in their hiding places.
Do Woodlouse Hunter Spider Bite?
Yes, woodlouse hunter spiders can bite if you try to handle them. They’ve got massive fangs that they insert into your skin.
However, these spiders aren’t aggressive. And the best part is that their bites are non-poisonous.
A bite from woodlouse hunter spiders feels like a bee sting. Redness, rashes, a bit of pain, and swelling can be the outcomes of woodlouse hunter spiders’ bites.
Red Dwarf Spider In Texas
Red dwarf spiders are tiny red spiders found mainly in the Northern US. But over the years, they’re spotted often in Texas.
In Texas, the red dwarf spiders are also known as sheet web spiders.
These spiders are red, and some of them have a black abdomen instead of red. Their abdomen is round. A matured red dwarf spider grows only up to 2 mm in length. On the first look, you may confuse them with spider mites.
But their globe-shaped round abdomen and a noticeable head distinguish them from spider mites.
Sheet web or red dwarf spiders are more outdoor spiders than indoor spiders. Outdoors, you’ll find these spiders and their webs in the scantiest of vegetation and even in flowers.
These spiders will weave their webs anywhere where they can find tiny insects to hunt. They’ll make their webs even in footprints of animals and humans in the soil.
But most of the time, the red dwarf spiders spin their webs on or near the ground and foliage. Red dwarf spiders build their webs with two horizontal silk layers that can trap an insect.
The spider hangs upside down underneath the layers, hiding from the insects.
When the web traps an insect, the spider can sense the vibration of the fluttering insect on the web.
It bites the insect from behind the horizontal layers, injects its venom, and drags the insect to itself through the layers.
A typical prey of red dwarf spiders is tiny invertebrates, including springtails, ants, flies, and little beetles.
Red dwarf spiders play a beneficial role in your garden by eating away the damaging plant pests like aphids and mealworms.
However, red dwarf spiders can also turn into prey. Centipedes, big black ants, frogs, and ground beetles can hunt and eat these tiny red spiders.
The chances of seeing red dwarf spiders in Texas homes are pretty low. It’s because the indoors are not typical habitat for these spiders.
However, they can sneak inside your home at times, especially when the weather outdoors is inclement for them.
Do Red Dwarf Spiders Bite?
Red dwarf spiders rarely bite humans. They avoid anything more prominent than their size. There’s no information on if they bite humans if you try to pick them up with bare hands.
But given their tiny size, their fangs might be too weak to penetrate your skin. And red dwarf spiders are certainly not poisonous to humans.
Red Crab Spiders
Red crab spiders belong to the Thomisidae family. Spiders belonging to the Thomisidae family have an appearance like a crab. They also come in different colors like white, gray, brown, yellow, and even red.
These spiders have two pairs of legs projecting forward that give them an appearance of a crab. The other two pairs of legs in the rear end are short and thin.
The red crab spiders grow up to half an inch in length, and they also have a round abdomen with tiny hairy bristles on it.
Outdoors, these spiders hide under rocks, wood logs, and stones. When gently touched by a stick, these spiders rear up like a tarantula in self-defense.
Red crab spiders are common in eastern Texas than anywhere else in the state. These spiders don’t spin a web, and they’re pouncing hunters that attack their prey rather than spinning webs to trap them.
Red crab spiders are diurnal. It means that they are active both during the day and night.
Sightings of these red crab spiders in Texas homes occur because of the same reason for other spiders: to escape the harsh weather outdoors.
Do Red Crab Spiders Bite?
Yes, red crab spiders bite if you try to handle them. These spiders have a habit of biting on the tip of the fingers if you try to pick them up with your bare hands.
The bite is painful and causes immense swelling. When red dwarf spiders bite on your fingers, then your finger can swell up twice its average size.
The bite wound also turns red. In many people, the bite wound can also turn pale and discolored.
Fortunately, a bite from red crab spiders is not poisonous.
You will not need any medical attention unless you show severe allergic symptoms like nausea, breathing difficulty, vomiting, and dizziness.
Cardinal Jumper Spider
There are 100 species of jumping spiders in Texas, and the cardinal jumper spider is one of them.
Cardinal jumping spiders are velvety red on their heads and abdomen. They’ve got hairy bristles all over their bodies that make them appear like red velvet ants.
Their legs are black, and there’s a black stripe running alongside their dorsal abdomen. The abdomen of cardinal jumper spiders is oval-shaped rather than round.
The females are bigger than the males. A female cardinal jumping spider grows up to half an inch in size, whereas the male ones are a bit shorter growing up to 0.4 inches.
Cardinal jumping spiders mimic mutillid wasps, and given the similarities in their looks, you can confuse a cardinal jumping spider with a mutilid wasp.
Cardinal jumping spiders don’t spin the web either. They’re the ones who hunt their prey by lurking and pouncing or jumping on them.
But they do spin webs to hide their eggs and to rest. But they don’t use the web for trapping and hunting their prey.
Outdoors, the cardinal jumping spiders hide in tall grasses, dense bushes, and underneath the loose barks of trees.
Cardinal jumping spiders can sneak inside your home too.
Inside your home, the jumping spiders will hide underneath furniture, in the cracks and gaps on the walls and floors, between window and door frames, and in the clutter of books, newspapers, and cardboard boxes.
Do Red Cardinal Jumper Spiders Bite?
Yes, they do bite. But the fangs of red cardinal jumper spiders can’t penetrate your skin. So, the bite from cardinal jumper spiders and other jumping spiders is not painful.
But you’ll feel a pinch when they bite you.
Cardinal jumper spiders don’t bite you unless you try to handle them or when they get crushed on your skin.
Cardinal jumper spiders are not dangerous to humans, and their bites are also non-poisonous.
Hacklemesh Weaver Spider
The hacklemesh weaver spider, often known as tangled nest spider or night spider in Texas, is another species of red spider in Texas.
Outdoors, the hacklemesh weaver spider lives under loose wood bark of trees, leaf litter, underneath stones, and woodpiles.
Both the males and females are of similar sizes. An adult matured hacklemesh weaver spider grows up to 12.5 mm to 14 mm in length.
These spiders are reddish mahogany brown. If you observe them from a distance, the color of these spiders looks like blood red.
However, the abdomen of these spiders has a distinctive color. It’s reddish but has a dark charcoal gray background color, making the abdomen appear lighter than the carapace.
Some hacklemesh weaver spiders also have light brown figurines on their abdomen, which, at times, hide the redness of their abdomen.
The hacklemesh weaver spider enters homes during the winters to overwinter. They’ll sneak in wet basements, bathrooms, kitchen, laundry rooms, and in cluttered areas like attic storage rooms to hide.
The male spiders overwinter as immature spiders. And during overwintering, the male spiders will molt twice before the spring arrives in April to turn into mature adult males.
After turning into an adult, the males mate with females. After mating, the males die.
The male hacklemesh weaver spider has a shorter lifespan than the female. The females can easily survive for two years.
The females will lay their eggs in the egg sacs. They deposit the egg sacs in their web. An egg sac of a female hacklemesh weaver spider can contain up to 175 eggs.
The hacklemesh weaver spider looks like a hobo spider. That’s why many people confuse it with the hobo spider despite its red color.
The hacklemesh weaver spider has a unique way of spinning its webs in the form of a funnel. That’s the reason they’re known as tangled web spiders in Texas.
They design their webs in a way that draws their prey inside the web’s tunnel with no chance of escaping.
Like most spiders, the hacklemesh spider is nocturnal. However, if the prey gets stuck in their web, they won’t mind devouring it during the day.
Do Hacklemesh Weaver Spider Bite?
Yes, hacklemesh weaver spiders can bite humans. But the cases of bites from these spiders are zero to a minimum.
Their bites are painful, and bites occur only in cases when they feel threatened. But their bites are non-poisonous and not fatal to humans.
Also, the hacklemesh weaver spider isn’t aggressive to humans, and they try to avoid contact with humans and pets.
Arrow-Shaped Micrathena
Arrow-shaped micrathena are typically garden spiders that you’ll come across in the Eastern US. But for the past few decades, these spiders have been spotted in states like Texas, Florida, and Louisiana.
It got its name because of its unique arrow-shaped body. The abdomen of the arrow-shaped micrathena spider is in the shape of an arrow.
The head, legs, and carapace of the arrow-shaped micrathena spider are red. But the abdomen comes in different colors like yellow, red, white, and even black.
It’s the females that have the most color in them. The male arrow-shaped micrathena spiders are entirely black.
On the top of their abdomen, there are thorn-like extensions that give it a pretty menacing look. But it’s only the female arrow-shaped micrathena spiders that have these prickles. The males don’t have them.
Experts believe that they developed these thorns as a means of self-defense against predators. There are also two large extensions protruding from the bottom of the abdomen.
The males are shorter than the females. A mature adult female grows up to 9 mm in size. In contrast, the males are only 5 mm.
The arrow-shaped micrathena spiders spin webs to catch their prey. Their webs are like the webs of orb-weaver spiders. The webs are circular, with strings running within the web.
The spider will rest in the middle of the web, patiently waiting for a fly to get stuck.
They spin their webs only a few feet above the ground between leaves and twigs. The arrow-shaped micrathena spiders don’t enter homes at all.
Do Arrow-Shaped Micrathena Spiders Bite?
No, they don’t bite humans. And if in the rarest or rare they bite, the bite is very mild without any side effects.
A momentary swelling and minor pain can be the result of the bite.
The Red House Spider
And finally, the most common red spider in Texas homes is the red house spider. The red house spider looks like the dwarf spider, but it’s a bit bigger than the dwarfs.
A mature female red house spider grows up to 7 mm in size, whereas the males are only 3-4 mm.
The abdomen of the red house spider is darker than its body color. And these spiders crawl pretty fast.
Experts say that the red house spider can crawl up to a speed of 1.2 mph!
The red house spiders hide in places that are typical hiding places of any house spider. They’ll hide in cracks and gaps in the walls, furniture, and floor.
But the most common places where you’ll find them are in cluttered areas where there’s a lack of natural light.
The red house spiders can also survive outdoors. Outdoors, these spiders live in cool and damp places with thick vegetation.
The red house spiders spin a web to catch their prey. Like most spiders, the red house spider is also a solitary spider.
It’ll get aggressive if any other spider tries to invade its territory.
Do Red House Spiders Bite?
Yes, red house spiders bite humans. But they’re not aggressive towards humans and shy away from human contact.
The red house spider bite is quite painful, but their bite is not necrotic like the bite of the brown recluse spider. And their bites are also non-poisonous.
Their bites cause pain and swelling. And most bites occur when anyone tries to disturb their web with their bare hands and fingers.
So, it’s always a good idea to use a broomstick to get rid of these spiders’ web.
Summary
To summarize, the most common seven red spiders in Texas are –
- Woodlouse hunter spider
- Red dwarf spider
- Red crab spider
- Cardinal jumper spider
- Hacklemesh weaver spider
- Arrow-shaped micrathena
- Red house spider
Not all these spiders are house spiders, especially the arrow-shaped micrathena spider.
Spiders sneak inside your home in search of prey when the weather outdoors becomes too harsh for them.
Spiders are sneaky creatures and hide in the most inaccessible places of your home where you don’t frequent often.
To get rid of them, it’s always a better idea to lure spiders out of hiding before going onto full-fledge spider control.
To know more about bugs in Texas, read our post on common house bugs in Texas homes.
Nang Chen is an Entomologist and Arachnologist who is associated with Vienna’s museum of natural history. He’s also a consultant with real estate groups, insecticide conglomerates and law enforcement groups as a forensic entomologist. Nang Chen holds an M.S. from South China University and he’s a regular contributor to our site.