Steatoda Grossa (False Widow)

Another example of the False Widow type spiders which we're beginning to realise are far from rare here in Basildon, Essex. In the last 3 days we've found 5 sepcimens including 1 in the house. Two of them have been large specimens, so I'm assuming that they're females. One of them which I think is bigger that the one in this video as seen below I've kept and is in a demijon in the garden. The ones we get most frequently are the Steatoda Grossa variety which have a nasty bite, but as you can see in the video they're not looking to go around attacking people and the likelyhood is that as long as you don't pick them up by the legs or do anything to hurt them they're fine. I think they're interesting especially as they're supposed to be rare, the truth is more like - people just think of them as being generic spiders and so never report them.