Down Under Author Showcase Day 28

Welcome, Cecil Wilde!

Our Down Under Author Showcase is almost over, but not our discoveries of wonderful new authors (at least to this review group).  Cecil Wilde is our featured author today and our review of Defying Convention follows Cecil’s author page.  It’s one of our highly recommended reads so be sure to make its acquaintance today, along with Cecil’s other stories and novels.  As always, don’t forget to enter Cecil’s giveaway and locate the Scavenger Hunt word of the day!

Australia Fact of the Day!

Since Cecil makes a mention of spiders (hmm, where does that happen?), let’s take a closer look at one common spider in Australia!

There are 1500 species of Australian spiders and the average person swallows three spiders a year. The most infamous spiders mentioned in Australian literature, including a few of the stories by our Down Under Authors (can you name which ones?) are: Redback Spider, and Sydney Funnel-web Spider.

Redback Spiders (Latrodectus hasselti) are very common in Australia. They are even kind of popular: one Australian beer is named after them.

Redbacks can be found everywhere in Australia, especially in the densely populated urban areas. They thrive in the warmer regions. Look for them on verandas, in sheds, in storage yards, on industrial sites and inside houses. They also hide in hollow logs, wood or junk piles etc.

Small insects make up the bulk diet of Redback Spiders, but they sometimes kill and eat much bigger prey, even small lizards if they get tangled up in the sticky web. They also steal wrapped up food items from each other’s webs if they can.

How dangerous is the Redback Spider?

Redbacks are responsible for the vast majority of serious spider bites in Australia. However, they are not considered dangerous. Only the bite of a female Redback Spider is toxic (the males are too small to bite anyway).

To get bitten you have to actually stick your hand into the web of a spider, they rarely leave their nest. The fangs of the Redback Spider are tiny. Even if you do manage to get bitten the bite is likely ineffective. In addition the Redback Spider venom is a very slow acting toxin, and most people don’t show any reaction to it (except it itches like crazy).

Possible symptoms in those who do react are pain (can become severe), localised sweating at the bite site, and later on more sweating, muscle weakness, nausea and vomiting.  A simple ice pack is the best first aid. In most cases it’s all that’s required as very few people actually develop these symptoms (about 6% of those bitten, to be precise).

Honest, if you go and see a doctor here and tell them a Redback spider bit you, they’ll probably just tell you to go home and put ice on it.  The Redback Spider is related to the venomous Black Widow Spider commonly found here in the US and looks very similar.

The only difference is the red back, or rather the very distinctive red dorsal stripe (instead of the hour glass) that you can see in the picture.

Cultural Impact outside of Arachnophobia? Per Wikipedia (I know, I know) Slim Newton drew popular attention to redbacks with his song “The Redback on the Toilet Seat”, which won the Golden Guitar at the first Country Music Awards of Australia in 1973. A sculpture of an impossibly large redback  (I personally like The Big Poo better), one of Australia’s big things, was built in 1996 at Eight Mile Plains, Queensland. The Angels 1991 album Red Back Fever takes its name from the spider. Matilda Bay Brewing Company produces a wheat beer called Redback,with the distinctive red stripe as the logo. The redback appears in the name and emblem of the South Australia cricket team. The Airborne Redback, an Australian ultralight trike, was also named after the spider. Redback Boots is an Australian workboot manufacturing company, which uses the spider in its name and logo

New Zealand Fact of the  Day!

Let’s keep going with arachnids and the New Zealand spider Hollywood made famous!  That would be the Avondale Spider, ok it’s sort of an immigrant from Australia. The large harmless spider found around the Avondale area of Auckland is an Australian huntsman spider. This spider found its way to New Zealand in the early 1920s, with the first specimen found in 1924. It probably came in imported wood used for railway sleepers. (What the heck is a railway sleeper?) It has not spread very far from Avondale, so it has received the popular name of Avondale Spider. In South Australia this species is quite common, and people encourage them to live in their houses to keep the pest insect population down.

In 1989/90, 374 Avondale spiders were sent to Hollywood to star in the Steven Spielberg movie Arachnophobia. This spider is harmless to humans, but it looks fearsome and therefore suited its movie role as a “killer spider”. The film made use of 374 live Avondale spiders, from New Zealand, which were picked for their large size, unusually social lifestyle, and yes, are essentially harmless to actors, uh humans. They were guided around the set by the use of heat and cold, but the large “general” and “queen” were articulated models.  Look it’s Bob (that’s what they called the largest mechanical spider in the movie)!

The first reaction of most people on finding Avondale spiders is usually horror. The spiders move very fast when disturbed (as do people when frightened!). Mature spiders with legs outstretched can measure up to 200 mm across (8”).

The mature males are frequent visitors inside houses in the months January to March when they are looking for a female to mate with. Females are capable of laying up to 200 green eggs in an oval-shaped, white papery-looking egg sac about 25 mm long (1”) by 12 mm wide (1/2”). Females guard their egg sac, and after 4-6 weeks open this up to enable the spiderlings to hatch. They will look after the spiderlings for a few more months until they disperse. Spiderlings will feed communally if the prey is too big for them to manage on their own.

Avondale spiders live in colonies with their extended family and friends; no other spider in New Zealand has this lifestyle.