A confirmed sighting of a brown widow spider itself. Look for the telltale orange hourglass shape and an overall color scheme of blacks, browns and tans. Residents of southern California (or other ...

No wonder they’re called widow spiders. To get sex with an older female, a male might fight off many rivals or perform courtship gestures for up to six hours. At the magical moment, he’d place ...

The bite is neuropathic like the black widow, but it generally does not spread, so it’s painful but not life threatening. These spiders are brown to dark brown and have long legs. They build ...

Fortunately, fatalities are fairly rare; the spiders are nonaggressive and bite only in self-defense, such as when someone accidentally sits on them. The animals most at risk from the black widow' ...