A red back spider in the us???

Question

I found a spider in my garage....i have done the research, and it did not have the red hour glass on its belly like a black widow. instead it had a line of what looked like a stripe of three red dots on its back facing upward. is this possible that it is an austrailian red back spider? have their been any recorded cases of this? thanks

Answer 1

Learn to ID them, here -

http://www.spideridentification.org/

http://www.usq.edu.au/spider/index.htm

http://www.arachnology.be/pages/Identifi...

Answer 2

just kill it....

Answer 3

It's probably a Northern Black Widow. They have red spots, and also a less well-formed hourglass shape underneath them.

Here are some pic's of them:

http://bugguide.net/node/view/26421

Redback spiders do actually have an hourglass shape underneath them too, and the red mark on their back is normally just one unbroken line.

Here's a page with some info. about them:

http://www.ozanimals.com/Spider/Redback-...

Hope that helps.