Black House Spider
Badumna insignis
Other Names: Common black spider, Window Spider. Note that "Window" has an "n" in it; these are not the same as the Black Widow Spider from America, which is closely related to the Redback Spider. The Grey House Spider (Badumna longinquus) is similar but less black / more grey and a bit smaller.
Size: Female body up to 18 mm with a 30 mm legspan
Family: Desidae (Intertidal spiders, originally named after marine species which live between high and low tide, but also now includes land dwelling spiders such as Badumna species).
Distribution: Widely distributed throughout Australia (especially Southern and Eastern Australia) and New Zealand. They are very common in the Blue Mountains of NSW, and many other places.
Habitat: They live in rough barked trees, and around many buildings (like houses) where they make webs around the edges of windows, and other places. Their webs sometimes have a funnel shape in them, but the funnels are smaller than funnel web spiders, and they don't have obvious "trip wires", and their webs are usually high up rather than low down near or on the ground like those of funnel web spiders.
References: Wikipedia.
About the Black House Spider
They are much more black than the picture I took at the Australian Museum. Most of the dead spiders have faded in colour, but this one especially so.
Note that dead spiders usually fade in colour, so nearly all the spiders will look blacker or darker in colour in real life than they do in the photos of dead spiders from the museum.
Photo taken at Australian Museum, Sydney. Higher Resolution 3516 x 2476.
Photo taken at Australian Museum, Sydney. Higher Resolution 1574 x 1002.
Photo taken at Australian Museum, Sydney. Higher Resolution 1600 x 1067.
Photo taken at Australian Museum, Sydney.
Photo by Fir0002/Flagstaffotos.
Photo by Fir0002/Flagstaffotos.
Photo by Fir0002/Flagstaffotos.
See Also
Australian Mammals
Australian Birds
Australian Reptiles
Australian Frogs
Australian Fish
Australian Wild Plant Foods
Return to Australian Spiders
