The redback spider or, Latrodectus hasselti, ranges through Australia; moreover, it has managed to spread to New Zealand, Japan, the United Arab Emirates and Belgium. They don’t expect it to flourish in Belgium because the redback spider will not eat french fries with mayonnaise.
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A redback spider bite is very painful. So, if you want to get bitten by a spider, but you don’t want it to be painful, the redback spider is not recommended.
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The female redback will often cannibalize the male after mating. This is such a perfect metaphor for human marriage that entomologists theorize the spiders are trolling us.
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A redback spider bites its victim, injects it with a substance that liquifies its insides and slowly consumes it. For the prey, it’s a lot like a gym membership.
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The venom of the Redback Spider kills an average of zero people each year, making it the deadliest spider in Australia.
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The bite of the male Redback is seldom serious due to its smaller size and the fact that it is usually preoccupied with coming up with excuses not to mate that year.
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Early treatments for the bite of l. hasselti include sucking out the venom, tourniquets and cocaine injections. Of course, now they have an antivenom for bites and most people use those… except anti-vaxxers who still insist on horse de-wormer…
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In an experiment, some redback spiders were starved at fifty degrees and some were starved at seventy degrees. The ones being starved at a cooler temperature lived longer. This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that some scientists really HATE redback spiders.
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You can tell a redback spider by the red markings on its abdomen and back; or, you can just yell out, “HEY, REDBACK SPIDER” and see who turns around.
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L. hasselti will eat insects, small lizards, snakes and even a mouse, given the chance. Both adult and hatch-ling redbacks will eat other redback spiders after a conflict or just as a light snack. This ties the food chain up into a tidy little bow.
Potatoes and the Promise of More Potatoes 
Males looking for excuses not to have sex. A true oddity of the natural world.
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Being cannibalized is one of our “buttons”…
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Men. You’re such delicate creatures….
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It’s the pedipad thing. (Google it)
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I did. You’re going to have to help, anyway…
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I’ll send you a link
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I just yelled, “HEY, REDBACK SPIDER” and no one turned to look at me. That is good to know just in case one made it to my house. I may try this same tactic for all spiders and snakes since I do not have enough horse de-wormer to protect me from all of those possible bites!.
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I yelled out, “HEY, REDBACK SPIDER” once and my whole family turned around. Obviously, that means that they are part of the invasion of spider people. They don’t know that I know so… shhhhh!
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Being a scientist myself, can I still get away with hating spiders? A recent post I made was about a rain of animals, and I discovered that it actually rains spiders in Australia! That is just not right.
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In all fairness, most Australians are slightly venomous so a rain of spiders is no big deal. I’ll check out your post on the rain of spiders, hoping that you didn’t mean “reign”…
BTW, I’m a Chemical Engineer and Mathematician.
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Too weird. I’m an environmental engineer and environmental scientist. I never knew engineers with much of a sense of humor.
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I think it’s how we keep our sanity…
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I feel an affinity with redbacks. I plan to eat all the males I have sex with too.
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After you finish, have a sensible salad…
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REDBACK SPIDERS are probably just BROWN RECLUSE spiders who stayed out in the sun too long with no shirt on.
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One has a deadly neurotoxin… the other, a venom that makes your skin liquefy and fall off…
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