Cellar Spider

Category:

Actual Size: ¼” not including legs

Characteristics: Pale yellow to light brown or gray with very long thin legs.

Legs: 8

Habitat: Found in damp cellars, basements, crawlspaces, garages, and dark quiet places.

Habits:

  • Often mistaken for daddy longlegs or harvestmen.
  • These creatures serve as predators to the larger spiders found within homes.
  • They adeptly craft their webs in secluded corners and along ceiling lines, preferring to rest upside down.

Cellar Spider in Wisconsin

Known for their elongated, delicate limbs, cellar spiders are innocuous and brittle arachnids, commonly mistaken for the unrelated daddy longlegs spiders. Frequently encountered within basements, cellars, and garages, they have earned their nickname due to their preferred habitats. Occupying the dimly lit corners of rooms, these spiders are known predators of sizeable domestic spiders and various insects such as flies and wasps, occasionally preying on their own kind in times of food scarcity.

Cellar Spider Habitat

In their natural habitats, cellar spiders can be found in cave entrances, rock crevices, and similar sheltered locations. Within human residences, they are drawn to humid and dark areas. Their webs are notably disorganized and sprawling, and they exhibit a high sensitivity to motion, swiftly capturing insects that blunder into their snares. Both sexes of cellar spiders are present in climate-controlled environments throughout the year.

Cellar Spider Behaviors, Threats, or Dangers

Despite possessing venom, cellar spiders are not considered a threat to humans, as they are not known to bite and hence pose no health risks. The primary inconvenience they present is the extensive webbing they produce. Unlike other spider species that consume their old webs to craft new ones, cellar spiders accumulate their webs, leading to unsightly and cumbersome accumulations in residential and commercial settings. If you are dealing with cellar spider problems in your home, contact your local spider exterminators.