Posted by tanner mitchell on August 15, 2006

Q: Are there an poisionous spiders in saskatchewan(Regina)because we found two huge spiders that share similar qualities with the Hobo Spider. Like the Hobo Spider the male has two boxing gloves sort-of-fangs and has a light brown strip in the middle of it's body.

Habitat: suburban/yard

State: Saskatchewan

Habitat: suburban/yard

A: Here's a great website from the Royal Alberta Museum that covers the poisonous spiders in North America (including Saskatcewan) www.royalalbertamuseum.ca

I excerpted this information for you: It looks like the Hobo Spider is one of three species in this genus found in North America that regularly move into peopleís houses. The other two species are the House Spider, T. domestica, and the Giant House Spider, T. duellica. All three were introduced from Europe, and all three look very similar, the most obvious difference being their size. Usually the Hobo Spider is intermediate in size between the smaller House Spider and the often very large Giant House Spider, although much overlap in size occurs. The House Spider is the most widely distributed, being found throughout most of North America. The Giant House Spider occurs from Washington and southern British Columbia with isolated outlier populations occurring east to southern Saskatchewan. The Hobo Spider is distributed from southern British Columbia, Washington and Oregon east to eastern Colorado and eastern Wyoming and south into Utah. There are, at present, two records of the Hobo Spider in Alberta, one from St. Albert, and the other from Grande Cache. The Grande Cache specimen was found crawling out of a crate that had just been shipped from British Columbia. Both the Giant House Spider and the Hobo Spider appear to be gradually expanding their ranges.

Jim Berry ( August 15, 2006)