A Clutter of Sac Spiders & a Big Bunch of Grapes

Grapes bought at an upmarket store contained a suprising discovery inside - A nest of Sac Spiders

My mother had an experience yesterday that would have caused most people to have an accident in their car if the same thing had happened to them. Thank goodness my mum's not arachnophobic!

"I bought them yesterday morning (23rd February 2009) at about 12h30 at ----------, Dainfern (Gauteng, South Africa).

As you can see by the pics, I had already (blindly) eaten some of them from my passenger seat, whilst I was driving. Then I saw a white fluffy bit on the grape that was about to be popped into my mouth!!!"

Have a look at the photographs - you can clearly see the sac that was nestled within the grapes. This sac was filled with hundreds of baby spiders. The mother spider can be seen in one of the other photos.

The retail company is listed on www.hellopeter.com as a company who doesn't care or respond, which I find quite surpising, especially considering that their staff seem to know about the www.hellopeter.com website.

It's going to be interesting to see how they respond to this incident....

You can find out more about the sac spider on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheiracanthium_inclusum

or see photo's of the effects of the bites:
http://www.biodiversityexplorer.org/arachnids/spiders/bites.htm

also:
http://www.biodiversityexplorer.org/arachnids/spiders/miturgidae/cheiracanthium.htm

There seems to be a bit of a debate going on in South Africa on how poisonous this spider actually is....

Another reference to the sac spider can be found at:

http://www.scienceray.com/Biology/Zoology/Deadly-Spiders-of-the-World.152047#

Sac Spider

There are many kinds of Sac Spiders through out Europe. More than 200 species of yellow sac spiders throughout parts of the world. There's ongoing research into the effects of this spider's bite; in South Africa it is felt they are responsible for 90% of deaths concerning spider bites.