Oops, just noticed my comment was similar to a couple others. Sorry other people :/

If you have Lysol, you can disable a small spider from a distance. It makes their legs curl up for a good 20 seconds so you have a better chance of squashing it.

it vanished before I got the Lysol. I had to move my bed to get to the wall and that's when it disappeared.

You speak the truth. When I visited that beautiful country many years ago, I woke up in the middle of the night to find a funnel-web spider walking up the wall in my room. I'm not sure I've ever been so frightened in my life. I'm such a wuss, I had to wake up my host and made them do something about it. A huge boot did the trick. Still gives me the chills.

Those funnelwebs you mention? The most venemous spiders in the world. You know how many people they've killed since the introduction of antivenom in the early 1980s? Zero. You know who died of these bites BEFORE that? Infants and very old people in poor health who did not receive medical treatment. Do you know how many of them have died due to these bites, in the entire recorded history of the entire field of arachnology? 13. In all recorded history. Assuming the OP is not an especially linguistically gifted baby or a hospice patient, OR (not even "and") assuming that she would seek medical help, there is literally no such thing as a dangerous spider for her.

I know the facts, 94- hence why I said that instances of bites were rare. If left untreated, the bite of a funnel web spider can be fatal to anyone. The point is to reduce the risk of being bitten in the first place, and to be sure to seek medical attention in case it happens. Also, for your information, the Brazilian wandering spider is the most venomous and deadly spider in the world. The more you know!

True, by some measures. There is not an objective "most venomous" measure. And in the case of THEIR already rare bites? 2.8% - in children, those most likely to be actually negatively affected - even required any medical attention at all. Grand total number of deaths I can find attributed to it, to date? Two. So dangerous!

Sorry, timer has forced me to double-post this. You know who can also (and is hundreds of times statistically likelier to) injure/kill you? Any random medium-size-or-larger dog. May as well just assume they will and kill them first. Minimize the risk of it happening, right? Other human beings too, come to think of it, without even regard to size. Wait, actually, that's a stupid, terrible idea. But it's the one your logic unavoidably leads to, as presented. Maybe that logic isn't quite so good, then. But if you want to stand by it, please go ahead and agree that we should just kill on sight anything that conceivably might kill us.

Levvy- let's try this logic. Arachnophobia is a real thing- an often uncalled for fear, but a real and uncontrollable fear nonetheless. The only way to cope with it is to educate oneself on spiders and potentially seek therapy. The OP is clearly afraid of spiders given the wording used in this post. If the killing of one arachnid that is hardly endangered can limit the OP's psychological stress, that's worth it. It seems you are unable to empathize with phobias. I myself am afraid of spiders, dogs, and many humans. How do I cope? I had a pet tarantula I grew to adore. I still squash the Woodlouse spiders in my basement because although they're harmless to me, they can deliver a painful bite and are a potential danger to my cat. My fear of dogs? I carry pepper spray in case of an attack. For dangerous humans I've studied self defense and Taekwondo. I might also remind you that dogs that attack and kill are usually put down; and humans who attack or kill are locked in prison or given the death sentence; depending on their state laws and the charges against them. There's also a few other factors regarding the Sydney Funnel Web Spiders that you've not mentioned. Though they're not typically aggressive- they will defend themselves if necessary with potent and often multiple bites. If bitten on the abdomen rather than a limb; the venom can spread much faster. Even before seeking medical attention and having the antivenin administered- a bite capable of piercing a fingernail can be quite painful and traumatic. Like the venom of many other spiders, symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, and muscle spasms are very painful even with a low risk of death. Any human being can have a random yet life threatening allergic reaction to any given spider bite; though that risk is low. Lastly; any animal bite poses a risk of infection. What were those spiders fangs hunting before they bit a human? No human bloodstream needs extra and unnecessary bacteria if the person can help it. Even in low risk situations, my main point is that it is always better to be safe than sorry. If a spider has the right to defend itself- so does a human. It is a given human right to defend oneself in any dangerous situation. Your personal love of arachnids does not authorize you to step on that right. Your logic is not enough to rid the world of arachnophobia- a phobia that is theorized to have developed throughout human evolution due to the fact that many spiders are dangerous to humans and that antivenin/antivenin has only recently been developed. People have the right to feel fear, and they have the right to defend themselves and take preventative measures to ensure their safety. If your logic can't grasp that, you might consider dropping your research of arachnids long enough to take a crash course on basic human psychology.

Literally not a single point you've raised in your entire post actually demonstrates what's different between my example and yours. The closest thing was saying that dogs and humans who kill are "usually put down". But we're not talking about animals that already killed. We're talking about animals who theoretically might attack in an incredibly thin band of circumstances and in an incredibly thin band of sub-circumstances within that (which, as explained above, is likely not even in play here) might kill someone. That's a category literally every sufficiently large dog falls into. In fact, every single point you raise that makes spiders dangerous (aside from some scary verbiage about envenomation, which boils down to "it hurts" - like, well, a dog bite) is still equally applicable to dogs (even in your own words, like "any animal bite") - if not even MORESO, in the case of factors like infection. Spiders aren't generally fecalvores. Dogs often are. This does not exactly help establish what makes them less dangerous. The hard and fast data is that dogs kill more people per year. I don't think that means we should kill them on sight - but I'm not the one saying the risk of even pain or distress justifies killing something. You haven't given one single reason why what I proposed is not the unavoidable logical outcome of your reasoning. The situation I've proposed (that you should kill dogs on sight) is 100% in line with every single facet of the logic you've put forward. So if you really favor this approach, you should have no trouble whatsoever stating that we should do that. Instead, you spent three whole paragraphs dancing around it, when you weren't accidentally reaffirming it. Either it's acceptable to kill anything that could potentially kill you, or it's not. Own up to your own argument and the "right to defend oneself/feel fear" and pick one. You said it yourself. It's always - and you said always - better to be safe than sorry. I sympathize with phobias. If someone with a clown phobia decided to murder one, that sympathy would vanish. Not that it matters, but evidence actually stands quite contrary to the argument that arachnophobia is evolutionary. Research has indicated it's culture-bound, not universal, let alone biological. Not only that, but it can be cured in a mere two hours of therapy, which doesn't sound like most evolutionary imperatives I know of. Entirely beside the point, but I see that erroneous chestnut of "It's biological! We can't help it!" dragged out too often. For a starting point, you can try G.C. Davey's "The Role of Disease and Illness in the Perpetuation of Fear of Spiders", and the Association for Psychological Science's "People aren't born afraid of spiders and snakes: Fear is quickly learned during infancy". (Oh, hey, it's that topic you assumed I wasn't reading about!) Of course, most phobias aren't biological either. They're a disorder. It's unfortunate, and people need help with it. It doesn't render them unaccountable for their behavior. If someone with a phobia of dogs was caught poisoning strays, they'd be rightly looked at as a dangerous lunatic. In the end, whether I'm curing anyone's phobias is irrelevant. All I'm doing is calling out senseless behavior and bad logic. I'll leave phobia curing to actual therapists, and two hours of the patients' time.

My original comment is summed up as nothing more than "be cautious, be safe, and be careful". Yet you seemed to feel the need to attack my caring about the safety of another human being on a comment that was hardly offensive to anyone but you. I don't believe you are capable of sympathy or empathy, because the only thing I've learned from your comments that I didn't already know is that you feel that only your opinion and your logic matters. Through your passive aggressiveness your severe narcissism and superiority complex shines through quite brightly. Aside from your comments on this FML, nearly all the comments agree that Australian spiders are dangerous-and the rest are on neutral territory. I'm through having you attack my logic with irrelevant hypothetical situations when the situation I was referencing was exactly relevant to the FML. My behavior is not senseless, and my logic is only "bad" in your personal opinion. Since I have a life to get back to, I'll study more on the theories of the origin of arachnophobia when I'm done studying my Orcas. That is worth learning about and I'm actually intrigued- but I'm not going to attempt to learn anything from someone hellbent on an online battle due to their love of spiders- especially considering that only one other person over on page 2 agrees with you. I understand now that in your eyes, only your logic is correct and relevant; that I deserve to be verbally and intellectually attacked and interrogated for trying to keep someone safe, and that you must have the last word in order to sleep at night. I expect that last word to be "Goodbye" so you can go back to work as an arachnologist and get on with your life. I'll be getting on with mine now, because I have better things to do than talk to a thick skulled online persona with an irregularly functioning anterior insular cortex. Goodbye!