Originally Posted by
artme
As kids we - my three brothers and I - had little fear of Redbacks. We had calloused hands from doing the sorts of things feral boys do.
A favourite trick was to get two fat female Redbacks, go up to a new lady teacher and say "Look miss". spiders were then tipped onto the palmsand the two spiders stirred to attack each other. Great fun!!
Redbacks are not actually native to Australia. They are a localized mutant of the Black Widow from North America. Some cousins, the Brown Widows have also reached our shores andcross bred with the Redback. The resultant cross is apparently even more toxic than the parents.