Hobo Spider Identification: Chevrons, Range & Bite Risk

Hobo spider identification, quick visual answer

Start with the honest version, because it saves you a lot of squinting. Nobody can confirm a hobo spider by eye, and that includes the people who study them. What a naked-eye check gives you is a shortlist, not a name. Four signs build that shortlist, and they only mean anything together.

• Size. The body runs roughly 7 to 14 mm, with a leg span of 28 to 45 mm. That is somewhere between a pencil eraser and a US quarter. Anything much bigger is a giant house spider or a wolf spider.
• Colour. An even, muted brown. No bright bands, no stripes, no two-tone contrast.
• Chevron. A row of light V-shapes down the top of the abdomen, pointing forward. Useful, but far weaker evidence than most guides claim. See the section below.
• Web. A flat horizontal sheet ending in a small tubular funnel at one corner.

For an overview of every common US house spider with comparison diagrams, see our spider identifier hub.

One check does earn its keep, and it is the one that matters medically. Count the eyes. Hobos have eight, in two close rows. Brown recluses have six, in three separated pairs. So a chevron-backed spider with eight eyes in a Pacific Northwest basement is a hobo or one of its close cousins, and either way it is harmless. A plain tan spider with six eyes in the south-central US is a different conversation, and our brown recluse identification guide covers it.

Why almost nobody can identify a hobo spider by eye

This section exists because most hobo spider guides, including an earlier version of this one, oversell what you can tell from looking. The specialists are blunt about it, so we will be too.

The chevron is not proof

Rod Crawford curates arachnology at the Burke Museum in Seattle, in the middle of hobo country. His verdict on the famous chevron is short. The pattern is real, and it is worthless for identification. Thousands of spider species carry chevrons, so the mark says almost nothing on its own. Worse, it is inconsistent within the species itself. Some hobos show a strong chevron, some a faint one, and some none at all.

The same goes for two other signs people lean on. A funnel web marks the whole family Agelenidae, not one species. And the swollen “boxing glove” palps that get pointed at in photographs belong to every adult male spider on Earth. Neither narrows anything down.

What a real identification takes

Confirming Eratigena agrestis takes a microscope. You have to examine the reproductive parts: the epigynum on a female, or the palpal bulb on a male. Nothing else settles it, because about 200 species in the region look alike to the naked eye. Crawford notes that whole-body photos are no use for identification, which is worth knowing before you post one and wait for an answer.

Utah State University Extension lists the other features a specialist checks, and the list shows how fine the distinctions get. A specialist looks for plumose setae, meaning feathery hairs on the legs. Then comes the exact eye layout, followed by a count of the teeth on the cheliceral retromargin, where a hobo carries six to eight. Last is the male palp, which has two prongs in a hobo and one in its near relatives.

That is the whole argument of this page in three lines. You probably cannot name it. You do not need to. The rest of this guide covers what the spider actually does, and how the scare that made the name matter got started and then collapsed.

The 1987–2017 hobo spider scare and CDC reversal

No US spider has had a stranger swing in reputation than the hobo. For three decades it sat alongside the brown recluse and the black widow on the CDC’s short list of medically significant species. Public health pamphlets in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho warned residents about necrotic ulcers. By 2017, the CDC quietly removed the hobo from that list. Newer state extension fact sheets followed. That arc is unusual enough to be worth telling in full, because it shapes what current guidance actually says.

It all started in 1987. The late Darwin Vest published case reports arguing that hobo spider bites could cause skin wounds with dying tissue, much like a brown recluse bite. His reports ran only in a regional journal, but doctors across the Pacific Northwest picked them up quickly, and they soon reached medical training materials. Then the CDC added the hobo to its list of medically significant spiders. For most of the 1990s and 2000s, a worsening skin wound in Seattle, Portland or Boise was a believable reason for an emergency doctor to suspect a hobo bite, even when no one ever saw a spider.

How the claim fell apart

Trouble started when other researchers tried to repeat the original work. Rick Vetter at UC Riverside went back through the case reports, and Greta Binford studied the venom chemistry. In 2004, Bennett and Vetter published a widely cited review in Canadian Family Physician. Three problems kept coming up. The original reports rarely had a confirmed spider, so most patients had only a skin wound and a story. Lab tests on standard animal models could not reproduce the tissue death (necrosis). And hobo venom held nothing like sphingomyelinase D, the enzyme behind recluse wounds. With no mechanism and no repeatable wounds, the claim looked weaker and weaker. Many 1990s wounds blamed on hobos have since been reclassified as MRSA, fungal infections, vasculitis or other skin conditions.

What the 2017 reversal actually said

The 2017 CDC update arrived quietly. There was no press release and no policy paper. The hobo spider was simply taken off the list of venomous arthropods. That quietness is the point. No one discovered that hobo spiders are safe. Evidence for the 1987 claim just failed to turn up, year after year, until nothing was left holding it up. For Pacific Northwest homeowners, a hobo bite is now treated much like a bee sting. It can be uncomfortable and a little inflamed, but it is not life-threatening, and it does not call for the detailed first aid used for confirmed recluse bites.

Hobo spider anatomy

Hobo spider anatomy is typical of the funnel weavers, a body plan it shares with the giant house spider, the grass spider and several smaller European cousins. The features below are what to look for in a phone photo or under a hand lens. Most of them are visible from above, which is the view you get when the spider is on the floor or at the bottom of a window well.

Two body features trip people up most often: the chevron pattern and the eye rows. The chevron is a row of pale arrowheads down the top of the abdomen, pointing forward toward the head. It is clear on a fresh adult. On a faded or older spider it can almost vanish, leaving a plain brown abdomen that looks more like a sac spider. The eight eyes sit in two roughly equal rows near the front of the head. Most mistakes come from never checking the eye count. A zoomed-in phone photo settles it in seconds and rules out a brown recluse, which has six eyes.

Hobo spider web, the funnel

The web is the hobo spider feature most homeowners actually see. It is a flat sheet of silk, usually 20–60 cm across, with a small tube-shaped funnel tucked into one corner. The sheet is not sticky. It catches prey through vibration: when a beetle, fly or sowbug walks across it, the spider feels the movement, sprints out of the funnel, grabs the prey and drags it back inside to feed. Close relatives like the giant house spider and the grass spider build the same kind of web and hunt the same way. That is part of why they get confused with hobos so often.

Indoors, hobo webs sit low. Look at the base of basement walls, the bottom of window wells, behind appliances, along the floor edges of a garage, and in any storage corner with dust on the floor and no foot traffic. Outdoors they turn up in woodpiles, under decks, in cracks in retaining walls and in low ground cover. The webs are easiest to see at dawn, when dew turns the sheets bright white against a dark background. Some Pacific Northwest entomologists even survey hobos by counting the glowing sheets on lawns early in the morning.

A useful rule: any flat horizontal sheet with a small funnel at one corner is an agelenid web. In the Pacific Northwest, the candidates are hobo spider, giant house spider, and grass spider. The species checks below tell you which.

Hobo spider behavior

Hobo spiders sit and wait, then sprint. Most of the time the spider rests at the mouth of its funnel with its front legs touching the sheet. When prey lands on the sheet, the shaking travels through the silk to the spider. It races out in a straight line, grabs the prey and drags it back into the funnel, all in a second or two. Outside of hunting, hobos save energy. They spend most of their lives within a few centimeters of their funnel and leave a web only when it is beyond repair.

Two behaviors cause most of the “hobo in my house” reports. The first is the late-summer male wander. In August and September, adult males leave their webs and roam widely, looking for females. They are fast and stay at ground level, and they end up indoors more in these two months than at any other time. A spider racing across a wood floor in late summer in Seattle is most likely a wandering male hobo or giant house spider. The second is bathtub stranding. These spiders fall into smooth tubs and sinks overnight and cannot climb out. By morning the spider sits at the bottom of the tub, tired and easy to scoop into a jar.

Hobos are also fast on the ground, about 30 cm per second in short bursts, which is why people frequently mistake them for wolf spiders. Both run; wolf spiders are larger, hairier, and don’t use webs at all. Both species avoid humans, neither chases or jumps, and both flee disturbance rather than confront it.

Hobo spider life cycle

Hobo spiders live 1–2 years. The cycle runs roughly in step with the Pacific Northwest seasons. Egg sacs are produced in late summer and fall, flat, papery, lens-shaped disks containing 50–100 eggs each, attached to a substrate near the maternal web. The female guards the sac through fall, then dies as temperatures drop. Spiderlings hatch in spring, disperse over a few meters from the sac, and start building small sheet webs in low ground cover. Most spiderlings never reach adulthood, weather, predators, and competition thin them aggressively in the first summer.

Spiderlings that survive molt several times over their first summer and fall, gaining the chevron as they grow. A female is adult by her second summer, about a year after hatching. She may then live another year and lay one or more egg sacs. Males grow up a little sooner. They leave their webs in late summer to look for mates and seldom live through a second winter. This late-summer wandering is when most indoor hobo sightings happen, and when most recorded hobo bites occur. Wandering males are the ones that end up in shoes, gloves and bedding.

Where hobo spiders live, Pacific Northwest geography

The hobo spider comes from Europe. Across most of that continent it lives in fields, hedgerows and against buildings, and nobody there thinks much of it. Shipping almost certainly brought it to Seattle in the 1930s, and the earliest confirmed Pacific Northwest specimens date to about 1936. Over the following decades it spread inland and south, riding cargo along railways and highways. Today its established North American range covers most of Washington, Oregon and Idaho, western Montana, and parts of Utah, Wyoming and southern British Columbia. Outside that range there are essentially no breeding populations.

Those state lists come from surveys published by Washington State University, Oregon State, the University of Idaho, UC Riverside and the American Arachnological Society. The upshot is simple. Outside the Pacific Northwest, a spider that looks like a hobo is nearly always something else. Usually it is a grass spider (genus Agelenopsis), from the same family, with a similar web and similar colors. Two bold dark stripes on the front body section give it away, along with longer spinnerets.

Hobo spider invasion biology, and the giant house spider

The hobo is an invasive species in North America, and it is now being invaded right back. From the late 1990s, the giant house spider began spreading through the Pacific Northwest. That spider is another European cousin, and a close one. Field surveys in Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver BC have since recorded hobo numbers falling in homes where giant house spiders are common. The two species share the same indoor harborage, the same funnel-web architecture, and the same prey base. The giant house spider is larger and apparently outcompetes the hobo for those resources. In some PNW homes, the “hobo problem” of the 1990s has become a giant-house-spider problem in the 2020s.

The irony is hard to miss. For thirty years, public-health messaging treated the hobo as a serious medical threat, and during the same period, a harmless larger cousin quietly displaced it in the very homes the public was worried about. Both species are now confirmed to be largely harmless. The giant house spider was never on a venomous-spider list. The hobo came off in 2017. Pacific Northwest residents who used to fear hobos in their basements are now finding either smaller numbers of hobos, larger numbers of giant house spiders, or both. Neither needs to be feared, and removing them tends to make harborage available for the next colonist. Sealing gaps and reducing clutter works better than killing.

Hobos share those basements and bathtubs with several other spiders. For the ones you are most likely to meet alongside them, see our guides to cellar spiders, house spiders, and jumping spiders.

Hobo spider vs brown recluse

The most common hobo spider mix-up is with the brown recluse. Both are medium-sized, tan-brown spiders, both can turn up indoors, and both have been on venomous spider lists at some point. But their ranges barely overlap, they have different numbers of eyes, and they build very different webs. The table below covers the differences that matter in the field.

Geography settles most cases on its own. In the Pacific Northwest, a chevron-backed spider with eight eyes is a hobo or a giant house spider, almost never a recluse, because brown recluses are not established in WA, OR, ID or BC. In the south-central US, a plain tan spider with six eyes and a violin mark is almost always a recluse. For a deeper field guide to recluses, including how the six eyes sit in pairs and what the violin looks like, see our brown recluse identification guide.

Hobo spider vs giant house spider (Eratigena atrica)

The giant house spider is the hobo’s closest look-alike in North America, and the overlap is almost total. Both belong to the genus Eratigena and the family Agelenidae. Both build the same funnel web, and both live across the same Pacific Northwest range, often in the same basement. So most “hobo spider” sightings in the region are really this spider. Its species name, atrica, means dark, and that fits: giant house spiders are larger, darker and more boldly marked than hobos.

Both species are now considered harmless, so telling them apart is more about curiosity than safety. Usually, a quick size check settles it. A body longer than 13 mm with bold banded legs means a giant house spider. A body of 7–14 mm with plain brown legs and a fainter chevron means a hobo. Both respond to the same steps: the vacuuming, sealing and decluttering that cut hobo numbers also cut giant house spiders.

Hobo spider vs grass spider (Agelenopsis)

The grass spider is the third funnel-weaver look-alike. It shares the family Agelenidae with the hobo but belongs to a different genus, Agelenopsis. It also covers far more of North America, including most of the Midwest, the South and the East Coast. So outside the Pacific Northwest, a funnel web with a chevron-marked spider in it is almost certainly a grass spider.

The fastest tell is spinneret length. Grass spiders have very long, finger-like spinnerets that stick out clearly behind the abdomen, visible in most photos without a hand lens. Hobo spinnerets are shorter and harder to see. The second tell is habitat: grass spiders live outdoors on lawns, while hobos live indoors and in ground cover. Add the stripes on the front body section, and the two are easy to separate even in a blurry phone photo.

Other hobo spider look-alikes

Three species cause most of the confusion, and we have covered them above. Several others still get called “hobo” in Pacific Northwest homes, though. The table below lists the ones that turn up most often in reader identification requests.

Here is a useful rule of thumb. A spider with a bright two-tone body, banded legs, only six eyes, or a body longer than 18 mm is not a hobo. A hobo has even brown color, a chevron pattern, eight eyes in two rows and a flat sheet-and-funnel web. That mix is easy to recognize once you know the field marks.

Hobo spider venom, what we know now

Before 2017, hobo venom was often called “potentially necrotic.” That label rested almost entirely on the 1987 Vest case reports. Then chemists looked properly. Greta Binford and colleagues studied hobo venom through the 2000s and 2010s, and what they found was an absence. Hobo venom holds no enzyme like the recluse’s sphingomyelinase D. It carries no flesh-destroying toxin at all, and nothing in it could cause the slow ulcers people blamed on it. Animal tests agreed, failing again and again to produce tissue death. Independent reviews said the same. The widely cited 2004 Bennett and Vetter paper in Canadian Family Physician concluded that the 1987 case links did not hold up.

What the venom actually does

Experts now agree that hobo venom does very little to people. A bite is much like a bee sting: a brief sharp pain, a small bump, some redness and a short-lived itch. Most of it clears within hours, or a few days at worst. Nothing like systemic loxoscelism, the whole-body illness that can follow a bad recluse bite, has ever been recorded. The change in public health advice, including the 2017 CDC list update, followed the venom science, not the other way around. To see how bite information changes over time, and how proven bites differ from folklore, see our bug bite identification guide.

What to do if a hobo spider bites you

The risk is far lower than once thought, but a hobo spider bite is still a bite, and any bug bite deserves basic first aid. Below are the steps to take if you suspect a hobo bite. The good news: you do not need the detailed routine used for confirmed recluse bites, with cool compresses and photos every six hours. Standard wound care is enough in almost every case.

1. Wash the bite with soap and water. A gentle rinse reduces secondary infection risk. Don’t scrub.
2. Apply a cool compress for 10–15 minutes. A wrapped ice pack reduces local swelling and itching. Repeat every couple of hours for the first day if needed.
3. Elevate the area if it’s on a limb. Elevation reduces swelling. Prop the arm or leg on pillows for the first few hours.
4. Take an over-the-counter antihistamine for itching. Diphenhydramine or cetirizine can calm the itch. Acetaminophen or ibuprofen can help with pain.
5. Monitor for 48 hours. Most hobo bites fade noticeably within a day or two. Lesions that keep expanding, darken centrally, blister widely, or come with fever or chills should be evaluated by a doctor, but in most cases the cause turns out to be something other than the spider.
6. Photograph the bite and the spider if possible. A clear top-down photo helps a clinician evaluate later. Don’t risk a second bite trying to capture a live spider.

Pest control disclaimer. Photo-based identification can help, but it is not always perfect. For dangerous spiders, large infestations, or anything you are unsure about, contact a licensed pest control professional.

Why the old advice still sticks

That reassurance matters. Three decades of scare messages taught Pacific Northwest residents to treat any small spider bite as an emergency, and current evidence does not support that worry. Ordinary bug bite care is enough: clean it, keep an eye on it, and see a doctor only if it gets worse. To compare it with other bites, such as mosquito, flea, mite or bed bug bites, see our bug bite identification guide.

Hobo spider myths debunked

More myths follow the hobo spider than almost any other US species, and the 1987 to 2017 scare is why. Below are the ones that keep coming back, each with the evidence against it. Meet a hobo claim that is not on this list? Check it against a recent extension fact sheet from Washington State University, Oregon State, or UC Riverside. Those are what working entomologists actually use.

• Myth 1

  Myth: “Hobo spiders cause necrotic flesh wounds like brown recluses.”

  Truth: False, and the CDC agrees. Repeated lab studies could not reproduce the 1987 findings of tissue death. Hobo venom has no sphingomyelinase D, the recluse's flesh-destroying enzyme, and the CDC removed the hobo from its venomous spider list in 2017.

• Myth 2

  Myth: “Hobo spiders are aggressive and chase people.”

  Truth: False. The scientific name agrestis is Latin for 'of the field' or 'rustic', not 'aggressive.' The bad-tempered reputation comes from a mistranslation. Hobos run away when disturbed, not toward you.

• Myth 3

  Myth: “Hobo spiders jump at human faces.”

  Truth: False. Hobos are funnel weavers built to sprint short distances across a horizontal sheet. They do not leap upward, do not target faces, and do not display threat postures. They flee disturbance.

• Myth 4

  Myth: “Every brown spider in a Northwest basement is a hobo.”

  Truth: False. The most common 'hobo' in Pacific Northwest homes is actually the giant house spider (Eratigena atrica), a close cousin that is even larger and also harmless. Wolf spiders, cellar spiders and grass spiders also turn up indoors regularly.

• Myth 5

  Myth: “One hobo bite can kill a child or a pet.”

  Truth: False. Modern medical journals record no confirmed hobo spider deaths. Experts now treat a hobo bite much like a bee sting. It can be uncomfortable and a little inflamed, but it is not life-threatening.

• Myth 6

  Myth: “Hobo spiders live only in the Pacific Northwest.”

  Truth: Partly false. They are firmly settled in the Pacific Northwest, but they are also native and widespread across Europe, where they have lived in fields and gardens for thousands of years. The 'Northwest only' idea comes from how rare they are elsewhere in North America.

• Myth 7

  Myth: “Killing every hobo you see is the right thing to do.”

  Truth: False. Hobos eat other indoor pests. The giant house spider competes with them and seems to push hobos out in some areas. Moving spiders outdoors and removing their hiding places work better than panic spraying.

• Myth 8

  Myth: “If you see one hobo, your house is infested.”

  Truth: Exaggerated. Hobo numbers vary widely. In the Pacific Northwest, a single male wandering in late summer is normal, because adult males roam looking for mates. A real infestation shows several sheet webs in basement corners in one inspection.

Hobo spider prevention in the home

Hobo prevention comes down to one idea. Funnel weavers need shelter: cracks, voids and clutter. Take that away and the population falls on its own. Surface sprays rarely fix a hobo problem, because the spider lives inside the voids, not on the open walls where the spray lands. The steps below follow what the Washington State University and Oregon State University extension fact sheets recommend.

Not sure it is a hobo spider at all? The bug identifier tool takes a phone photo and returns a best guess in seconds.