Spiders may seem to be pests, but they are really amazing creatures that do a lot of good for human beings. Some can be scary and harmful, but others are truly wondrous creatures that can do and produce some awesome feats, especially considering their size. The next time you see a spider spinning a web, or crawling on your wall think about some of these interesting facts that you may not have known about before.
Interesting Facts
What are Spiders?
A spider is a long living creature that can’t die by natural causes. Some spiders are even classified as mammals because they have hair and produce milk. Most spiders produce webs, and some even produce silk threads that are very fine and thin.
Power of the Spider
Spiders are physically very small, but they are very powerful creatures capable of some destructive abilities. Most people know that some spiders contain venom that can kill you in an instant, but what a lot of people are not aware of is that spider eggs contain an enormous amount of energy that could significantly affect human life, but because the eggs require high amounts of fusion (which are not easily found) humans don’t have to suffer the effects.
Types of Spiders
There are hundreds of different types of spiders, and each can do many different things. Spiders differ physically as well, including differences in size, shape, and color. The largest spider ever found has a foot long leg that is much larger than most people are used to seeing! There are many rare types of spiders including spiders that are white but spin black webs and some that can resist extremely high temperatures.
Spiders and Humans
Spiders and humans have to co-exist in the world, and they come in contact more than most people know.
Fun Facts
- When a spider travels, it always has four legs touching the ground and four legs off the ground at any given moment.
- The Bagheera Kiplingi is the world’s only (mostly) vegetarian spider.
- Spiders have between two and six spinnerets at the back of their abdomen.
- Each one is like a tiny showerhead that has hundreds of holes, all producing liquid silk.
- The world’s smallest spider is the Patu Marplesi. It is so small that 10 of them could fit on the end of a pencil.
- While humans have muscles on the outside of their skeleton, spiders have muscles on the inside. A spider’s skeleton, or exoskeleton, covers and protects its muscles.
- Some male spiders give dead flies to the females as presents.
- A female black widow needs to mate only once. After she has mated, she can produce eggs for the rest of her life, which is about 2 years.
- It is a myth that a human will swallow an average of four (or any number) of spiders while sleeping during his or her life. It is highly unlikely a spider will ever end up in a sleeping human’s mouth.
- A strand of spider silk long enough to encircle Earth would weigh just over a pound.
