Indigenous to Australia [of course]
they belong to the Araneida family of orb-weavers, which do wield venom, but it’s not particularly dangerous to humans.
The genus contains 17 species known for their abilities to blend
seamlessly into their surroundings. During the day they wrap themselves
around twigs or flatten themselves against tree bark.
At night they become active, spinning webs between trees.
spiders will pull their own legs clean off if they get damaged because most of them can regrow legs during molting, which explains why you often see spiders missing a leg but never any missing half a leg?
some remarkably distressing scientists proved this by getting a spider to pull off all of its legs and then feeding its limbless torso for months until it sprouted a full complement of legs again and then hopefully used them to get the fuck out of dodge
baby spiders don’t get lenses until their first molt and before that they just have baby eyes and while this ought not to be any weirder than the concept of baby teeth, welp,
there are so many spiders floating around thousands of metres up in the air that they’re described as “aerial plankton”
The Sky Is Full Of Spiders
there are spider-parasitising spiders but instead of laying eggs in organs or stealing blood or anything like that they just ride on top of bigger spiders and steal snacks when their mighty steed is eating
there are ant-mimicking spiders that use their disguises to raid ant nests and w/e but there are also ant mimics that just. hang out. they make fake ant colonies full of fake ants. sometimes the actual ants that they’re mimicking find their house and live with them. stealth 100
some mother spiders live in communal family nests, where multiple mothers can work together to bring down bigger prey while all their collected babies are cared for by the babysitters
some mother spiders feed their babies mouth to mouth like birds
some mother spiders carry their babies around and i was aware of this but not the fact that if you steal their eggsac they’ll freak out and search for it for hours and sometimes end up adopting anything that’s vaguely the right size, they will carry around empty snail shells for weeks and lovingly dote on them…
guys i am literally about to cry over spider moms
i borrowed the book op cites from the library (biology of spiders by rainer f. foelix) because of this post and my two favourite new spider facts are
-they don’t just have an exoskeleton – they also have a secret partial inside skeleton
and
-you know the guy who gave spiders drugs and took pictures of their fucked up webs? he ended up studying them because his buddy was studying garden spiders and they spin webs at 2-5 am and his buddy was like, Ugh, fuck this, i want to sleep in, do you have anything i can give these spiders to make them spin webs at not two in the morning -and this guy, A Pharmacologist, was like, hell yea, here are some amphetamines for your spiders -and all those did was make the spiders spin some exceptionally weird webs at 2-5am -and i guess his buddy gave up in disgust at these spiders who wouldn’t let him sleep but mr. spider amphetamines was like, you know what, this is cool, i’m gonna keep going with this
real talk why do so many fantasy universes think giant spiders are necessary
The sad part is there’s a decent chance a large proportion of them can be blamed on one spider.
The tarantula that bit JRR Tolkien as a child.
He swore he didn’t have a spider phobia and the experience had nothing to do with the man-eating giant spiders in The Hobbit, the even more giant and even more man-eating spider in Lord of the Rings, or the unholy eldritch spider from outside creation that plunged the world into darkness and made literal Satan scream like a little kid in the Silmarillion. Very few people believe him.
Given LotR’s influence in the fantasy genre, there is a high probability that tarantula is the progenitor of even more fictional spiders than Ungoliant was.
wow fuck that one tarantula
“fantasy universes have too many spiders” factoid actually just statistical error. Georgs Spider, who bit JRR Tolkein & is to blame for menacing over 10,000 fantasy universes, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
I’m not someone who believes in ghosts, but I was sitting in my room, alone and in the dark, and I heard the strings of my violin being softly plucked.
My violin is hanging on the wall several feet away.
So I gathered my courage, grabbed my phone, and used the camera light to investigate.
And found this.
A goddamn spider was playing my violin. Not even joking. The little shit.
I think I’d have preferred a ghost….
So anyway…. *tiny incoherent cough exhumes from spider* Here’s Wonderwall.
bwa ha ha ha
I hesitated before posting, but I bet I know what’s going on here. The plucking was pretty rhythmic, right?
Male spiders pluck the webs of female spiders in a pattern to determine if the female is interested.
That spider was trying to mate with your violin…
Ahh so it’s a boy(I just assume every insect I see is a girl) that’s such a cute mating ritual!
He just wants love!
The behavior would indicate that it is a male. Only females weave webs. Male spiders have to be careful not to be mistaken for prey and eaten, so they pluck the web. Poor thing didn’t exactly get any this time!
Poor spider thinking “Damn this web was made by a strong spider, a real awesome spider, can I possibly get with this boss ass spider??”
poor little hyperion, dreaming of the moon
Male spiders still make webs… that’s how they catch their food…
Maybe they’re thinking of the fact once mature, male spiders tend to leave their webs and set out on a search for romance?
But yeah I’d guess as the violin strings are not the right thickness, material or scent as webbing, it’s probably just that it’s a right fat wee spider and also violin strings make a noise at the tiniest vibration.
That’s an orb weaver too and they tend to be pretty clumsy when off their webs.
