Talk:Spider

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Talk page for the article on spiders

Archives: Talk:Spider/Archive 1

If you want to identify a spider, and preferably have a picture, please check out Wikipedia:WikiProject Spiders/Undetermined pictures.

Contents

[edit] Please add at bottom

Please add new materials at the bottom of this page.

[edit] flims and popular culture

i am a spider lover,though i dont know the different familes of spiders,i have a min spider farm in my garden.i want somebody to write about the many films that have featured spiders.well most english films have shown spiders to be horrifying characters which when grown eat human beings and crap like that. it is real fun to even see the trailors of such movies,especially the black and white ones.--Jayanthv86 19:51, 18 January 2006 (UTC) so please message me and tell me what you think on User_talk:Jayanthv86

This article is already getting too long, and has been cut back a couple times before, but it might be good to have a related article on "spiders and art" since spiders have been featured in folk stories, legends, and myths all over the world, dances have been linked to spiders (see tarantella), they have featured in folk songs ("There was an old lady who swallowed a fly...") and in poems ("Little Miss Muffet...", which actually has a connection to a real person whose father used spider webs to speed coagulation of bleeding wounds), I think spiders are used in the designs of some traditional woven rugs, etc., etc. The intersection of fascination with webs, fear of bites, morbid interest in females who eat their mates, etc., etc. has produced many human-centered reverberations in the sphere of culture. P0M 05:45, 21 January 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Recent blanking/moving of an entire section

A user called "Georgia guy" has blanked a section and moved its contents (?) to a new article. Making such major changes without prior discussion is disruptive. Please discuss major changes beforehand. I have reverted the article. P0M 21:49, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

The article itself is 42KB with it in the article. The Types of spiders section is large enough for its own article, and what real reason is there for it to be all in one article?? Georgia guy 22:29, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Let's see what other people think about reorganizing this article. Not long ago a number of other fairly large changes were made, but I don't think we've really outlined the article or thought about what the general reader is most interested in. P0M 22:38, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reorganize the article? Shorten the article?

The article currently is arranged as follows:

1 Morphology and development

o 1.1 Respiration and circulation
o 1.2 Vision
o 1.3 Defense

2 Life cycle 3 Reproduction

o 3.1 Do female spiders eat their mates?

4 Ecology

o 4.1 Predatory techniques
o 4.2 Spider webs and prey capture

5 Types of spiders and the severity of their bites

o 5.1 Tangleweb spiders (Theridiidae)
o 5.2 Orb web spiders (Araneidae)
o 5.3 Other forms of webs
o 5.4 Hunting spiders
o 5.5 Spiders that ambush their prey
o 5.6 Others

6 Spider bites

o 6.1 Black widows
o 6.2 Brown recluse spiders and hobo spiders
o 6.3 Huntsman spiders
o 6.4 Redback jumping spiders
o 6.5 Brazilian wandering spiders and Australian venomous funnel-web spiders

7 Taxonomy 8 Symbolism 9 Spiders in Films and popular culture 10 See also 11 References 12 External links

Is seems a bit strange that section one (morphology and development) mentions "defense" but not obtaining its food. Also, it does not appear to have any subsection devoted to the general characteristics that differentiate spiders from insects, etc. The section on reproduction mentions the frequently asked question whether spiders eat their mates, but it doesn't have a subsection on the ways that spiders distinguish potential mates from spiders of the wrong species and from wasps and other creatures. The section on "Ecology" includes subsections on predatory techniques and on webs and prey capture. But webs are predatory techniques, and prey capture is the result of using some predatory technique. Other forms of predatory techniques are not mentioned. The "types of spiders" section seems to be a bit "ad hoc." I think the original intent was to address the problem of identifying and describing the habits of some of the most commonly encountered spiders. The section on Taxonomy probably belongs here, but if the article has to be shortened it is that section I would move to another article (after fixing some of the other problems).

Judging by the questions that readers leave on this talk page, people most frequently look at the article on spiders to try to determine (1) What kind of spider is in my house/back yard? and (2) Is it dangerous? Before readers can answer that question,, they need to be able to determine whether what they have is actually a spider or not. The current diagram could be improved. There is a better diagram on the Commons. A good diagram would call attention to (1) spinerettes, (2) two-part body (vs. harvestmen with a one-part body and insects with a three-part body), Eight legs (which most people already know), pedipalps present but there are no antennae, chelicerae and venom production (in almost all spider species). Somw contrastive photos are probably needed to help readers distinguish between spiders and some other arthropods.

The thing that is most often useful in helping readers identify spiders is what the spiders were doing when they were found. Dividing webs into (1)orb (2) tangle webes (cob webs) and (3) sheet and funnel webs can be useful, and those kinds of webs are also found in characteristic places. Knowing that spiders that make orb webs never have medically significant venom can be reassuring to people. Knowing that spiders that make tangle webs in and under overturned boxes and similar places may have medically significant venom can caution people to avoid unintended contact with them. Knowing that some spiders that make funnel-shaped webs can be dangerous is also important to point out. Spiders that wander around the home looking for mates are the next group that should be identified and discussed, since a couple of N. American problem biters belong to this group, not to mention some species in S. America. Venomous and non-venomous funnel web dwellers need to be distinguished.

For the general reader, it may be enough to know that something under their back porch either is or is not likely to be a widow spider or a brown recluse. They may be content to be able to divide spiders according to their main hunting methods, and then to distinguish real problems from spiders they have no need to fear. Since more and more people are buying tarantulas as pets or display animals, we probably need to add some information about those tarantulas that have extremely unpleasant venom, and that may bite anything that comes within their fight or flight zone.

What other features would make this article better? P0M 08:08, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Spider bites seems to belong in its own article. Such a move will also shorten the main spider article, which seems to be a bit long. Lejean2000 15:04, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Assassin Spiders!

I just learned about assassin spiders, but there doesn't seem to be any mention of them in WP. They probably deserve their own article. Anyone know anything about these? --Rschmertz 08:52, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I think you mean what some people call "pirate spiders," the Mimetidae. P0M 04:44, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm talking about the spider found here. If that is indeed the same as a pirate spider, the linked article doesn't do it justice in terms of the physical description. I question whether they really are the same thing. --Rschmertz 08:52, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
And here. --Rschmertz 09:29, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Wow. They are Archaeidae. I'm not sure how much is known about them. They are such incredible modifications of the ordinary spider body proportions that it would be difficult to give people any idea of what they look like without photos. Search for the Latin name in Google and you'll get some words but only a few unclear photos. P0M 11:09, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

See the article assassin spiders. There will be a very nice picture (in good resolution) on the page soon.

[edit] Spider bites, dangerousity

I think the sections 5 and 6 on spider bites should be relegated to their own article, and all the gratuitous references to a particular spider's "dangerous" and "very dangerous" and "not dangerous", being almost completely arbitrary and subjective, be deleted or moved to the "spider bites" article. Real encyclopedias do not pass judgement on each species reported at the title.

Please sign your postings with four tildes, (~~~~).
Sections 5, 6, and 7 seem to have grown up in a somewhat haphazard way, something that can happen with any Wikipedia article when many individuals make changes to it over a couple of year's time. It does look like the article needs some attention on this score.
The assertion that the information on the degree of danger associated with spider bites of various species is "arbitrary and subjective" is not true. On top of that, one of the most frequent questions from general readers to be entered on this discussion page is, "What is the spider in my basement/attic/back yard, and will it injure my child?" Running parallel to that reasonable question, there are sometimes confident-sounding assertions that certain spiders are dangerous and problematical that are given out in places like journals of dermatology but turn out not to have anything other than anecdotal information behind them. As for encyclopedias, the first article I checked on Wikipedia was this one, and the reason was that I had seen so much errant nonsense in an article on spiders in an inexpensive encyclopedia I purchased while in grad school, so I'm not too much inclined to go by whether other encyclopedias mention anything about the severity of envenomations. People need the information, so we should provide it and make sure it is right. Within arm's reach I have Kaston's How to Know the Spiders, and the "Golden Guide" Spiders and Their Kin, both of which provide information on the bites of spiders that produce medical problems. The website of the University of California at Riverside has useful information on envenomations. All of these sources are concerned to give objective information and counter misinformation that could make people tend toward a hysterical reaction to encounters with spiders.
I spent a couple of days last summer looking for information that would help rank the severity of bites. Perhaps it is time to retrace those searches.
One way of organizing information about the different kinds of spiders is to divide them up according to where they are likely to be found and what they are likely to be doing. One can sometimes give users reassurance, as by noting that no spiders that make orb webs are known to be problem biters. On the other hand, the article might serve readers better by pointing out that although many of the commercially available tarantulas are little inclined to bite and do not even give particularly painful bites, some of the tarantulas that are available on-line (and perhaps in some pet shops as well) can give extremely painful bites that would warrant medical intervention. Some dealers are up-front, clearly labeling these species as having very potent venom, and other dealers merely extoll their beauty, their being "good eaters," or whatever.
A similar way of organizing information about spiders is to divide them by hunting methods.
The hard spiders to give people useful information about are the Brown recluses. Many people are concerned lest they have them in their homes where they might give somebody a bad bite. But one of the things we are missing is a good picture of one of their nests. It wouldn't hurt to have a picture of the living arrangements of the Hobo spider too. The Widow spiders are easy to recognize, so the other two are more important for American readers to learn to recognize. We have good pictures of the Australian funnel-web spiders. (Somehow I can't imagine anybody living in their range not having already been warned about them.) We also have a good picture of the Brazillian Wandering Spider, It might be useful to readers outside the U.S. to have pictures of their lairs. Other than those few, and perhaps a warning to take care in selecting the species of one's first pet tarantula, I think the most important thing to do is to reassure readers that the others are not creatures that "need killing." P0M 03:28, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you; people want and need information on which spiders are dangerous, and what to expect from their bites, etc. But that information, voluminous enough for several articles, should be relegated to another page. Already this article is way too long. 22:29, 30 March 2006 (UTC) Don't know why four tildes don't show my user name Nickrz 22:30, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I've been working on an article, Spiders having medically significant venom, just as you have suggested. I've had some other things to do so I left it a little too loosely structured to suit me. One of the difficulties seems to be that different researchers measure things like the volume of venom that spiders have in different ways, so they come up with different numbers. I'm trying to make a table that will show the available info and then average the values somehow.
One of the advantages of linked files is that we could do things to help people locate the spiders that have entranced or alarmed them by arranging them in different ways, e.g., (I) found on (A) spiral web, (B) messy web, (C) funnel web..... (II) Predominant color (A)Red, (B) Green, (C) Brown, (D) Black... P0M 23:25, 30 March 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Redback jumping spiders

Can anyone bring cites for the assertions in this paragraph? Have those spiders pictured been positively identified as Phidippus johnsoni? They look suspiciously like P. clarus to me. Anyway, this text is the exact sort of hearsay crapola an encyclopedia does not need. "Most reports seem to be coming from California." Really? What reports? A what makes it "seem" that way? Reports of spider eggs in bubblegum seem to be coming from California, too, but we don't give credence to that old urban legend, do we? This text has got to go unless someone can bring the spotlight or credence and reason to bear.

There are sites on the internet where "dermatologists" have set up web pages insisting various spiders (usually jumping spiders commonly found about yards and gardens) are guilty of "defensive" biting - but such stories are almost certainly apochryphal, with ulterior motive. I loathe the fact we are repeating such tripe. Nickrz 22:50, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Please calm down a little. I personally do not find offensive language helpful.
As for the identifications, here is what G.B. Edwards had to say:

Hi Patrick,
I looked at your pictures. The specimen does look like P. johnsoni, although 16 mm is extremely large for this species, which makes me suspect it might be P. ardens. The best way to tell is to look at the epigynum. If it is broadly triangular with a distinct long median septum on the anterior end, it's P. johnsoni. If it has a deep rectangular depression toward the posterior end, just back of middle, it's P. ardens.
Best wishes,
GB

See his recent book, Revision of the Jumping Spiders of the Genus Phidippus, figures 323, 324 for ardens, 184, 185, and 187 for clarus, and 266-269 for johnsani.
I have several photographs of the epigynum. Unfortunately black on black is hard to make out. I would describe it as having nothing remotely like a rectangular depression, and several features that look either triangular or diamond-shaped. The front pair of legs of P. clarus are approximately half again as long as the next pair of legs, and many pictures of P. clarus display this characteristic quite well. The spider I have tentatively identified as P. johnsoni does not have this feature. P. ardens appears not to have the white stripe (shared by clarus and johnsoni) on the leading edge of the abdomen. The stripe of P. ardens is ordinarily much more noticeable than the one on my specimen. I got the spider from a dealer in Florida who identified it as P. ardens or P. johnsoni. P. clarus is common in Florida, but not in the south-west where this specimen was captured. The dealer is surely familiar with P. clarus.
I went through an on-line key, which I can relocate if necessary, and everything pointed to P. johnsoni except that the key thought spiders of that species should have a white spot on the abdomen near the cephalothoras. This spider has a pair of white spots near her the tail end. She has metallic green chelicerae (not uncommon), and rather feeble-looking pedipalps (a characteristic of johnsoni, from what Edward's photos show.)
As for P. clarus, they are smaller than P. johnsoni, and the spiders photographed are almost twice as large as P. clarus.
As for the rest of your criticisms, it is possible that some complaints about P. johnsoni come from somewhere other than California, but a rash of them came from there. I've played with various members of the Salticidae for over 50 years and have never seen an agressive one yet, so I was curious enough to try to trace this matter down. (I'm also in the market for more typical-looking P. johnsoni so I can be sure that they are all as easy to handle as this spider is.) I didn't want to outright contradict an M.D. or two who are getting articles published in professional journals, but I have corresponded with the specialists at the University of California at Riverside and anybody else I could think of who might have some experience in this area. I think I wrote the words you complain about before I had made the rounds of the Salticidae specialists. Probably I can strengthen those words if I can go back over old e-mails. I think there is a good reason for reassuring people when concern seems to be exaggerated. At the same time, nobody can prove a negative. It is possible that some people are getting bitten. At first I didn't see how it could happen since the Salticidae I am familiar with will rapidly evade people if they need to, and I couldn't imagine making unintentional contact with one. But the spider sitting next to me on my desk is so heavy-bodied that anybody foolhardy enough to do so could reach out and grab her. These spiders, and expecially the brightly colored ones who usually get their photographs published, are extremely attractive, and I can imagine that some people might try to catch them and suffer a defensive bite. They should be warned that the bite will hurt a lot. This particular spider is about 16 mm. long and probably has a proportionate amount of venom, so I am not about to engage in personal research to prove a point. But what I have learned about these spiders by corresponding with other people and then double-checking their answers against my own experience suggests that people can be given appropriate information about the purported danger of this species, the real but not grave danger of getting bitten as a result of putting the squeeze on one, etc. P0M 04:14, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
I just found an article from a specialist who gives a picture of a gray Phidippus, calls it Phidippus formosa (a synonym for johnsoni), and complains that it bit him three times on the back of the hand while he was trying to photograph it. The spider looks like P. octopunctatis to me. I've seen my P. octopunctatis open and close her chelicerae as though she is thinking about biting something; on the other hand she is afraid of crickets her size and does not attempt to bite them when they blunder into her. I'm puzzled because I've never yet had a jumping spider go onto my body that I did not corral into doing so. And when I've cornered the P. octopunctatis and have gotten her to walk out onto my hand she has been perfectly calm about it. P0M 06:47, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A question of proportion

I've been trying to straighten out the data on amounts of venom, LD-50, etc.
(MG/KG) KG Pounds
Genus species Venom amount LD-50 Can kill Can kill
Atrax robustus 0.81 0.16 5.0625 11.1375
Latrodectus mactans 0.03 0.002 15 33 lb. small child
Loxosceles laeta 0.27 1.45 0.186206897 0.409655172 lb. creature
Phoneutria fera 8 0.3 26.66666667 58.66666667 lb. child
(Sorry. I need to put this info into a real table, but I don't have time now.)
These data are based on experiments with lab mice. Mice are stronger than men, or else hardly any adults should die of any of these spider bites.
One thing stands out: The Phoneutria have 10 times more venom than anything else -- or else somebody got a decimal point wrong or something. I only found one source for the venom amount of a Phoneutria genus spider. Does anyone have any insight/information? (Phoneutria fera venom is 8 mg., whereas Atrax robustus only has .81 mg. That doesn't seem fair ;-)P0M 06:47, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Little question

I've been wondering of what's the name given to tiny red spiders that sometimes are found in cracks in the house. I tried looking for it in this article but it's not there...

Does anyone know the name of that spider? =\

--Datavi X 11:41, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I tried the dwarf spider and money spider, but I don't think these match to my criteria... Oh well.

--Datavi X 17:56, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

The real tiny red spiders are:

Florinda coccinea (Blacktailed Red Sheetweaver)

Florinda coccinea (Blacktailed Red Sheetweaver)

Florinda coccinea (Blacktailed Red Sheetweaver)

These spiders do not crawl around on walls. I think what you may have seen are the brilliant red adult form of those monsters called chiggers. Take a close look next time: Are there three body segments (insects), two body segments (spiders), or one single globe with eight little legs sticking out? The adult form of chiggers do not bite people. P0M 23:53, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

It's a spider with one single body segment with 8 small legs. I hope you get what I mean ;)

--Datavi X 12:59, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Google for chigger and then look at the images. If it has a single body segment it is not a spider. P0M 07:22, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Progress report

I have tweaked various parts of the article, mostly making the grammar more regular.

I have found venom amounts for Phoneutria sp. that are from a very reliable source and around 1/10 the size of the source I mentioned earlier. I think it is clear that somebody messed up a decimal point. They have more venom than the Atrax spiders, and their LD-50 is lower, so they are really incredible little killing machinese. Fortunately they do make a very active threat display, and they look so fierce that one would have to be a bit crazy to risk getting close enough to get bitten. Supposedly they will jump on people and then bite. See what I've got at Spiders_having_medically_significant_venom.

I think it would be very helpful to reorganize the article. The last two main sections both have extensive remarks about the toxicity of various spiders. One part o the article ought to be about the main "lifestyles" of spiders, dividing them into web spinners, pond (surface and sub-surface) spiders, prey chasing (lynx, wolf, jumping spiders), etc. The objects should be (1) to make it easy for people who want to identify the spider that dropped down from the ceiling on them, and (2) to give people an overall idea of the general diversity of the spider population. (Some people probably have never heard that there are spiders other than the ones that weave cob webs in the corners of their houses and the spiders that weave beautiful orb webs outside. So we need to show them the major ways that spiders make their livings.

I've clarified the section on Phidippus johnsoni. I hope that I can soon get an uncontested specimen so that I can see whether it will attack me. I don't think I would like that much better than the bite of the last Phidippus audax that objected to my squeezing her, but curiosity may nip this cat. P0M 05:32, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

As for labeling, I'm sticking with Phidippus johnsoni (?). Hopefully somebody will provide an image of a spider that is unambiguously identifiable as P. johnsoni. It's either johnsoni or ardens, and without killing the spider it's impossible to tell which it actually is. P0M 07:28, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I have no picture, but....

I saw a spider that I didn't recognize. It was less than 1/4 inch long, light grey, and had two black stripes running the length of it's abdomen. I could see four eyes, two large central ones, and two smaller ones to each side. It looked a little like a tiny tarantula. This was in Minnesota. As I watched the spider he ducked into what looked like a little cave made out of dead leaves. I'm not sure whether the spider built it, or if it just looked like a cave. It bolted out of the "cave" when I moved what looked like the "door". If I had a picture, that would help a lot, I know.--RLent 20:46, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Your description would fit several different kinds of spiders. You might click on the blue Wikipedia Commons link near the very bottom of the spider article and/or on the "spider gallery" link and see whether anything in those galleries looks familiar. Offhand, I would say that you are most likely to have seen a wolf spider. You didn't say what part of the year you saw this spider in. It may have been an immature specimen. But many wolf spiders are pretty small.

Did it look anything like this one?

"Rabid" wolf spider

You should click on the picture to get a larger view. This spider was quite fast, but, despite the name, not at all inclined to bite. Instead, it seemed like quite an inoffensive spider who wanted nothing more than to be left alone. The double stripe was quite apparent in this lady's makeup. I think this was a mature specimen, perhaps a third of an inch long at most. I don't know the species. Everything I could find pictures for looked pretty much like this one except they lacked the two black front legs.

If your spider had constructed a shelter for itself then you ought to have noticed that it was webbed together somehow, or even lined with spider silk. By the way, noting behavior is as important as learning the scientific names for these creatures. People have been doing great work recently on taxonomy and yet seemingly ignore behavior pretty much. The 19th century scientists used to spent lots of time and ingenuity in learning the life stories of the spiders. Fabre wrote a story about trying to learn how a burrowing wolf spider dealt with wasps that visited its territory. If I get weird looks while stalking a spider on campus imagine how the French peasants must have regarded a grown man on his hands and knees with his eye glued to a hand lens for hours at a time. P0M 04:44, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reorganizing last two sections

I've had a go at fixing little problems in the earlier part of the Spider article, but the last two sections are more problematical. The fact is that they repeat each other. Probably they started out well enough and then grew a bit chaotically.

We have prepared the way for moving the issue of the toxicity of venom out of the main article, but the fact is that many people consult this article hoping to learn whether the spider in their environment is likely to bite someone and cause injury. Other people want to know "what kind of spider did I just run across?" I believe in most cases the person who asks that question hopes to put their visitor into some kind of context, i.e., hopes to know how they catch their food, what else they do in their time on earth, whether there is anything else interesting or unusual about them, etc. So it would be a good thing if we could come up with some way of guiding readers to the appropriate articles, e.g., on jumping spiders. One way would be to organize spiders by size (and give a picture of a typical spider of that size standing on a sheet of graph paper to indicate scale), another way to organize them would be by color, a third would be whether they were found on a spiral web, a web such as a widow spider makes, a sheet web, etc. Another set of questions would cover the spiders that rove over the ground, on walls and fences, et5vc., The actual collections of photos could go on separate pages.

So far these are just some ideas, basically, group the information not by genera but by slightly larger groups, maybe all the spiral web weavers, all the jumping spiders and near relatives, all the arboreal tarantulas, all the terrestrial tarantulas, etc. would be discussed as groups in the article, and then there would be ways to help people find the right group for their spider. P0M 05:37, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Add Smithsonian Education link?

Hello! I am a writer for the Smithsonian's Center for Education, which publishes Smithsonian in Your Classroom, a magazine for teachers. An online version of an issue titled "Under the Spell of Spiders" is available at this address:

http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/educators/lesson_plans/under_spell_spiders/index.html

If you think the audience would find this valuable, I wish to invite you to include it as an external link. We would be most grateful.

Thank you so much for your attention.

I am reading through the article. It looks very good, with some excellent photographs. I have thusfar noted one misconception that may have shown up in our own article, the idea that "spiders....don't have a mouthful of teeth to help them break down their food". That is true of spiders such as the black widow, but definitely not true of wolf spiders, jumping spiders, tarantulas, huntsmen... What you will see after they have finished their meal is a little ball of indigestible chitin that looks quite a lot like the ball of indigestible stuff that an owl will spit up after it has digested the rest. Actually, now that I think of it, one of these little piles of chewed up remains might make a good picture. P0M 00:57, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reply from Smithsonian

Thanks, POM. Please keep me apprised if you can think of slight change in wording that would bring the text closer to precision on this matter. Perhaps we can make the change. Again, we'd be honored to have our link included.

I'm in a time-bind right now, butin a day or two I will try to figure out a way to say it correctly in a few words. P0M 15:30, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Golden Wheeling spider "

I can't find anything about this spider anywhere (no hits on google). Does it have an alternative (more common) name? Anyone have the taxonomy? Twilo 12:46, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

You can Google for Carparachne aureoflava. (I fixed the article to include the Latin name.) There is one picture, and if you follow the link to the original image you can retrieve a slightly larger version. P0M 15:43, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spider Fights in some countries

There is no mention of spider fights in the article so I just want to share it here. Some countries like Philippines and Japan hold matches where they have two spiders fighting to the death. http://www.sportsshooter.com/davidpix/spider/

People catch spiders from fields at night and set their spiders against other people's spiders. I remember doing it quite a lot when I was younger. We kept spiders in match boxes and held the fights on sticks. In the Philippines, it used to be just a kid's game, but now its become much like cock fighting and people often bet thousands of dollars.

Other links describing the game btw: http://www.sunstar.com.ph/static/gen/2005/10/30/feat/games.big.boys.play.html http://www.mindanews.com/2003/08/25nws-spider.html

Im not really an expert on it so im just posting here now just in case someone else knows about it. Jak722 01:58, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

There is a book called Spider Boys that is autobiographical. The author grew up in Singapore. When I did some reading I discovered (if I remember correctly) that they used a certain species of jumping spider, and they used males. The males would fight, but the issue was basically the kind of reproductive jousting that elks and other such animals indulge in, so they weren't really fights to the death. That's not to say that other places don't let females fight to the death.

The sociology of the phenomenon must be fascinating. I wonder if there are any serious studies. (The novel contains lots of inaccuracies about spider anatomy. The male spider does not have a penis, for one thing. So I don't know how much the author was depending on his childhood experience and how much was just his imagination.) P0M 04:20, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

The book is Spider Boys, by Ming Cher. ISBN: 0-688-12858

[edit] Moving Forward

I edited the article on Latrodectus bishopi (the red widow) and will occasionally take a look at the write up in more detail. I've been very busy working on a revision of one spider genus and coauthoring eight of the chapters in the "Spiders of North america" and so have had little time to do any further editing. I see that there have been numerous changes and that the article and associated articles are getting quite detailed. Richman 24 June 2006

I saw information somewhere on the relative toxicity of venoms of the widows, but have misplaced it.
I'm not sure about article structure. One thing the article was doing was helping people identify the "monsters" in their cellars and gardens -- and another thing that has interested people has been whether the spider in the bedroom is a danger to the new baby or the children playing on the floor. One result was that we had something on, e.g, widow spiders as one kind of spider making tangled webs and saying that they are the ones to warn the kids about, and then we had another section on spider bites that could be bad news and the widow spiders got mentioned all over again. Engineer Scotty and I discussed this problem and he was trying to eliminate the repetitions. Meanwhile I decided that we could do with a series of a kind of spider-finder indices to help people find the sub-articles that will give them the information they need. (Identifying_spiders starts with the habitudes of spiders. The next thing I will add is a section that divides them by colors. Of course it won't be of much use for all of the brown-grey spiders, but the brightly colored ones can perhaps be profitably orgnized that way.
I'm trying to aggregate all of the spider pictures on the Commons. We are betting quite a large collection, but one with some important omissions. Fortunately there is somebody working in India who has sent in a few unusual (to me) pictures.
On a personal note, I got bitten in bed this morning when I moved my forearm in my sleep. I woke up rapidly. :-) I didn't have my glasses on and while I was reaching for them the offended creature made her escape. She was dark in color and perhaps 5 mm. long. I noticed two puncture marks and some mild pain. The area swelled up to around the size of a nickel or a little larger. Five hours later all that remains are the punctures, about 1.5 mm. apart. That's a pretty wide separation for a creature only that long. Too bad I didn't get a photo of the spider, or whatever it was.
Are there any reports of bites by the Atypidae? I can't imagine that even a dry bite would be much fun.
It is good to see you back. Please give us the benefit of your professional judgment. P0M 17:08, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Interesting spider, surely not actually a member of the Lycosidae

Discussion moved to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spiders/Undetermined_pictures#Unicorn_spider.

[edit] Arachnophobia

The article has nothing on Arachnophobia, not even the word it self. Since Arachnophobia is one of the most common phobias in the world, and since it relates directly to spider-human interaction it should be listed somewhere. As of where, Im not really sure tho.--Azslande 13:44, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone know whether there is a specific diagnosis of "arachnophobia"? Some people believe that fear of snakes is probably innate with humans, as it appears to be with other primates. There seems to be less indication that there is an innate fear of spiders. Phobias are acquired, and the pathology is individual, i.e., if somebody is irrationally afraid of bunny rabbits it is generally because of some extremely traumatic event that involved an actual bunny. P0M 16:52, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] spiders eating mates

It isn't unusual for spiders to prey on other spiders, including of the same species. --EngineerScotty 20:51, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Some spiders specialize on eating spiders of other species. Spiders that are hatched together may cannibalize their nest mates, especially if something prevents them from dispersing. The mating dance of the Salticidae is probably necessary to minimize the chance of the male being taken for ordinary prey by its potential mate. Other spiders have equivalent ways of identifying conspecifics, e.g., web strumming patterns for the spiral web weavers.
If a spiral web weaver should happen somehow to land on the web of a conspecific she would not easily get stuck in the web. If it didn't leave the web then there would probably be a fight. On the other hand I suspect that all spiders are good judges of how risky an opponent is going to be to fight. If the potential prey looks too big, shakes the web or the twig too strongly, then the spider is likely to back off. (I'm a little bit sceptical about claims that black widows make prey mistakes and bite humans. What I've seen whenever I've disturbed a nest (with a stick not with my finger) is that the spider will drop to the ground and then play dead.) Anway, my point is that conspecifics may be less likely to attack each other simply because they will be about the same size and both will likely look for something smaller to try to eat.
I think that there is a learning process that goes on when spiders are growing up. The tarantulas that I seem to have accumulated in the last several months were reluctant to eat full sized crickets at first, but after they had caught a couple they seemed to be much more eager to move on them as soon as they were provided. I bought a Huntsman spider a couple autumns ago. She was DOA but came with an egg case that was hatching. I tried to keep the hatchlings. They were extremely hard to contain because they were smaller than the cracks in the aquarium/terrarium I pressed into service. They moved with incredible rapidity. Most of them got away. I kept a few dozen of them in small plastic cups. One of them was about twice as large as all the others and I have always suspected that she learned to cannibalize her nest mates, so she got a good feeding before I managed to find ways of breeding fruit flies and releasing them into individual cages. All the others died and, eventually, so did she. But she lived the longest of all of them. I suspect that before a spider has successfully tackled prey of a certain relative size it will tend to back off unless fairly desperately hungry.
One other thing. In some species the males have teeth in their chelicerae that the male uses to lock down the fangs of the female. His pedipalps are long enough to reach her epigynum without his having to let go of her fangs. So he inseminates her and then bails out. That's a clear evolutionary proof that matings work better with a "trust and immobilize" foreign policy.
There are some spiders that break off the male's pedipalp after it is inserted, eat the male, and eject the pedipalp later after it has been thoroughly drained. The female gets all the spermatazoa and the food value of the male as well. That strategy works well too. I guess the failing strategy would be for the females of some species to eat most of the males before getting impregnated.

P0M 05:02, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Photos

Argiope argentata (?)
Argiope argentata (?)
Golden Orb Weaver plus male? Nephila maculata (?)
Golden Orb Weaver plus male? Nephila maculata (?)

I just added these two photos (both from Costa Rica)to the article. Of the first one I haven't a clue what it is. The second one I thought was a 'golden orb weaver', but another photo suggests it's a Golden silk orb-weaver. Don't know which species, though. And I ony assume the one in the background is a male. Is it? Could you add any info you have to the photo's pages? Thanks. DirkvdM 19:03, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Is the first an Argiope (spider)? — Omegatron 23:29, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Well done, nice pictures.

Second one looks a lot like Nephila clavipes to me, which is found in Costa Rica a lot. --Sarefo 13:07, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Speaking of images, does anyone else think the article has too many photos? The right side is almost completely picture after picture stacked on top of each other, which is messing up the layout of the page. --Mad Max 02:28, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Praise for wiki

I recommended this article to someone earlier. I think they were pretty impressed. Everyone apart from vandals give yourselves a pat on the back.

[edit] Spider's predators?

What are some animals that prey on spiders?

Josh215 21:19, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Birds and other spiders are the first two things that come to mind. Also, some wasps do particularly nasty things to spiders, such as laying wasp-eggs inside spiders which then hatch and consume the spider. The Spider-Man comics written by J. Michael Straczynski have made much of this spider/wasp rivalry in recent years. RobertAustin 12:15, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
The major predators are surely hunter wasps. They are the only animals I know of that specialize in taking down spiders (other than the small minority of spider species that specialize on eating other spiders, and there don't seem to be large numbers of them). They are prolific and their nests are easily found. If you find a mud dauber nest sometime you can open it up. You will find it packed from end to end with comatose spiders (or what is left of them after the wasp larvae hatch and go to work). Some of the trapdoor spiders make an underground tunnel system shaped like the capital letter H. One upper point of the H has a door that the spider can hold shut against predators. If that fails she runs down the tunnel and into the horizontal part--where there is another door she can defend. The wasp that enters to find and sting her to death will go all the way to the bottom and then, usually, give up. Should the wasp find the side tunnel and force it open the spider will retreat to the other vertical shaft and go up to the top where she will quickly break through to the surface and flee overland. From that fact alone it is pretty clear that spiders have been dealing with predatory wasps for a very long time.
Compton says that the spiders that actually encounter predatory wasps seem to be mesmerized by them somehow, unable to flee or fight back, and they are then easily stung and carried off by the wasp.
I always rather liked the mud dauber wasps as a kid. They are solitary wasps, so there are no special guard wasps around their nests. They come and go with loads of mud to build more onto their nests (usually built inside of barns and sheds--I wonder what they did before people came along). They always seemed rather oblivious to my presence, but many predators appear rather unconcerned about anything that isn't obviously gunning for them and isn't on their menu. I'm sure these wasps can sting, but I've never heard of anyone actually getting attacked by one of them. (You'd probably have to grab one to get stung. I doubt that they would even defend their nests.) P0M 07:33, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Size?

As I was asked this question : "what is the size of the largest spider ?" I consulted this article and saw it coudn't answer my question there's no information at all on spider size (smallest, average, largest..) even in the morphology section, no order of magnitude or something which I think is a bit atonishing.

Good point. If you look at leg span, there is supposed to be a Huntsman spider in S.E. Asia that can span around 10 inches. Some tarantulas are said to have nearly that great a leg span, but they may be counted as "larger" because they are more heavy bodied. I'm not sure where we can get really reliable information on this subject. Somebody must have weighed the heaviest of the tarantulas and published that information somewhere. Body length gives a better comparison. Some tarantulas are about 3.5" long.

Some spiders are less than 1 mm (.05") long. (Microphantinae). P0M 02:23, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "In 1973 Skylab3 took 2 spiders into space to test their web-spinning capability in zero-gravity."

This sentence is totally out of place. The Captain Returns 03:05, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] formatting and layout.

There's an issue withthe predatory behaviors sections. There's a long bar of edit links there, stepping on the text. This is one of the only pages I've ever seen such an error on, so i suspect it's the page, not my browser. someone with more formatting experience than I may want to fix that. ThuranX 16:00, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Seems to be o.k. now. P0M 19:53, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] pictures

A few pictures of a strange spider



Bye! Ajor 12:24, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

The genus seems to be Argiope. What part of the world was this spider found in? Body length is about 1 inch, right? P0M 19:46, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
It comes from Bourgogne in France. I don't remember the length of this spider, it's a shame we didn't put any object on the side to be able to measure it. Ajor 23:38, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
What was

http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/common/images/button_link.png Internal link inserted above for? It messed up your own picture.

You could Google for Argiope and hope to find one that looks exactly like yours. I'm almost sure that is the genus since the cephalothorax has a very characteristic shape. You could also search the Commons and use the new search tool called Mayflower. (Just start a regular search and you'll soon see a way to use Mayflower to search for the word you've already entered. P0M 05:33, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Argiope_bruennichi? P0M 14:41, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes it seems to be the same as this one: Argiope (spider) Ajor 16:10, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Nervous system

We should add some info about the nervous system. Sancho (talk) 16:37, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I haven't seen any sources on this subject. To me it is fascinating to see a tarantula with a brain that is probably the size of the head of a map pin at most and yet is (or seems to me to be) capable of purposive behavior. (I've read of Grammostola rosea spiders that have moved the colored pebbles around their cages so that the "paving" was of uniform colors in different areas of the cage. I've personally observed a spider that wanted to move a stick struggle with the task of picking it up securely for 5 minutes or so and then, when it finally lucked out and got the right grip on the stick, it dragged it 2.5 feet away without pause or deviation in direction, dropped it, and then was done with the matter.) It would be good to know how many neurons are involved in this process, whether they are arranged into regular structures in the brain, etc. Most people seem to regard the delicate work of making a spiral web as entirely hard-wired in the spider doing the work.
There have been some discoveries regarding the brain structures of honey bees in recent years. One of the things that makes this job easier is that honey bees are known to remember and communicate things like whether they have found nectar or pollen, and how far away and in what direction they have found it. Also, they remember the location of their hive in terms of landmarks and perhaps other features. (If some field bees are out in the field when a beekeeper moves their hive to another place miles away, the bees will pile up on the ground or a convenient piece of vegetation close to where the hive was originally placed. When bees are moved, the first time they leave the hive they must make a comparison of what they see with what they expect to see. Noting that they are seeing a new set of scenery around the hive, they then fly a very systematic pattern (almost like the raster pattern of a cathode ray tube) in front of the hive. Having "decided" that they have enough information about the appearance of the new hive setting, they will next fly off in search of food. The next day they won't bother to learn their hive site because they don't register a mis-match when they leave at the start of the day's work.
There is anecdotal evidence that suggests that tarantulas can learn to be unalarmed by the hand of their keeper reaching for them. Jumping spiders seem to realize after a while that the human who has moved into their visual field to observe them is not going to attack them, and they fairly soon stop taking evasive actions. Jumping spiders go out to hunt and return to their "pup tents" at the end of the day. Do they follow a trail back? Or do they remember how to get back?
What is known about bee behavior led to discoveries about memory banks in bee brains. Perhaps similar studies have been made about spiders. P0M 21:03, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
Here's an interesting abstract to an article on the central nervous system of a specific spider: K. Sasira Babu1, and Friedrich G. Barth. Neuroanatomy of the central nervous system of the wandering spider, Cupiennius salei (Arachnida, Araneida). Zoomorphology, Volume 104, Number 6 / December, 1984. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg.
Even in the abstract, there are some really interesting facts - only 50900 neurons in the brain, and only 49000 in another part called the suboesophageal ganglia. I can get access to the full article, but this might be too species specific. Sancho (talk) 21:33, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
100,000 neurons doesn't sound like much until you start looking at how many neurons an early version of neural net programming would model. I don't remember exactly, but 100,000 sounds huge. My impression is that the spider's brain must have the equivalent of at least 100,000 elements. For comparison, my high resolution computer screen has about 1,000,000 pixels.
BTW I've read that the human stomach has about as many neurons in its immediate vicinity as are in the brain. That's a relatively new discovery, within the last 10 years or so I think. P0M 07:18, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
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