For the Love of Spiders - An Arachnid Lover's Manifesto 🕷🕸️

Tw: arachnophobia, obviously.🕸️

(oh, and just warning you, there will be lots of spider pics in this blog).

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One of my most salient traits to those who know me in person is my love for spiders. 

What isn't immediately apparent is that I was incredibly afraid of spiders before I moved south. But through time and experience, I've learned to love them.

It all started that first October, when I found large brown spiders making massive, 2-foot-wide webs on my deck.

Being from Ohio, I was used to wolf spiders, but these looked much different, and I'd never seen a wolf spider in a huge web like these.

I enjoyed watching these spiders build their webs - from a reasonable distance, of course - but their presence on my deck made me take pause. Were they dangerous? Would they build webs all over everything, or hide in my lawn chairs? I had to know what my new neighbors were if we were to continue to coexist.

I looked them up and learned they were most likely Hentz orb weavers, or a similar species. I read up on them and learned a lot, for example:

🕷 They build their orb webs every night in the fall, and take them down each morning, eating their own silk (both females and juveniles do this. When the males mature, they stop building webs and go off to seek mates). 

🕷 Over time, they learn where exactly to build their webs so they aren't disturbed, so that animals (or people) don't continually knock down their hard work.

🕷 They have poor vision.

🕷 They're quite shy. When startled, they play dead.

🕷 They are docile -  If you wanted to pick one up, it would just crawl around on you for a while and chill out.

🕷 They're unlikely to bite unless essentially trapped. They prefer to run away or play dead, and would only bite as a last resort.

🕷 Even if they did bite, it would be akin to a bee sting at worst, and it wouldn't be medically serious.

There are tons of different species similar to this kind of spider, though all of them share these similarities.

He’s taking a nap. So eepy.

So, I learned that while these fellas are chonky, they were harmless. Cool! I thought, and moved on with my life, not thinking much more of it.

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One night soon after, I left my back door open for a couple of minutes while I was cooking (because I had burned my dinner • ᴖ •), and it was chilly out. 

I'd soon learn that one of these fellas found her way in.

When I woke up the next morning, I was cold. I groggily reached for my sweatshirt that I had left lying on the floor the night before. My fear of brown recluses had me well-trained to shake out my clothes before putting them on. I was glad in this instance.

I heard a faint thump noise, the sound of something falling out of my sweatshirt and hitting the ground.

I leaned over the foot of my bed to see what it was, and there she was, in her massive glory, lying on the carpet, dazed.

My pulse instantly quickened at the sight of her. I could feel my hands get shaky. But as soon as I saw her, I knew exactly what she was, and that she was harmless to me.

She was likely as shocked, confused, and groggy as I was, having been snuggled up fast asleep in my sweatshirt moments before.

Remembering what I had read about their tendency to play dead, I knew that she would lie there on the ground a little while before moving again. I reasoned that I had time to run to the kitchen to grab a glass to put over her before she ran away, so that's what I did.

That's a drinking glass, by the way. She was massive. Her body alone was probably the size of a quarter.

I eased some thin cardboard from a box of pasta underneath the glass, brought her outside, and we both lived to see another day.

I knew I wasn't in danger in that experience, because I understood her. From her point of view, she had just wandered, blind as she was, into this warm cave, and found a warm, fuzzy little place on the ground in there to snuggle up in - tell me that’s not adorable, and that you wouldn’t do the same!

She meant no harm to me; she didn’t know any better. She was just like me, trying to stay warm and keep on living, and I wanted to let her.

Following an experience that typically would elicit only pure terror,  I was struck with a sense of awe, wonder, and curiosity, and began wanting to learn more about the other spiders around me.

I tried to identify the spiders I saw on my deck and in nature, and read up on their species. I became aware of the sheer level of biodiversity of spiders in my area. That there are thousands of species, with countless adaptations, hunting styles, and web building techniques; that they come in countless shapes, sizes and colors (even pink!). I learned how seriously important they are to our ecosystem.

Lynx spider, near the front entrance of my apartment.

This jumping spider on my deck was large enough to cover the whole first joint of my pointer finger!

Smol fella in a web on my hammock.

And dude, they’re just so cool. Graceful, surprisingly intelligent, impressively talented, and often quite pretty, too.

I have no idea what species this green lovely is, but they were all over the campsite where I was! If you look closely, you'll see they have pink toes. Cute!

Look at this beautiful spiral this spider wove in one of my herb plants! This was likely a feather-legged orb weaver.

A beautiful zebra jumping spider I found on my parents' house.

And dude, spider silk refracts sunlight into beautiful rainbows! 🌈

A few species (such as the Joro spider) even have golden silk. It's officially one of my favorite things.

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A surprising thing I've learned on my amateur arachnologist journey is the sheer amount of fearmongering and misinformation there is around spiders. They tend to have a negative reputation, but in reality, most spiders are docile, shy, and reclusive, and there are only a couple of species (only 2 in the US, the black widow and the brown recluse) that can truly hurt us.

Much of the sensationalism surrounding the joro spider, for example, is entirely unwarranted, outside of it being an invasive species (media actually jumped the gun on calling joros invasive, though that lie did turn out to be true). Media wants to paint joros as “giant invasive venomous flying spiders!!” But in reality –

🕷 Most spiders are “venomous” - the word venomous literally means "having venom", and the majority of spiders use venom to kill their prey; only a small, niche portion of them do not. Most spider venom doesn't affect people at all, so a spider species being "venomous" says nothing about whether it poses danger to humans. Joro spiders are, in fact, not found to be aggressive, so they only bite as a last resort. When they do, their bites are not medically significant (meaning it'll be like a mosquito bite or bee sting, you'll survive and not have to go to the hospital).

🕷 The "flying" rumor is because of a phenomenon called ballooning (which common in many species of spiders, including native ones!) - 

This is done mostly by baby spiders (spiderlings) shortly after hatching. They release thin wisps of spider silk into the air to use as a little parachute. This helps them to disperse to new areas (probably why they're among the first to populate after natural disasters!). 

And, btw, that's so cute?? They’re literally tiny babies with parachutes. How on Earth is that threatening?! There's a really cool article talking about some of the mind-blowing physics behind this phenomenon here.

🕷 Joros' biggest offense is being massive, but we already have writing spiders for that (they are incredibly colorful too, and make cool designs in their webs!). Here's a pic of the first one I saw after moving south:

I often see articles or posts mistaking different species (such as the writing spider and the Joro spider). 

Beyond Joro spiders, a pervasive rumor persists that yellow sac spiders like the smell of gasoline (following an interesting Mazda 6 recall as a result of them infesting EVAP lines), though this has been seemingly debunked, as it turns out they may actually be attracted to the material EVAP lines are made of (they LOVE my car, especially my dashboard and under my hood, which leads me to believe that same material is still used in other car parts).

Anyways, I digress.

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Every aspect of a spider’s morphology, behavior and appearance serves some sort of instrumental purpose for their survival. For example, what scientists know so far about the web building behaviors of some spiders is incredible -

🕷 Orb weavers orient their webs based on gravity, and in its absence, the position of the sun (scientists literally launched spiders into space to figure this out).

🕷 They alter the weave of their web depending on the size of the prey in the area.

🕷 They can use their webs to “hear” what is around them insanely well, by feeling the vibrations of sound waves on their webs.

This web was the size of a half dollar coin in real life. It took me a solid hour to get a photo of this guy.

Some male spiders do whole mating dances for females. Others use specific patterns of plucking and bouncing on females' webs to court them. 

Some spiders look like ants and walk like them and hide among their colonies to prey on them and other insects and evade predators.

This guy was visually convincing. I found him crawling on my bedroom wall, and thought he was a red ant at first - you can't tell from this photo, but his coloration is spot on.

This beautiful baby (either Castianeira crocata or Castianeira descripta) found her way into my house somehow. Allegedly she is supposed to mimic wasp ants with her coloration. I was able to catch and release her safely, but she was INSANELY fast.

These are just some of the facts that I can think of off the top of my head, but there's a ton of interesting science on spiders out there. At the same time, there is so much about them we don’t even know yet.

So, this is my PSA. There’s a whole hidden, magical little world right in front of our eyes every day, that we don’t see unless we look for it. Learning about spiders has given me a new source of awe and joy, and has eliminated a great deal of fear from my life.

Here's some more spiders I've met along the way:

This little fella would run around on my screen door every day, likely hunting gnats. I wanted to befriend him so bad, but he thought I was gross.

This feather-legged orbweaver lived on my deck all summer long. I named her Wren. The first time I saw her, she was rather skinny, and I nearly thought she was a piece of mulch from my plant. I think she became gravid (spider preggers), and started to look more chonky and spider-like, the way she does in this photo.

Her species weaves a line in its web called a stabilimentum. It's supposedly meant to keep birds from flying through their webs, but scientists haven't been able to confirm this and still aren't entirely sure exactly why spiders do this. Writing spiders (aka garden spiders), like the one I showed earlier in this blog, also weave stabilimenta in their webs.

This little lady made quite a few spiky egg sacs - like, five of them! So, I got the opportunity to watch the circle of life while she was hanging out on my deck.

At least one of these sacs hatched, and her babies didn't immediately go very far:

See that little white line? That's a spiderling in its web. It built one just like mom's!

From the photo above, you can see that her little babies were smaller than even a droplet of water. They were so small, in fact, that one actually crawled *through* the bug netting on my hammock. They had some sort of fuzz on them that gave an almost ethereal glow about them.

I read online about another spider that makes a stabilimentum, called a trashline orb weaver. These fellas, rather than building stabilimenta out of spider silk, arrange the exoskeletons of their prey in a line down their web instead. I was ecstatic to discover one of these guys a couple weeks after hearing about them on the front steps of our house!

Don't mind my finger, BTW - pro tip, that's how you can get your camera to focus on small things easier!

And if you think that guy is small, you should see this guy -

I think I named him Francis.

This adorable long-jawed jumper visited me while I was doing my homework outside one day on campus during the summer:

He was very curious about me, and seemed to want to be my friend. I had to keep him from crawling into my backpack so he wouldn't get squished, but I wish I had found a way to take him home. He was so stinkin' cute.

This absolute unit was hanging out on the wall in my office. I trapped and released him. He was huuuge.

 Finally, a teeny boy:

If you are also intrigued by all these lovely spiders, I have to give a shoutout to iNaturalist and YouTuber Travis McEnery for teaching me a great deal of what I know.

The next time you see a spider, remember they are a friend, just trying to get by just like we are, and tell them I said hello.

🕷♡S