Last week I shared a fun book for the summer about riding a dragonfly and included fun facts about dragonflies as well as a craft round-up. I have two books to share soon about spiders and thought I would do the fun facts and craft round-up first and then share the books over the next week or so. With one book the dragonfly post got rather long, so I wanted to do this as three posts. The first book is shared!! The second book is shared!
How do you feel about spiders? Are you an arachnophobe? Or do you love spiders? If you find one in your house, do you kill it or leave it alone? Or are you one of the people who capture it and take it outside? During my research I discovered you should not do this. If the spider is living inside your house, it most likely has gotten used to living inside and will not survive outside. Now let me share the interesting fun facts I found out about spiders.
Fun Facts About Spiders
- Spiders are not insects! They are arachnids. They only have two body segments unlike insects that have three. The spiders have a thorax and an abdomen.
- There are 38,000 spices of spiders and are found on every continent except Antarctica.
- Baby spiders are called spiderlings.
- Spiders mating season is autumn. Since spiders are born in the spring the spiderlings have grown big and the older spiders are also out looking for a mate. The female spiders let off a pheromone that the males sense with special hairs on their legs. The males wander around sniffing for a mature female. The males do not search for prey during this time and will eventually starve to death. The females usually stay close to their webs and conserve their energy to have what is needed to lay eggs.
- All spiders have 8 legs. When a spider travels it has four legs on the ground and four legs off the ground at all times.
- Most spiders have eight eyes, but some have none. Spiders are nearsighted. Jumping spiders can see more colors than humans can.
- Spiders help pollinate plants and are a food source for small mammals.
- Spiders have pale blue blood.
- Spiders do not have teeth, but they all have fangs. Their fangs have enough venom to kill their prey. They inject digestive juices into their prey and then suck it up liquified. There are only a handful that have fangs that can penetrate human skin. Most spiders are not dangerous to humans. Spiders do not usually bite humans. They only bite when they feel their life is being threatened. They do not usually pay attention to humans.
- Most spiders are carnivorous. There are spiders in Central America that are mostly herbivores. Spiders however eat more insects than both birds and bats.
- Some spiders can run up a wall, but others cannot. It depends on their feet.
- Spiders have between two and six spinnerets on the back of their abdomen. Each spinneret has hundreds of holes for producing silk. All spiders spin silk. The silk comes out as a liquid but hardens when it hits air. Some spiders can make up to seven types of silk like sticky, smooth, stretchy, etc. When adjusted for weight, spider web silk is stronger than steel. The Golden Orb spider’s web can catch a bird.
- Cobwebs are abandoned spiderwebs.
- On average it takes an hour for a spider to spin a web. However not all spiders spin webs. The ones that do use the web to catch food. Half of known spiders are active hunters that use their silk as a dragline that trails them or to make a place to rest but not actually a web.
- Some spiders spin a web every day.
- Some spiders spin a small web like a fishnet and hunt their prey with it. Others use a long line of silk like a fishing line.
- Grass spiders spin a funnel shaped web.
- Wolf spiders are the fast (but not the fastest). They can run 2 feet per second. In the 16th and 17th centuries it was believed that a bite from a wolf spider (a type of tarantula) would be fatal unless they did a special dance to a specific piece of music. The dance is locally known as the tarantella in the Taranto region of Italy.
- The wolf spider carries her babies on her back.
- There are some spiders that mimic ants. They do this to evade predators and some do this to hunt ants.
- The Goliath Birdeater is the largest spider and can be up to 11 inches wide. The tiniest spider is Patu marplesi and ten of them can fit on the end of a pencil.
- There are some species of spiders that live on or in water like the raft spider. Most spiders however live on land.
- Some male spiders just want to get eaten by the females. The red widow spiders have the males force feed themselves to the females. If she does not eat him, he will continue to place himself into her mandibles until she eats him.
- Spiders are mostly solitary animals, however there are some that form communities which build large communal spiderwebs. The communities can have thousands of individual spiders. They use the communal spiderweb to capture prey and share the harvest with one another.
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| A Jumping Spider Eating a Fruit Fly John Tann from Sydney, Australia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons |
_-_Kitchener,_Ontario_2018-07-13_(05).jpg) |
| Grass Spider Ryan Hodnett, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons |
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| Wolf Spider Hsing Lo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons |
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| Female Goliath Birdeater Muséum de Toulouse, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons |
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| Raft Spider Ocrdu, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons |
Sources:
- Arrow Exterminating. “25 Interesting Facts about Spiders.” (5 Nov 2022) https://arrowexterminating.com/blog/25-interesting-facts-about-spiders/
- Everyday Health. “Spiders that Bite.” https://www.everydayhealth.com/skin-beauty-pictures/common-spiders-and-spider-bites.aspx
- Marshall-Seslar, Alysia. Wellbeing with Alysia. “30 Interesting (& Kinda Creepy ) Spider Facts for Kids | Free PDFs.” (4 Aug 2022) https://wellbeingswithalysia.com/kids-spider-facts/
- Mendoza, Jordan. USA Today. “Seeing More Spiders Crawling Around Your Home? Don’t Panic, There’s a Reason, Experts Say.” (3 Sep 2021) https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/09/03/more-spiders-inside-home-mating-season/5703482001/
- Miller, Michael and Micaela Jemison. Smithsonian Sparks. “Eight Strange but true Spider Facts.” (28 Nov 2014) https://www.si.edu/stories/eight-strange-true-spider-facts
- Preferred Pest Control. “10 Facts About Spiders that Might Surprise You.” (22 Dec 2022) https://www.preferredpest.com/blog/all-about-spiders-10-facts-about-spiders-that-might-surprise-you
Now for the crafts. I asked fellow bloggers for some spider crafts and received many to share with you!
Spider Craft Round-Up
2. Paper Plate Spider Craft from Crafts on Sea
3. Toilet Paper Roll Pipe Cleaner Spiders from Simple Everyday Mom
5. Pom Pom Spider from Red Ted Art
6. Simple Paper Spider Craft for Preschoolers from Beth Ann Averill
7. Popsicle Stick Spider from Little Bins for Little Hands
9. Paper Plate Spider Craft from Little Ladoo
11. Toilet Roll Stamped Spider from Taming Little Monsters
12. Conker Spider from Messy Little Monster
13. Mason Jar Lid Spider from Fireflies and Mud Pies
15. Spider Handprint Craft from The Best Ideas for Kids
16. Spider Coloring Page from Messy Little Monster
17. Easy Scrunched Paper Spider Craft from Crafts on Sea
18. Simple Spider Craft from Easy Peasy and Fun
19. Spider Ring from Crafts by Amanda
21. Pinecone Spider from Fireflies & Mud Pies
22. Spider Life Cycle Craft and Sequencing Cards from The Preschool Toolbox
23. 5 Easy Spider Crafts from Lorena and Lennox, Bilingual Beginnings
25. Kinetic Sand Spider from And Next Comes L
26. Spider Snack
27. Spider Shirt from The Educators' Spin on It
30. Popsicle Stick Spider Web from Little Bins for Little Hands
31. Colorful Watercolor Spiderweb Art from Projects with Kids
32. Giant Sticky Spiderweb from And Next Comes L
Now be sure to come back to learn about our spider books. One is a picture book called Jumper, and one is a middle grades STEM novel called The Girl Who Built a Spider.
