At this time of year, when 'Legs and Co' (and I'm not talking about a 1970's edition of Top of the Pops) are scuttling around your carpets like it's the mini-beast equivalent of Strictly Come Dancing, the last thing an arachnophobic homeowner wants to hear is 'spiders are your friends'.
Ironically, on this clump of constantly morphing data we are brazen enough to call 'The Web', generally, the most likely statements, comments and 'facts' about a fascinating and useful animal are either 'it looks better on the sole of my shoe', or 'eeeeugggh kill it!'
I recently blogged about the ever-predictable presence of the British house spider (Tegenaria species).
It's autumn, so male spiders must search for a mate. There's a little book they read in their tunnel webs (passed from generation to generation), it teaches them (1) never to leave their hidey hole until at least late August, (2) Try not to get stuck in a bath. (3) Favour finding Mrs Spider over finding something to eat. (4) Be on TOTAL alert for predators. (5) Learn to detect ANY movement - it's a threat unless it's a female. (6) Always head back indoors. (7) Last resort is to bite.
It's a book specifically written for a seven-legged animal. I know spiders have eight legs, but most of them read it on the loo before going out on the pull and need a free leg to wipe their spinnerets!
Yep - that's pretty contrived, but most of our arguments for killing spiders are too.
House spiders are an inevitable visitor in autumn and they are, as I say every year, completely harmless. If you are frightened, try not to squish them. Plonk 'em outside if you must - they just want to scour your skirting board for a female friend. Most will die after mating through the shear exhaustion of wandering around for weeks.
It always astounds me that one of Britain's more impressive arthropods is vilified with such resounding hatred from all corners.
The Guardian's John Moore recently bigged up team Tegenaria with this sensible scribe in prose only I can dream of constructing!
Making the point that children have a natural, un-deterred urge to touch spiders through their general explorative intrigue, the article quotes Stuart Hine, of the Natural History Museum and suggests our fear of these animals is more 'nurture than nature'. Mummy and Daddy will say "NO - don't touch that!" instilling fear through association.
My 19-month-old niece recently pulled her grandfather in the direction of a magazine on a table, while making a spider-like scuttling motion with her hand. When he looked at the photo she was pointing at the spider-like green stalk head on a tomato. So it's clear that even at that age, there is an association between the eerie scuttling motion and the spider shape.
I just hope my sister (a total arachnophobe) doesn't besmirch spiders to such a degree that my niece becomes another squisher!
Spiderham (nothing to do with Homer Simpson's Spider Pig)
A quick note. My boss recently recalled a childhood memory of a spider scuttling away from a kitchen worktop, carrying a piece of meat. He seemed pretty sure he saw it happen!
I was a little sceptical about this, as most arachnids subdue live insect prey with either a neurotoxin (paralyses by shutting down nervous system) or an agatoxin (paralyses by shutting down muscular mechanisms).
They tend to use this technique as an alternative to having a fridge! They leave prey wrapped up in silk in suspended animation, but still alive with insect blood hydraulically coursing through their exoskeleton.
Then, when they fancy a snack they return to the web and use a digestive enzyme to biodegrade the contents of said insect, which can then be sucked up by the spider.
I didn't imagine for one minute that a spider would be interested in cooked or processed mammalian meat, but on a tedious search of the web, I found similar accounts and observations by other folk.
The general consensus on this seemingly unlikely scenario is that spiders possibly have a 'taste' sense and are aware of organic materials which may attract insects like flies and ants and wasps, so occasionally, when the opportunity arises, they will carry our mealtime detritus to their web as bait for their own mealtime!
Stay webwise folks.
Gav.
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