Spider Facts
2. Spiders have 8 eyes and 8 legs.
3. Spiders have no bones. They have a hard outer shell called an ‘exoskeleton’. Because
it is hard, it can’t grow with the spider. So young spiders need to molt, or shed their exoskeleton. The spider must climb out of the old shell. Can you imagine how hard it must be to pull all those legs out! As adults, they stop growing and do not need to molt.
4. Male spiders are usually smaller than females.
5. All spiders produce silk but not all spiders spin webs. Silk can be sticky, dry or stretchy. Spiders have silk spinning glands, called spinnerets, at the tip of their abdomen. As a rule of thumb: Spiders who make webs will make one new web every night.
6. To molt means to shed their outer shell.
7. The biggest spider is the Tarantula.
8. Spiders recycle their silk, they eat up what isn’t useful anymore.
9. There are more than 30,000 species of spiders, all of which belong to the Arachnid family.
10. Spiders are oviparous, which means that their babies hatch from eggs.
11., All spiders have fangs, which eject venom. Not all spider bites are harmful, even though they can hurt!
12. Spiders eat insects, some of which can be harmful to plants.
13. The venom of the female black widow spider is 15 times stronger than rattlesnake venom.
14. The Brown Widow Spider (Latrodectus geometricus) is not as dangerous as some other widow spiders because the Brown Widow Spider is less likely to bite someone, and injects less poison. Still, it is a venomous creature, and must be treated with respect.
15. Black Widow is considered the most venomous spider in North America.
16. Black Widow spiders are not usually deadly, especially to adults, because they inject only a small amount of venom.
17. Only the female Black Widow is dangerous to humans; males and juveniles are
harmless.
18. The female Black Widow hangs belly upward and rarely leaves the web.
19. The Black Widow is also called the "hourglass" or "shoe-button" spider.
20. Araneae is the Latin word for spider.
21. More than 35,000 spider species of spiders occur in the world. Of these, about 3,400 species in 64 families are found in North America.
