Creepy crawly spider facts

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DID YOU KNOW?

  • You are rarely more than a few metres from a spider. And that one acre of ground is home to about a million spiders!
  • Around most homes you will find about 20-50 different species of spider. But in any bushland area, there is usually around 100-120 species!
  • There are around 10,000 different species of spiders in Australia, but only around 3,500 have names – but don’t be alarmed, most are too small to bite.
  • And it is the unexpected direction that spiders move in that generates the fear response in humans.
  • The majority of spiders will run away from wind/blowing.
  • If you have a 4WD watch out – spiders (as well as scorpions, cockroaches, lizards and snakes) are attracted to an idling 4WD diesel.
  • Speaking of cars…although huntsmen spiders have a weak venom, they are responsible for the most human deaths through car crashes (as they scramble across the windscreen).
  • Spider silk is easily dissolved with household bleach
  • Despite popular belief, daddy long legs spiders are harmless..
  • Male spiders look and behave like females until they are adult.
  • No Australian spider (including the white tail spider) has caused flesh-rotting.
  • An Australian jumping spider, Portia, has telephoto vision second only to the eagles.
  • Most spiders have eight eyes but are basically blind.
  • Spiders often consume their webs at nights end and then recycle the silk, through their gut, in about 20 minutes.
  • Most of the white on a spider is formed by the white guanine in the folds of the gut
  • Spider silk is highly elastic so when it reaches its most stretched point in the Spiderman movies, it should pull him straight back to base, not act like a rope.