Spider Facts

I have always been terribly scared of spiders! So creepy and disgusting looking creatures. That is how I came to know about something called arachnophobia, which is fear of spiders. In an attempt to get rid of the fear, I tried to find out some facts about spiders, whether they actually are so scary as I have perceived so far, or it is something different. So, let us have a look at some amazing facts I came to learn in the due course.

Let me just tell you that there are many types of spiders and though the classification remains more or less the same, the characteristics of each vary. For example, their sizes, weight, poisonous quotient, etc. But as it is reported there are more than 30,000 species of spiders that are known till date.

Characteristics of Spiders

Spiders have eight legs and their body mainly consists of two distinguishable parts, their head and the rest of the body which appears to be like a big capsule. They are called the thorax (head) and the abdomen.

Description
They are arthropods, which mean, they are invertebrates (creatures that do not have a spinal cord in them) and have jointed limbs and a segmented body with an exoskeleton made of chitin. Spiders have an exoskeleton, meaning that their skeleton is on the outside.

Spiders fall into the category of bugs and are classified as arachnida. Arachnida is a class of arthropods that have four pairs of walking legs and no wings. Spiders are devoid of any antennae and come under the animalia kingdom.

Food
You will surely find this spider fact interesting that some spiders, like the female of redback spiders eat the male redback spiders. But generally, spiders eat ants, beetles, earwigs, grasshoppers, crickets, cockroaches, etc.

Interesting Facts

• Most spiders have eight eyes, in some cases the number is six, and in some rare species of spiders there are none at all.
• Camel spiders are capable of crawling at a speed of about a mile per hour!
• Can you even guess how many knees do spiders have? There are 48!
• I'll give you a startling information now from tarantula facts for kids. Did you know that tarantulas make noise? Yes, they pretty much do, and it is audible from a distance of 15 feet...! The process is known as stridulation.
• There is spider named 'daddy long legs' which is obviously due to their long legs and probably they are the first spiders you must have seen, because they are fairly common house spiders.
• The females of the spiders are bigger in size than their male counterparts, in nearly all the types of spiders.
• Next time you aim to jump or participate in the high jump competition, keep the spider as your idol. It can jump up to 25 times its own height!
• The largest spider in the world is the Goliath birdeater tarantula. They weigh up to 120 grams approximately, and the legs can be around 12 inches in length.
• Australian funnel-web Spider, Brazilian wandering spider, redback spider, brown recluse, black widow are amongst the world's most poisonous spiders.
• Tarantulas are known for their furry or hairy appearance. They shed their fur or hair as they grow, and also when they are intimidated. Tarantulas are considered a delicacy in some places, for example, in Cambodia they are fried and eaten.
• One of the spider web facts is that you won't get caught in a Hobo spider's web because they are not sticky, as opposed to typical spider webs.
• Wolf spiders are sensitive to the vibrations felt by things around them, which includes indications of beating of wings or its prey walking on the ground.
• Brown recluse spiders weave irregular webs that have visible designs of disorderly threads.
• The females of yellow and black spiders are around 19 mm to 28 mm in size whereas the males are a mere 5 mm to 8 mm.
• An unusual fact about black widow spider is that the females rarely eat the male spiders after mating. In most of the other species, the males are eaten up by the females immediately after having mated.

So, after all these different and interesting spider facts I am sure you would like to know about identifying a spider. Isn't it? So go on and read more information on spiders in all the links incorporated within this article.