Beautiful Spiders

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, biology, natural history, spiders

James O'Hanlon loves spiders, particularly jumping spiders. Seeing these beauties, it isn't hard to understand. I gathered these pictures of peacock jumping spiders from several sources. They are astonishing!

Depending on your display, these pictures are about two to three times life size. They show a female's eye view of the male spiders' mating dances. To attract a female, a male peacock spider will raise his flattened abdomen and two legs, and wave and bob about and dance for her.

In O'Hanlon's book Eight-Legged Wonders: The Surprising Lives of Spiders, we find that a chance photo of such a spider taken by Stuart Harris completely changed his life. Before, he had a rather good life, but unfocused. When he saw a colorful little spider, photographed it, and posted the photo, he was soon hailed as the discoverer of a new species. To confirm it, a spider expert (arachnologist) asked Harris to find and capture a specimen. It took him three years! Now, the new species has been described and given the designation Maratus harrisi. And Harris has become something of an arachnologist himself.

For perspective, I must note that more than 53,000 species of spider are known so far. About 6,000 are jumping spiders, but only about 100 species are peacock jumping spiders. That narrows the field, since Stuart has added 1% to the list of known peacock spiders (In proportion, finding a new species of monkey would add only 0.3% to the known 334 species of monkeys). Nearly all of these pretties are found in Australia.

With this book, O'Hanlon hopes to reduce spider phobia. Many people find spiders both horrifying and disgusting. Popular culture, which usually depicts spiders as venomous monsters, hasn't helped. While it is true that nearly all spider species are venomous, most of them are too small to bite through human skin. Of those that can bite, a spider bite is usually milder than a bee sting. A big spider, like this tarantula I caught in my garage in Oklahoma about 40 years ago, can inflict a more painful bite, but it is not dangerous (In Oklahoma, male tarantulas are on the move, looking for mates, in late summer). Only a very few spiders have a bite that is dangerous to humans, and the only really deadly one, the Sydney funnel-web spider, is native to Australia, though international shipping has begun to spread them around.

Some people keep tarantulas as pets. A formative experience for me was when I was in kindergarten; one kid's dad visited, bringing the family tarantula. The father lifted the spider out of its cage and let it walk on his hand and arm. I was fascinated, as were most of the kids, but some hung back in great fear. Fortunately, nobody screamed.

I understand that some people's spider-phobia is so great that they will be distressed just seeing the photos in this post. I hope such folks can look, first from a distance, then gradually closer, and desensitize themselves at least a little. Along with the author of Wonders, I would like for people to appreciate what spiders do for us. They live in every environment on earth except the extreme polar regions, including in our houses. The ones that come indoors specialize in eating insects. When you find a cobweb with a multitude of insect bits in it, ponder for a moment how many insects the spider has eliminated from your home, so you didn't need to use a fly swatter nearly so much.

Spiders may do more for us in the future. You may know that silk, from certain moth caterpillars, can be woven into a bullet-proof fabric. Kevlar was inspired by such silk. So was nylon, but for a different reason: silk is not only very strong, it is soft and beautiful. Chemists wanted to duplicate these characteristics in a cheaper material. For many purposes, nylons (there are several varieties) have proven "good enough".

Dragline silk, one of the silks most spiders produce, is much stronger than silkworm silk, and apparently more luxurious. A few people have been industrious enough to gather thousands of spiders and "milk" them for their dragline silk, and a few garments have been made. Such textiles are exceedingly costly, and it is hard to "farm" spiders. Put a number of spiders in any enclosure smaller than a back yard, and it will soon contain only one spider. They are indiscriminate cannibals. But a spider silk fabric is very glossy, soft, and yet strong, although you don't dare get it wet. Sweat a bit, and an undergarment would become a sticky mess! Research continues. Perhaps one day…

The book is filled with great facts and information. Spiders live among us, they very rarely do any harm. I suspect more people are hurt because they jump when they see one, than directly hurt by spiders. Let's get rid of the jumping reaction and save ourselves some pain and distress. Few people will come to love spiders, but I think most of us can learn to appreciate them and react more calmly when we encounter them.