h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My Brother carefully collects any large spiders he finds in the house or outside and takes them up to his bedroom, where they live a peaceful coexisatance with him on the windowledge, amongst cactus plants and some other plants, living off the huge amount of gnats/mosquitos we seems to get being not far from the marsh and also on flys and other insects, needless to say whilst I'm back in town, I will end up with 50 plus mosquito bites on my body (during the summer) whereas my Brother hardly ever gets any I think a statute of peaceful coexistance with spiders is the way foward, but obviously those spiders that do not adhere to the peaceful coexistance statute should be delt with appropiately

I'd also noticed the tendency of spiders to spin their webs on motorcycle handlebars, and engine heat is a good theory. There are others though:

a) They are trying to embarrass you in front of your mates. A motorcycle covered in cobwebs is a sure sign of a fair-weather biker.

b) They are trying to kill you, by forcing you to go really fast to shake the cobwebs off. (It doesn't work - you'd need to be doing mach 4).

c) They get bored when they're not killing and eating each other and fancy a bit of a blast.

On the other hand, perhaps all the sticky-outy bits just provide a good structural base and save them a lot of effort .

We had a bizarre spider in our basement the other day. We were trying to paint the room and there was one of those really leggy spiders in a corner. The ones with a little tiny body and reeeallly long legs. Every time I touched it, it spun round and round really fast hanging by one leg from the ceiling. Is this a normal defensive tactic for these spiders or was it just a weird spider?

I say the spider is on something, and whille stubling home from the pub is found a nice place to rest, your bacement.

Eat it and find out.............

Just checked some websites and it was a Pholcus phalangioides (apparently). Not read anything about spinny behaviour yet though...

Ah, the aptly-named long-legged cellar spider. The spinning defence behaviour is described here:

http://caliban.mpiz-koeln.mpg.de/~stueber/essays/pholcus/pholcus_phalangioides.html

RF

>> b) They are trying to kill you, by forcing you to go really fast to shake the cobwebs off. (It doesn't work - you'd need to be doing mach 4). <<

Now there's a novel excuse. "Sorry Officer, I had this spiders web on my handlebars and I was trying to get rid of it!"

Donald

They realy are clever little criters, but sooo butt ugly

I'm with you Feisor I 'cos I'm petrified of moths!

Las year we adopted a really big young lady , she lived in the study & used to sit on a pile of floppies next to my monitor. She frightened the life out of the , they still are very wary about coming in here <laugh?

plaster cast

Ah, the aptly-named long-legged cellar spider. The spinning defence behaviour is described here:

http://caliban.mpiz-koeln.mpg.de/~stueber/essays/pholcus/pholcus_phalangioides.html

Wow, isn't evolution great. It wasn't just a weird insane spider after all. You really do live and learn.

wow, how long did it take you to find that?

hmm I jsut found a dead spider whilst tidying my room


out of interest, does eating salt do any damage to spiders?

it was near part of an old ready salted hula hoop.

generly if something is dead next to something, it's oftern whats killed it, make your mind up.