Interesting facts about the biggest web building spiders
These spiders only have a lifespan of two years.
By Warren Dick
What is the only animal in the world that teaches you karate? A spider!
If you have ever walked unsuspectingly into a spiders web, you know exactly what I mean. Today, I would like to tell you a bit about one of the biggest web building spiders in the Durban South area, it is called the Golden-Orb Web Spider.
People often freak out when they see these huge spiders in their gardens, the spider can easily be as big as a man’s open hand, with a web spanning well over a meter in diameter. These spiders are easily identified by their golden colour webs.
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They are totally harmless to humans, like most spiders, they loath biting humans and only bite if absolutely necessary. They usually make a type of a protective cocoon at the top of their web, usually on a tree bark or sturdy leaf, and if threatened the spider will retreat and hid inside this cocoon. I have held many of these spiders in my hands and never once has one attempted to bite me, however I was once bitten by accident.
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I had one living outside my bedroom window and I used to help feed her by finding grasshoppers and moths and throwing them in her web. One day I was holding a big moth in her web for her and she unfortunately mistook my thumb for her prey. The bite felt like being poked by a pin, and nothing whatsoever happened to me, by the next day I could not even see the holes in my thumb.
You may have seen that I referred to that spider as being a female, these spiders are very easy to tell apart as the female is often almost 1000 times bigger than the male spider, the male (sometimes more than one) lives in the web with the female, and waits his opportunity while she is eating, to mate. These spiders only have a lifespan of two years, in that time a female spider can lay up to three egg sacs with about 1000 eggs in each, but out of all these baby spiders very few make it to adulthood.
Spiders should be our friends in the garden and in the home, as they help keep down the numbers of pesky insects, so please don’t kill these beautiful creatures. If you have to move them, you can dust them into a jar or a box and release them into a more suitable location.
WATCH: Golden Orb spiders – the architect of entrapment
