I once read that, throughout your life, you're never more than 20 feet from a spider.
I don't remember where I read that factoid, but it came to mind the other day while I was sitting alongside the Great Allegheny Passage biking and hiking trail in Ohiopyle State Park. I was trying to identify an odd shrub I had found and, while flipping through my field guide, a spider came gliding down right in front of me and hung over the book. It was suspended on a long and almost invisible thread of silk attached to a branch above my head.
It looked at me, I looked at it, and the spider then ascended back up the thread. I guess it wondered what I was doing and just dropped in to see whether I was making a correct identification. That encounter got me thinking once more about the factoid -- a spider within 20 feet at every moment?
I considered the place where I was sitting. Obliviously, there were spiders around. One had just visited me.
After I finished identifying the shrub, I got back on my trike and continued along the trail. Everywhere along the path, I'm sure, there were spiders -- on the ground, in the wildflowers, in the grass and ubiquitously dispersed so that the "within 20 feet" was still true.
After I got back to Confluence, even when riding along the streets in town, I was close enough to grass, trees, gardens, stone walls and other suitable spider habitats so that I figure there still were spiders within 20 feet.
When I parked the trike in the garage, I'm sure I was within 20 feet of a spider!
I've cleaned the garage enough times to know that in nearly every nook and cranny -- behind stacked wood, in the corners of the windows, and who knows where else -- spiders live, mate, raise young and happily go through their life cycles. Garages seem to be perfect spider habitats no matter how clean they are kept.
I went into the house.
Now, I know that most people don't want to admit that there are spiders in their houses, but when you think about that 20 feet as being in all directions -- left, right, forward, backward and up and down -- that includes the basement, the space between the ceiling and the floor above, the space in the walls. There are myriad recesses and cracks big enough for a spider, or a pair of spiders, to make a home.
On the coldest days of winter, I've watched titmice and chickadees perching on the outside edges of the house windows searching for dormant spiders and their egg cases, so I know there are spiders around. Those windows are within 20 feet.
All those places pretty well cover 90 percent of my terrestrial life, so I began to believe that, indeed, I do live with an eight-legged Araneae close by.
In the systematic naming of animals, Araneae is the order of true spiders. The larger class is the more familiar name Arachnid, which includes spiders and their relatives, including scorpions, whip scorpions, mites, ticks and daddy-longlegs.
Spiders are not insects. They differ by having eight legs. Insects have six. Spiders have a body divided into two parts; insects are divided into three parts. Plus, spiders have the unique ability to produce silk -- a thin, very strong protein substance that is extruded from spinnerets usually found at the end of the abdomen. Spider silk is one of the strongest compounds known, being 12 times stronger than an equal thickness of steel.
Webs are a familiar part of spider life. These are built from silk and are generally used to capture insects. Spiders have no chewing mouth parts, so after their prey is captured, it is injected with poison through hollow fangs. The poison has additional chemical compounds that liquefy the internal organs of the prey. After this is done, the spider simply plunges its fangs into the carcass and drinks its dinner.
Spider silk is used to build nests, help the spider climb (sort of like a rock climber attaching ropes to secure loops hammered into the rock face), wrap eggs into protective sacs, and encase prey for storage.
Not all spiders build webs. These species are called free hunters. They roam freely about a particular habitat searching for prey. Camouflage and quickness are their method of attack, rather than entrapment.
Crab spiders are in this group. They are found on flowers, and their bodies match the color of the blossom. Poised perfectly still on a petal, they blend invisibly into the background. When an insect visits the flower for a meal, the spider pounces and the diner becomes the dinner. The two long, curved front legs of crab spiders are stronger than the other six. These are used to catch prey and hold it to the fangs, which, as in web spiders, poison and digest the prey.
Back to my thoughts about being only 20 feet from a spider at all times. I thought of water. Being in a boat -- that is where I could be away from spiders.
However, I checked the kayak in the garage and, sure enough, tucked away in the back of the hull was a tiny web.
In addition, there are spiders that spend their life near, on and even under water. A species native to Europe and Asia called the diving spider spins a sort of diving bell made of silk and attaches to aquatic plants below the water surface. This is where the females lay eggs and the young hatch. To reach the nest, the spider carries a small bubble of air from the surface.
I thought about being in an airplane. Any spiders there⢠Probably, because airplanes are on the ground for a lot of time, which gives the tiny eight-legged creatures a chance to find an out-of-the-way place to live. Also, I doubt that all the luggage on a plane is free of spiders or other small invertebrates.
Also, there are some spiders that spin small webs that act as a balloon or kite. Once caught in a wind current, these spiders can travel hundreds, if not thousands, of miles, at very high altitudes, on just a few strands of silk. The island of Krakatau exploded in 1883. The enormous violent eruption destroyed all life on the island. However, within a few weeks, naturalists found spiders on the island. Most likely, these pioneers were carried from distant shores by prevailing winds.
Finally, I thought, the only place one might break the rule of being only 20 feet from a spider is on some sort of spacecraft.
I've never been in space, and never saw any stories about spiders being found on the shuttle or the International Space Station. So, I typed "spiders in space" into Google, and sure enough, on Columbia's STS-107 mission in January 2003, a golden orb weaver rode on the shuttle. The purpose of the experiment was to study spider web building and silk characteristics in microgravity.
Well, as far as I can see, we do constantly live within 20 feet of spiders. I guess we should just learn to love them, because they are companions for life.
