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Hi all
Thought i,d lighten the mood with some spider facts from one of our Club Magazines.
Spider facts
Not all spiders have eight eyes, some have six eyes, some four, some two and some have no eyes at all.
A spider’s web is packed with healthy nutrients. Before a spider spins a new web it makes a nutritious meal out of the
old one.
The word Arachnid is derived from Greek mythology. Arachne was a mortal girl who beat the goddess Athena at a weaving contest, so Athena turned her into a spider.
Many young spiderlings travel long distances to find a home attached to piece of silk blown on the wind. This is called ballooning they have been known to reach heights of 1,525 metres and travel hundreds of miles.
Until 200 years ago doctors believed that a diet of crushed spiders was a cure for the common cold.
In New Guinea the giant wood spider spins a web 2m wide and 3mm thick, they are so strong that the local tribesmen use them as fishing nets.
Every night the Orb web spider spins a bouncy web that contains enough silk to make a pair of tights. The web is light enough to blow in the wind but extremely strong. It must be strong enough to support the spider, which is 4000 times heavier than the web.
My wife thinks i need to get a life
Chris
Thought i,d lighten the mood with some spider facts from one of our Club Magazines.
Spider facts
Not all spiders have eight eyes, some have six eyes, some four, some two and some have no eyes at all.
A spider’s web is packed with healthy nutrients. Before a spider spins a new web it makes a nutritious meal out of the
old one.
The word Arachnid is derived from Greek mythology. Arachne was a mortal girl who beat the goddess Athena at a weaving contest, so Athena turned her into a spider.
Many young spiderlings travel long distances to find a home attached to piece of silk blown on the wind. This is called ballooning they have been known to reach heights of 1,525 metres and travel hundreds of miles.
Until 200 years ago doctors believed that a diet of crushed spiders was a cure for the common cold.
In New Guinea the giant wood spider spins a web 2m wide and 3mm thick, they are so strong that the local tribesmen use them as fishing nets.
Every night the Orb web spider spins a bouncy web that contains enough silk to make a pair of tights. The web is light enough to blow in the wind but extremely strong. It must be strong enough to support the spider, which is 4000 times heavier than the web.
For a given thickness, spider silk is stronger than steel.
Black widow venom is ten times more potent than Rattle snake venom.
Tropical spider webs may contain 100 metres of silk.
In 1936, a policeman on Lambeth Bridge in London held up traffic in order to let a large spider cross the road.
King Robert the bruce of scotland, following defeat by the English in 1396, saw a spider trying to swing from one beam to the next. After six attempts the spider succeeded, thus inspiring Robert to defeat the English at Bannockburn.
The earliest known representation of a spider is a drawing on a cave wall by a prehistoric artist in Gasuffa Gorge/ Castellom in Spain.
After the violent eruption of Krakatoa in August 1883, the first scientist to set foot on the shattered island in may 1884, reported no animal life apart from a small spider which was spinning a web.
In 1919 at Prairie Tableland, Queensland Australia, a Tarantula (selencosima sp) was seen dragging a Chicken over 50ft (16m) to its Burrow.
Jumping spiders can jump directly upward as much as much as 6 inches (16cm), they also hold the altitude record as a pair were found 22000ft (7000m) on mount Everest in 1920.
My wife thinks i need to get a life
Chris
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