Ruud Kleinpaste: It's spider time

It’s Spider time! 

Autumn – everybody is looking for a place to hibernate and those that are not hibernating will be looking for a place to find a mate. This is the time of the year to go outside after sunset, with a head-torch on, spotting our clever arachnid friends. 

Jumping Spiders (aptly named Salticidae – reminding me of Salto Mortale, the deadly jump) are everywhere inside our homes, on the plants outside and on the window sills where it’s nice and warm. Warmth means good conditions for flies and other prey – so that’s where these spiders perform their daring jumps 

Outside the windows you often find messy websites, inhabited by Badumna the grey house spider.  

Ironically, the white-tailed spider preys on Badumna and are therefore often found on the kitchen windows in the evening. 

A rather large and rather common dark spider is currently also on the move: it’s Uliodon, the “Vagrant” spider (therefore aptly named, as it is of no fixed abode) that is knocking on doors to find a girlfriend or boyfriend. 

Now this is a species that can cause the trouble often erroneously linked to white-tails and their bites.  

And then there are the master-builders of silken contraptions; these are often found in Native bush, or gardens with a good amount of large trees, especially trees with holes and other nooks and crannies in them: the Horizontal sheetweb spiders Cambridgea. 

That sheetweb can be huge and the spider hangs on the underside of that trampoline, waiting for a moth to make the tiny mistake of falling onto that web; a very quick move by the owner sees that moth being impaled by two sizeable fangs full of toxins that dissolve the insides of that prey. 

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