Handsome brute

[boaty]

This beastie has been in residence chez boaty for a couple of months now

Quite small when we first saw it, but has grown considerably due to the large number of hits on its website!!

Unfortunately it's recently been experiencing a rather savage denial of service attack from the elements, leading me to worry for its future; but it keeps patiently reconfiguring!

 

[NickBristol]

ewwwwwww :shock:

How big has it got to now? Can we have a scale of somesort on further updates?

 

[Paganwolf]

thats the UK's common orb web spider Araneus diadematus, and dont worry thats not to scale!!! they vary in size and colour upto abt 3cm leg span in females ,very beautifully marked the one in the pic is female

 

[jakunen]

I've got one in my conservatory.

It's keeping the white fly and drosophila nicely under control, but as the web anchors reach all the way across width of the conservatory (which is about the same size a the average 1 car garage), ITS BLOOMIN INCONVENIENT!!!

I keep forgetting about it and start using my exercise machine to find it staring me in the face and not looking happy about the fact I'm wearing the web as a hair net...again!

 

[NickBristol]

cheers for the reassurance

Even tho I did a dissertation at Uni on the effects of biological neurotoxins from various species around the world, including some of the really really nasty ones I've never been able to stop myself from going ewwwwww at a spider. More than happy to play with them tho which is odd.

The female of the species are always the ones to watch too

 

[Lurch]

Are you trying to give me nightmares?

 

[jakunen]

Nah, we're all a bunch of nice guys...

 

[boaty]

Well, she's still alive and well but has moved her web up a bit higher

The thing is, she's not been brought up proper - I'm sure we all believe in the ideal of only catching/foraging what you're going to use, but she's been using her web to catch insects that she doesn't eat! She just leaves the little crunchy ones; puts paid (yet again!) to the idea that humans are the only animals that act indiscriminately!

 

[Tantalus]

i thought they sucked the insides out and left the shells?

Tant

 

[jakunen]

That's what I thought too???

 

[Paganwolf]

these little critters wont be worth her while, she can tell this by the vibrations through the web, although she will (usually) munch her web every night and build a new one, so the little bug'gers wont go to waste.

 

[boaty]

As the lupine one says, these littluns just don't do it for her, so she leaves them - I have seen her munching on a juicier one, but didn't have my camera handy

Glad to hear that she'd eat 'em when recycling her web though!

 

[JonathanD]

I got bitten by one of these last year on the web of my hand between the thumb and forefinger, ****** hurts and the lump itches like mad, took two weeks to go down.

...and yes, I did try to climb a wall, but nothing happened :?: