About The Silk Road
Spiders are really fascinating animals and if you can learn to share your world with them in peace, you will have added a little to your enjoyment of life.
The Silk Road Description
Spiders seem to inspire a combination of fascination and fear amongst the public in general. I believe that the fascination is entirely justified by their beauty, complex behaviour, varied lifestyles and extraordinary diversity. On the other hand, fear of spiders, which can range from mild aversion to a fully fledged clinical condition known as arachnophobia, is less easy to explain. It seems unlikely that an innate fear of poisonous bites can really account for such apprehension. Among the 46, 000 or so described species of spiders worldwide, only some 20 or 30 are reliably reported to cause seriously dangerous bites to humans and none of these are found in Britain. Unless you happen to have the misfortune to be highly allergic, the most unpleasant symptom you are likely to suffer from a spider bite in the UK is a relatively mild and short-lived local reaction, equivalent to a bee or wasp sting. Other reasons that are sometimes put forward for this fear are that they move incredibly fast or are hairy, both of which equally well describe many other animals (such as domestic cats) which rarely inspire similar anxieties. Whatever the causes, innate or learned, most people can overcome their fear of spiders once they become more familiar with them.
Reviews
Aelurillus v-insignitus female. In the UK these are a nationally scarce species and this little lady was found at Brean Down. Habitat was stony calcareous grassland with lots of sun.
Perspective
Two of the worlds most feared spiders; a Sydney Funnelweb (Atrax robustus) left, and a Brazilian Wandering Spider (Phoneutria reidyi) right.
Dangerous right? Perhaps. Nobody has died from Sydney Funnelweb bite since 1980, and deaths from Wandering Spiders are quite rare. Then again, think about this. Is a family car dangerous? No one runs screaming from the sight of them, yet in Australia over 1500 people die annually from motor vehicle accidents. Over 30,000 die each year in the US, and over a million people die globally. So where is the real danger? It’s not lurking in the shadows waiting to bite you, it’s sitting in plain sight in the driveway.
I'm extremely sad to report the death of Australian arachnologist "Lady of Spiders" Barbara York Main earlier this week. She was an amazing naturalist and a pioneer in arachnology, respected throughout the world. She will be greatly missed!
Barbara was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in January 2011 for "service to science and conservation as a researcher and educator in the field of arachnology, and to the community of Western Australia". The award was announced ...in the 2011 Australia Day Honours List. She is also an honorary member of the International Society of Arachnology. In 2018 Main was awarded the Medal of the Royal Society of Western Australia, the first woman to win it since the award began in 1924. Main is noted for having studied the oldest known spider, a Gaius villosus trapdoor spider she named "Number 16", from its birth in 1974 to its death in 2016. - source Wikipedia
See More
Labulla thoracica This close up shows the impressive and intricate structure of a males palps. When male spiders mature, the last segment of the pedipalp, the tarsus, forms into a complicated structure known as the palpal organ. These secondary sexual organs are used to transfer sperm to the female during copulation. The male spins a tiny web known as a sperm web, deposits a drop of sperm which is then sucked up into the palpal organ ready to inseminate the female. Think t...urkey baster and you will get the idea. The details of palpal structures vary considerably between different groups of spiders and are the gold standard when it comes to identifying species. In the most part, male palps allows the male to only mate with a female conspecific which is usually termed as the lock and key system. What I do find interesting in this photo is the spider is chewing his palps something Bristowe mentions regularly in his observations.
See More
Megaloremmius leo. Huntsman spider in the family Sparassidae from the rain forests of eastern Madagascar.
Andasibe National park. Madagascar_wildlife #byPatrickAndriamihaja
Remarkable looking Sparassid Heteropoda sp. from Yunnan province, China. Shared with permission. Photos by Gao Hanfei https://twitter.com/GHF0000/status/112711 0150685204481?s=19