Thread for Taco & Coco - Silk sack lunch

Just thought this was cool...

Q: Why do spiders wrap their prey up in their web? Is the prey dead by that point or is it just paralyzed?

A: Remember poor Frodo in the Lord of the Rings? How the monster spider Shelob wrapped him in spider silk and paralyzed him? Fiction borrowed from fact. That much is true. Fortunately for Frodo, though, the plot omitted the dissolving of his flesh.

A spider swathes her prey in silk to subdue him and prevent his escape.

"Spiders are soft-bodied creatures who need to protect themselves from injury as the prey thrashes about in the web," says Susan C. Jones, urban entomologist at Ohio State University.

First the spider detects web vibrations that alert her to a struggling insect (or even bat or small bird). She dashes out along safe silks and shoots silk strands around the insect to hold it and stop its wild flailing. She stabs her fangs into the victim and injects poison to paralyze it and digestive fluid to dissolve the content of the prey's body. This takes an hour or two. The prey does not live long.

She can feed at her leisure. The spider plunges her fangs in, pumps with her muscular stomach, and sucks out the soup — using her hollow fangs as straws. Conserving energy spent on silk making, she also liquefies and eats the enshrouding silk. Done with dinner, she cuts away the hollow prey husk and it falls to the ground.

Spiders don't get caught in their own web because, as you guessed, they deal with non-sticky webbing. An orb spider, for example, lays down a temporary scaffolding of non-sticky silk. She walks on the non-sticky part and fills in a spiral of sticky threads. As she builds the sticky web, she cuts away the temporary scaffolding. She also puts safety strands into the web that are non-sticky. These allow her to later wend her way safely to her prey.

By the way, not all spiders build webs and some build webs totally from non-sticky silk. Orb web design is unique to each species. Spiders also use silk to line a lair, create a lifeline (like astronauts spacewalking), and encase their eggs.

"Males of some species use silk to wrap the female prior to mating," says Jones. (Untrusting souls.)

Further Reading:

Ohio State University: Spiders in and around the house by Susan C. Jones

Maurice Burton and Robert Burton, ed. The International Wildlife Encyclopedia. New York: Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 1969.

while this was fascinating to read, I will still smash them if they run across the floor.

Maybe Coco can join Taco and the two tamales at the next SLCC Potluck.

Except I think she would prefer orange.

yum, oranges.. but let's leave the spiders outside.

Thanks so much for this information, Rose, really neat to read and really thoughtful of you to post it! A++++++++++++ great seller!

I would have come to you SLCC potluck Taco but you only had two tamales and you didn't mention if they were hot or not.

Ahhhh Nisa - spidies only take such little delicate bites.