Spider radio story was a fascinating listen

Published 3:26 pm Tuesday, November 3, 2020

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Surveying the storm damage from Hurricane Zeta on Thursday, I couldn’t help but hear a fascinating story on “All Things Considered.”

The story was Halloween related, of sorts.

The host, Ari Shapiro, began the story with the following line: All right. As we get closer to Halloween, spiderwebs have been blanketing neighborhoods all over – fake webs, at least. But not all spiders hunt with those round silk traps.

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That was the hook for me.

The story was about the ogre-faced spider, or its Latin name, Deinopis spinosa.

The ogre-faced spider is fascinating. The spider uses silk between its legs to attack its prey.

The spider also uses low-frequency sounds to detect prey as well by its hair on its legs.

As I was driving about, I couldn’t help but imagine how the spider traps its victims.

Can you imagine producing a silk web that quick? That’s pretty impressive.

This spider, like all others, is doing a service for us as it is feasting on insects, thereby keeping the insect population down.

Everytime I see a spider, I always make a deal with it. I’ll let it live as long as it doesn’t bother me and helps keep the insects down.

That seems to be a good deal.

Anybody see any ogre-faced spiders around?