The largest spider in the world weighs as much as a dog: what else is it interesting about?

Classification and habitat

The Latin name of the spider is Argyroneta aquatica. Belongs to the family Cybaeidae (cybeids).

Silverfish live across most of the Eurasian continent - from the islands of Britain to Japan. In Russia and Europe they are common in most regions. The water spider inhabits bodies of water with stagnant water, and occasionally chooses rivulets and streams with weak currents for habitat.

In the reservoirs where the silver spider lives and breeds, there should be abundant vegetation, a lot of algae, on which it builds webs for catching prey and breeding offspring.

The Latin and Russian versions of the name of the water spider contain the root “silver”.

Being in water surrounded by air, the animal’s body shines with a silver sheen, so in different languages it is called in accordance with this quality.

Photo of the largest spider

In 2014, photographer Piotr Naskrecki published a story on his blog about an unexpected encounter with a large tarantula spider. He was walking through the forest in the southern African country of Guyana and heard a rustling sound under the forest floor. It turned out that next to him there was a very large individual of an arthropod creature - the span of its paws reached 30 centimeters, and its weight was 170 grams. According to the researcher, the spider was the weight of a healthy puppy. But, while dogs are considered smart and friendly animals, the wild monster was unfriendly - it released a cloud of its microscopic hairs directly into Peter’s eyes, after which he had difficulty seeing for several days.

You can see how tarantula spiders defend themselves from enemies using a cloud of fur in the video above.

It may sound counterintuitive, but tarantula spiders very rarely attack birds. As a rule, they feed on forest-dwelling insects, worms, frogs and small rodents. They catch them by jumping out of ambush - the web is used only for building nests. Of course, if a spider finds a bird's nest on the ground, it will definitely feast on the chicks or even the adults. But the name “tarantula” was given to these creatures only because in 1705 the German artist Maria Merian depicted a spider eating a hummingbird in her picture.

Illustration of a tarantula spider by Maria Merian

As mentioned, tarantula spiders can be found almost anywhere on our planet. But most of them live in the forests of Africa, South America and Australia. But people rarely see them - even Piotr Naskrecki once said that over the past 15 years he was able to see them only three times. Huge spiders live on the tops of trees, bushes and burrows. Their preferences depend on gender, age and individual characteristics.

Photo of a tarantula spider by Piotr Naskrecki

If you are afraid of spiders, try looking at pictures of spiders from the genus Maratus. They say that these are some of the most beautiful spiders in the world!

Behavior in the wild

If, according to the description, the silverfish can be confused with other species of the arachnid class, then the way of life is fundamentally different. The dropsy is the only spider that lives well in water. Swimming functions are provided by the legs, which he uses to row like oars.

The silverfish cannot be considered an absolutely underwater spider - it runs perfectly on land. At the slightest danger, an animal pulled to the surface by a net develops an enviable speed.

Dropsy can be detected and identified by the air bubble (bell), in which it sits shallow under water, sticking out halfway, and awaits a gaping victim.

The construction and maintenance of an underwater house is the main part of the silverfish’s life, a condition for its successful hunting.

Nest

The construction of the nest takes place in several stages:

First, the silverfish chooses a convenient place for hunting - it hangs a loose web on underwater plants. Cobwebs are a product of special glands that are found in all arachnids. This sticky substance comes out liquid, but quickly hardens in air and water.
Having weaved a network, the dropsy begins to draw air from the surface. It comes to the surface and captures air bubbles with the hairs on the body. Releases it under the arachnoid membrane, lifting it.
The arachnoid network plays the role of the shell of a balloon. As the spider captures a new portion of air, it strengthens the surface with new layers of web. The atmospheric air captured by the hairs is what the silverback spider gradually fills the nest with.
The air lifts the constructed dome, creating a comfortable nest the size of a walnut inside it.

One end of the shelter is open and serves as the entrance to the underwater house. The silverfish rests in its home, cleans its hairs, waits for prey, eats, and hangs up prey left for future use.

The spider lives alone in the nest; the males build houses close to the females, but live separately.

The dome has to be filled with air regularly. Healthy, strong individuals have large nests. Sick and weakened silverfish lose the ability to hold air on their body, the nest falls apart, becomes small and loose. The spiders weaken and drown.

Types of domes

For different life processes, water spiders build special nests:

Summer. Most of the silverfish's active life takes place in these shelters.
Egg. Typically, females convert their homes into egg domes when they lay eggs.
For molting. Here the spiders wait out the period of changing their body shell.
Wintering. This shelter is intended for hibernation - the shell is dense, the size is smaller. However, silverback spiders more often use shells for wintering. They skillfully adapt to conditions and occupy empty mollusk houses.
Spermic. Males build in preparation for reproduction.

Building a nest takes several hours. During this time, the silverfish rises to the surface several dozen times, stops to rest and continues working until complete completion.

Reproduction

The male looks for a female and fertilizes on her territory - in her summer home. She looks after the offspring. The clutch contains from 15 to 160 eggs. The female regularly fills the bell with air and protects the clutch.

Egg development lasts 10 days. The little spiders molt twice in their mother's house, then leave the house and live on their own.

Family ties are severed after leaving the nest. A hungry female can eat gaping spiders from her own offspring that have left the house.

Wintering

Silverfish can overwinter at any stage of development. Late clutches wait out the winter in the mother's nest. Vernal ponds are usually full of young silver spiders.

Aquatic plants falling to the bottom in autumn pull nests with spiders down. There they spend the winter. In spring they float closer to the surface. Some spend the winter on the shore in shells. With the onset of warm weather, they thaw safely if they are not eaten by birds.

Spring waters spread dropsy over a large area. They migrate in mollusk shells and directly in domes.

How to get rid of spiders indoors

In a private house

Like all other animals, spiders prefer to settle where there is enough food for them. Their food includes flies, cockroaches, moths, earwigs, ants and other small insects. Therefore, you need to start the fight against spiders by destroying their potential food :

Treat baseboards and corners with crawling insect repellent sprays. This action will already reduce the number of spiders, since such products are poisons for everyone.
Kill crawling insects using special crayons and gels.
Using a damp cloth wrapped around a stick or mop, remove all the cobwebs in the house. At this stage, it is important not to rush, so that along with the web, spiders also fall into our trap. The rag is then carefully removed on the street and destroyed along with its contents.

Sprinkle acid in spider habitats.

Clean regularly using a vacuum cleaner. It is useful to remove the brush from the vacuum cleaner and, using only the pipe, vacuum the baseboards (especially ceiling ones) and corners.
You can also use aerosol preparations based on chlorpyrifos or boric acid. They are designed to control spiders and ants. The product is used to treat corners and walls, after excluding access to fresh air. After 3 hours, you can ventilate and clean the room.
There are ultrasonic repellers that are harmless for human use.
Spiders cannot stand the smell of paint. Have you noticed that after repairs you can’t see them for a long time? The fact is that modern wallpaper adhesives always add insecticidal preparations that kill insects.

This is also interesting: How to get rid of arachnophobia? Or how to overcome your fear of spiders

In the country

All of the above measures also apply in country houses.

However, very often cottages have a basement and attic, which should also be taken care of when fighting spiders.

The basement should be cleared of all the junk that often accumulates there for years.
It is necessary to collect and destroy all the webs.
If possible, whitewash the walls and ceiling with lime. Spiders cannot stand its smell, and this simple measure will rid you of their presence for a long time.

Body size and structure

The appearance of dropsy is quite classic - the body consists of two parts. There is a deep section between the cephalothorax and abdomen.

The body of young spiders is lighter in color (yellow-brown, greenish-gray) than that of adults and old ones.

Body structure features:

The cephalothorax is rounded, the head is convex, slightly narrowed.
There are 8 pairs of eyes, despite this vision is weak; even a few centimeters away, the silver spider cannot distinguish objects.
There are 2 pairs of jaws on the head, one of them has sharp edges (chelicerae) and a poisonous gland. With the help of the secretion of this gland, the spider immobilizes and kills prey.
The legs have hairs with which the spider feels objects. They play the role of organs of touch.
The scutellum is shaped like a heart; underneath it are the bases of 4 pairs of legs. In males, the front legs are longer than the hind legs.
The abdomen is not dissected. The surface is covered with bristles or hairs. Their density is very high - about 1000 per square millimeter. These hairs have different shapes and lengths. They serve to hold air around the body.

The structure and arrangement of hairs in males and females is different.
The male has no hairs on part of his back. Because of this, the air dome of spiders is different; the female can be distinguished from the male by the shape of the bell around the body. Although most of the silver spider's life is spent in water, it breathes atmospheric air. Underwater existence is ensured by the construction of a cozy nest, similar to a vessel with air, and thin bristles that are not wetted by water.

Silverfish constantly rub their hairs with their paws, clearing them of impurities so that they retain air better. To do this, they suck their paws, secreting a special secretion that they use to treat the hairs on their body.

This is the main activity of the spider in the air dome when it is not waiting for prey.

The size of female silverfish is 11-12 millimeters, males – 14-18 millimeters. Female dropsy are small and not aggressive. They do not eat their males after fertilization, like other spiders. They get along well in the neighborhood - males usually build a house near the nests of females, so as not to spend a long time looking for a partner for reproduction.

Description and features

To describe the appearance of Argiope, we need a number of special “spider” terms.

1. First, let's introduce you to the concept of chelicerae. If translated from ancient Greek, you get two words - claw and horn. This is the first pair of limbs, or jaws, of arachnids and other arthropods. They are located in front of and above the mouth.

They usually look like claws and consist of several segments. At the tip of such claws there are ducts of poisonous glands. Now we can explain who araneomorphic spiders are - their chelicerae are located towards each other, and they fold together, sometimes overlapping one another. Such chelicerae are designed to attack large prey, sometimes larger than the hunter himself.

2. The second important term in the description of spiders is pedipalps. Translated from ancient Greek, we get two words again - leg and feel. This is the second pair of limbs, the pedicles, located on the cephalothorax (called the prosoma in chelicerates). They are located on the side of the chelicerae, and behind them there is a second pair of walking legs.

“Dismembered” into several segments, like phalanges. Adult male spiders use every last segment of the pedipalp at the moment of copulation with the female. They are transformed into a kind of sexual organ called the cymbium. It is used as a reservoir for sperm, as well as for directly introducing it into the female's genital openings.

3. And the last complex concept is stabilimentum (or stabiliment). This is a prominent thickening on the web. Usually made in the form of a zigzag weave of numerous threads at the center. There can be one, two, three or more such pronounced thickenings, depending on the type of spider.

It can be vertical in the form of a line, it can go in a circle, or it can be in the shape of a cross. Moreover, this cross is made in the form of the letter X. A very important thing for spiders, as you can see, since they constantly make it on their web. Its exact purpose has not yet been studied by people, despite numerous attempts.

Argiope weaves very strong webs that can trap medium-sized grasshoppers

Perhaps it attracts the attention of the victim, or, conversely, scares away enemies, or disguises a spider in its background. There are so many versions! The version about attracting victims is closest to the truth, especially since the purpose of the web itself is a trap. By the way, it is the stabilimentum that is best visible in ultraviolet rays, which many insects “see”.

Some spiders initially had a linear shape of the stabilimentum, but over time it became cruciform, which also speaks in favor of the version of luring prey. As they say, they do any “tuning” to achieve the desired goal.

Externally, spiders look like this:

Varieties

The most common species in our country is Clubionafallax - dropsy, silverweed.

This species has perfectly adapted to life in shallow stagnant waters, building bell-shaped domes for itself and its offspring. Each dwelling is intended for a certain phase of life - molting, wintering, breeding.

Males are 2-3 millimeters larger than females, look identical in appearance, and have a slightly darker body color.

Hydrachna cruenta Mull

A small red spider of the genus Araneina, also called a mite. It feeds on larvae and small crustaceans. The body is round, the spider looks like a small ball with short legs.

Attaches eggs to the foliage of aquatic plants, braiding them with an adhesive solution.

Dolomedes

This species is a representative of surface spiders that run along the surface at high speed. They prefer the surface of the water to dry land; when in danger, they easily dive into the water. The body size of females reaches 22 millimeters, males are significantly smaller (13 millimeters).

It can live on the shore, where it drags caught prey and eats it. It may not make shelters; it simply hides in the thickets of grass.

Its lifestyle can be called semi-aquatic. Lives near ponds and swamps, loves wet areas of meadows, forest thickets, and penetrates gardens.

Dolomedes can feed on insects caught in the air, aquatic inhabitants - fry, crustaceans. It kills the victim very quickly, then savors the food for several hours.

The most poisonous spider in Russia

Here, neither specialists nor ordinary people have any disagreements and there cannot be any. Karakurt is the only one of all the representatives of arthropods living in the vast expanses of our country whose bite can be fatal.

Appearance

Only females reaching a size of 15-20 mm are dangerous to humans. They have two distinctive signs that prevent karakurts from being confused with other representatives of arthropods. There are exactly 13 bright spots or dots on the upper side of the black abdomen. Naturally, there is no time to count them, but the very combination of black with bright spots should serve as a signal of danger. On the underside of the abdomen there is one equally bright spot in the shape of an hourglass.

Karakurt is the only spider in Russia whose bite can be fatal

Habitats

Karakurts are thermophilic. They live in the Southern Urals, the Caucasus and the Black Sea regions. However, recently the habitat of this spider has expanded to more northern regions of Russia, right up to the Moscow region. This is explained by global warming, but more optimistic scientists are confident that this only happens in very hot years, and not always.

What does it eat?

Like all representatives of arachnids, silverfish are predatory animals. They build traps that are located under water to catch prey. The web serves to catch small animals while the owner waits in the dome. By the vibrations of the webs, the silverfish determines the appearance of the victim.

Then the dropsy acts like all spiders - it injects poison, then saliva. Waits for the food to soften and has lunch. If there is no desire to eat, the prey is taken into the dome and hung in reserve in the web.

Dropsy's food consists of underwater and terrestrial small inhabitants. The female's prey is often her own children who leave the nest.

Small crustaceans

The silverfish spends most of its life in water. Small crustaceans are the spider’s usual diet. The most favorite types of food include water donkeys, small crustaceans measuring 1-2 millimeters in size.

Fry are also often caught in silverfish nets, which can reduce the population of some fish species.

Mosquitoes

Mosquito larvae and the insects themselves, which live in abundance near bodies of water, make up a significant part of the silverfish’s diet.

flies

Ubiquitous flies of various species and their larvae often end up in webs and become food for silver spiders.

Reproduction and lifespan

They become ready for procreation immediately after the last molt. At this time, in “girls” the chelicerae are still soft. During mating, the girlfriend wraps the partner in a web, and if he cannot then free himself, his fate is unenviable, he will be eaten. By the way, I would like to voice a certain theory about the notorious cruelty of female spiders here.

There is an assumption that the male deliberately gives himself up to be torn to pieces, supposedly thereby consolidating his position as a father. The female, having eaten the body of the unfortunate admirer, becomes satisfied and does not look for more adventures, but calmly engages in fertilization. It turns out that she herself is not against keeping the sperm of this particular applicant in herself. This is such “monstrous love”.

As a mother, she then performs at her best. She weaves a large cocoon, which is located not far from the main web, and hides eggs in it. Outwardly, these “nurseries” resemble the seed capsule of a certain plant. There are up to hundreds of eggs in a cocoon. The mother carefully guards the cocoon.

Argiope weaves a kind of cocoon in which about 300 eggs are kept and overwintered.

Children leave the “nurseries” at the end of August – beginning of September and actively disperse through the air on spider webs. There is another option for the development of events. Sometimes the spider lays eggs in late autumn and leaves this world. And the spiderlings are born and fly away in the spring. The life of Argiope is short, only 1 year.

A spider that lives in the ground in Russia. Spiders in central Russia, the south and Siberia, are they poisonous?

Not many people know that poisonous spiders are found not only in Australia or South America, they can live in your neighborhood. To understand this in more detail, we offer a rating of the most dangerous spiders that can live near us.

KARAKURT

One of the most insidious and dangerous spiders lives mainly in the south of our country (Crimea, Krasnodar region), but like other southern spiders, it can migrate to other regions during abnormal heat. Karakurt (from Turkic: “ka’ra” - black and “kurt” - worm) has a very dangerous poison that can lead to death if the bitten person is not helped in time. A karakurt bite causes unbearable pain spreading throughout the body. Only a serum developed against the venom of these spiders can save the bitten person. It is worth saying that only female karakurts are dangerous, which can be identified by a mark on their abdomen in the form of a red hourglass.

SOUTH RUSSIAN TARANTULA

The spider, the size of which can reach the palm of an adult, is mentioned in fairy tales and epics (it is even given a special nickname - people call it mizgir). Both sharply negative and positive traits are attributed to it.

With the help of supersensitive hairs located on its legs, the tarantula is able to hear human steps from several kilometers away.

Helping to get rid of blood-sucking insects - flies, mosquitoes and others, the tarantula is capable of biting a victim that is significantly larger in size, not only a mouse or a frog, but even a person. A tarantula bite cannot kill a healthy person, but pain, swelling, and inflammation are guaranteed. Only an allergic reaction is very dangerous, so it is best to take antihistamines with you on hikes and excursions to places where tarantulas live. Spider blood can reduce the harm from a bite. The wound can be smeared with the blood of a killed spider, sprinkled with hot ash, which neutralizes the poison; some people cauterize the bite site with a burning coal.

They say that the South Russian tarantula can pursue its victim for hours if it does not die immediately. This usually happens if the tarantula has bitten a large “game”. It periodically bites its prey and injects venom until it drops dead.

CHEIRACANTIUM (Yellow pouch spider)

Distributed in South Africa, countries of East Asia, Australia and almost throughout Europe, as well as in central Russia. Usually hidden under the foliage of small trees. Attacks mainly when there is danger for the purpose of self-defense. After a bite, a person feels burning pain, nausea, vomiting, weakness, body aches, body temperature rises sharply, and a headache. The bite site may turn red or even blue and, after some time, becomes covered in blisters. Symptoms usually disappear 2 - 3 days after the bite, the mark on the skin remains longer. If the condition of the bitten person worsens significantly, it is necessary to consult a doctor as soon as possible.