Spiders don’t really need any help in the creepy department, as the ten featured on this list attest. Nor do they need myths or horror stories to make them scarier. But that doesn’t stop people from trying.
Take the popular story
Spiders don’t really need any help in the creepy department, as the ten featured on this list attest. Nor do they need myths or horror stories to make them scarier. But that doesn’t stop people from trying.
Take the popular story children tell each other: A spider drops down from the ceiling at night, one tiny black mass hanging precariously from a nearly-invisible thread. Its target? The gaping mouth of an unsuspecting, snoring child. That’s how one person eats at least 15 spiders a night, the legend goes.
Except no matter how many times we tell each other the tale, it’s still not true, says Richard Bradley, an associate professor emeritus at Ohio State University and president-elect of the American Arachnological Society.
“Some people have been working on this, trying to disprove it by forcing spiders to go into people’s mouths, and they won’t do it,” Bradley says. “If you were in the center of a huge monster several hundred times larger than you, would you want to go into its mouth?”
Bradley, author of Common Spiders of North America, is one of many professional and novice arachnologists in the country studying the planet’s eight-legged critters and working to dispel popular myths. Most lesions, sores and bites, for example, are blamed on spiders but caused by either an insect or even a flesh-eating bacteria, he says.
But no matter how many times researchers explain that spiders don’t seek out small children to carry away to their webs, deep-rooted fears remain.
In honor of a season full of heebie-jeebies and creepy crawlies, the Cool Green Science blog asked Bradley and U.S. arachnologists for the country’s most interesting, notable or just plain creepy spiders.
Below are the top 10. And for those who just can’t get enough furry legs, googly eyes and impressive fangs, we’ve included an extra one at the end — what is considered the Bigfoot of the spider world.
Imagine building a closet tucked away somewhere safe, and then spending the next 40 years inside. The trapdoor spider does essentially just that, says Marshal Hedin, biology professor at San Diego State University and current president of the American Arachnological Society.
The large, furry females dig a burrow, create a door over the top out of soil, silk and saliva, and never come back out. At night, she props the camouflage door open with the top of her head and waits for vibrations from passing insects. “When something comes by, they grab it with their front legs and go back down into their burrow,” Hedin says. They have been documented in the wild to live up to 35 years old.
Net-Casting Spider, Deinopis
They go by many evocative names including net-casting, ogre-faced and gladiator spiders. Up close, the Deinopis looks like a walking stick with legs wearing a pair of motorcycle goggles.
“I think they’re adorable, but that’s just me,” says Natalie Stalick, a Wyoming-based spider aficionado.
Their claim to fame, outside of their larger-than-life pair of eyes, is their ability to “catch” their prey. The spider typically hangs upside down in a plant or tree with its back legs and holds a rectangular net of silk with its front two legs. When an insect such as a grasshopper wanders by, the ogre-faced spider throws its web as a fisherman would cast a net, says Paula Cushing, curator of Invertebrate Zoology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.
Least Venomous (But Still Somewhat Disturbing)
Feather-legged orb weaver, Uloborus, Family Uloboridae
The dietary habits of most spiders don’t help their creepy reputation. They eat by injecting venom and digestive enzymes into their prey, waiting for the insides to dissolve and sucking it out.
But not this guy. The feather-legged orb weaver is a member of the Uloboridae family, the one North American spider family without any venom at all.
Its webs resemble cotton candy, and entangles prey rather than traps it with a sticky glu