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The secret lives of spiders: an anthology |
Amid wood-sage and bramble,
On dry ground at the edge of gorse
The white vortex winds. She waits
At the nadir, the spout of the spun
Funnel, half hunger and half fear.
By night, the struts of the spiral
Are strung from fallen leaves
And broken sticks, or slung
From seeding inflorescences,
Tight rungs to slake her greed.
Welcome to her labyrinth,
Her crystal castle
Of hidden snares.
Fear not, sweet
Fly.
Source material. This poem is the product of a morning’s observation of this beautiful arachnid, dubbed the “labyrinth spider” by J.H. Fabre. No less than five intricately structured, funnel-shaped webs were watched beside Bristles Wood in Dropmore, Buckinghamshire on 26th July 2003, one of them occupied by a couple, co-habiting harmoniously for the time being; the other four inhabited by hopeful spinsters. The spider lurks in wait for its prey in a silk tube adjacent to a conspicuous, funnel shaped web. The strands of the web are not sticky, but unassuming flying insects are ensnared by additional fibres, slung more or less at random across the funnel. Once an insect has flown inside, the obstacles that impede escape are nearly always insurmountable. Vibrations caused by the struggle excite the spider’s curiosity, and once it has ascertained that these are not evidence of a predator such as a bird or ichneumon wasp, the spider darts out, seizes the prey, and sucks it dry at leisure in the depths of her bower. I have likened the web to a castle in response to Fabre’s inimitable description of the visual effect achieved when these spiders’ webs are decorated with “chandeliers” of dew. See The Life of the Spider, Chapter XV.
Giles Watson (July 2003)
Our cradle empty, we shall climb
To a high place, to catch the wind
And fly, strewing gossamer as we go,
Singly, flowing without will, to land
Wherever.
We shall know, by the compass
Blotched in white upon our backs,
Where to spin the spokes, and how
To spire the wheel; with one leg, feel
The trembling.
Approach too fast, and we shall quake,
And blur the whorl with shaking
From the underside, the compass
Pointing down, our legs the eight points
Taking.
At night we eat the orb, conserve
The silk, to spin again by morning,
Indelicately, cramming all
Into open mouths, every spoke
Consuming.
We spin the globes of nurture
After mating, span them so,
With loving claws, adore the
Minor worlds we make, compass
Turning.
Entwined in silk, their spinnerets
Are forming, massed bundles
Of eyes, and legs, and fangs
Entangling. Each of us
Expiring.
Source material. Veronica Godines, Araneus diadematus, http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu. Theodore H. Savory, The Spiders and Allied Orders of the British Isles, London, 1945, pp. 130–131. The common “Garden Spider” has a characteristic “cross” on its back, and is the archetypal orb-weaver. Immatures, already orphans by the time they emerge, go out to seek their fortunes by abseiling more or less at random on air-currents, attached to an anchor point by nothing but a thread of gossamer.
Giles Watson (July 2003)
Pirates of the spider world, we are born
Hanging from a halyard, and when grown
We wear red bandanas on our backs,
And cultivate the hairy legs of cut-throats.
Our tactics are subtle, well considered:
We do not raise our own rigging, set sails
To catch the wind, or lurk in caves,
But tug, gently, some lubber’s ropes, and wait.
The trick works every time; he thinks
We’re dinner, struggling in his snare,
And dashes out to assail us, but we
Draw cutlasses to slay him where he stands.
Source material. The genus Ero (Mimetidae) are very specialised hunters, preying exclusively on other spiders, of the genus Theridion. Ero does this by creeping up and tugging on the trip-wires of her victim, who, assuming that the commotion is being caused by an insect trapped in the web, dashes out expecting a meal. Little does the unsuspecting Theridion realise that he or she is destined to be the main course. For this reason, Bristowe (p. 23) describes Ero as a “pirate”. Taxonomists recognise Ero by the characteristic arrangement of spines on the anterior legs, and this spider is also remarkable in that it lays a few eggs inside a dark-brown cocoon, which it suspends from a single thread. Some Ero species boast brightly coloured abdomens.
Giles Watson (July 2003)
I will court you with the semaphore
Of yellow legs and white tarsi,
Raised perpendicular in loving salute
Like a crab doing homage.
I will ruffle my red eyebrows, jerk
My palpi at you sexily,
The yellow gooseberries of our
Abdomens drawing close.
I will do it vertically on the wall,
Desperate to impress you.
Stonecrop stems and toadflax
Shade our frantic throes.
Source material. This beautiful jumping spider is one of a number with elaborate courtship rituals, and the colouration of the male in particular has clearly evolved to enhance his display. It is plentiful throughout Britain. See Theodore H. Savory, The Spiders and Allied Orders of the British Isles, London, 1945, pp. 75–76.
Giles Watson (July 2003)
Now that I am long in the tooth, and lie
Inverted beneath my slack-strung hammock,
I champ my old chelicerae, and remember
My money spider youth in dewy spring,
Skydiving the swell on wind-stretched silk,
Flying wingless, eight legs curled, surveying
The dome of blue with upturned eyes,
Cushioned on hot air rising. I was a carefree
Spider then, the nuptials of the shared web
Before me. Now, I am grown too gross
To catch the breeze; I have difficulty
Eating dinner, my mate has slung his skin
Upon a twig, and leaves fall around me.
I look down. Gusts drag them to ground.
Source material. Linyphia montana is one of the larger of the money spiders, reaching a grand length of 7mm when fully grown. It is a very common spider, constructing a hammock-like web in bushes and hedges. Money spiders are the arachnid balloonists par excellence, covering vast distances by making use of thermals and gusts of wind. Linyphia montana is unique among spiders in having chelicerae (fangs) that continue to grow “so that they become disproportionate in size as the spider grows, literally, ‘long in the tooth’.” See Theodore H. Savory, The Spiders and Allied Orders of the British Isles, London, 1945, p. 112.
Giles Watson (August 2003)
First, time for the toning-in; this takes
Two days. You would think I was absorbing
The hue of the flower through my palps,
The way I wax with white on roses,
Grow jaundiced on goldenrod, or green
As a seasick sailor on holly-flowers.
Their scent comes to me through senses
Chemo-tactic, yet I am not sensitized
For these, but for bees and goggle-eyed
Hoverflies, drunk with nectar lust.
For these I wait, coloured in sympathy,
The pinkish, venomed tumour
At the centre of the rose.
By the code of the waggle dance
I shall find you, scent of sweetness.
Here she comes, my sterile queen,
I see her not, but feel her humming,
Taste her diaphonic questing
After nectar, brace my legs
To dodge the sting, draw my fangs
To sink them home.
My beacon,
The outfurled petal, bids me land.
And she is mine. Crablike, I
Manoeuvre like an eight legged
Swivel, let her feed awhile, gauge
The lunge for her vulnerable neck.
The surge of sun-warmed
Nectar, my reward.
Time it like lightning, too late
Thunder’s warning. Bite deeply,
Goggle eyed, and suck, as if
On milk. Hook my legs
About the flower. Deliver
Sweet death.
Pain is all I know.
Source material. Misumena vatia, also known as the flower spider or goldenrod spider (since goldenrods are one of its favourite haunts), does not use web to catch its prey. Instead, both sexes lurk amongst flower petals, waiting to pounce on insects that are attracted to the nectar. Lepidopterists tend to be particularly familiar with this spider, since, as W.S. Bristowe (A Book of Spiders, London, 1947, p. 22) remarks, “I could name several naturalists who have stalked and netted an insect on a flower only to find that it was dead and in the clutches of this spider. I have done so myself.” Misumena is also unique among English spiders in its ability to gradually change colour to match the flower in which it is lurking. This is entirely necessary, since it has been experimentally demonstrated that bees and flies will not visit a flower if a stone of a different hue is concealed within its calyx, but they will ignore stones of a similar colour. Since the female (who is considerably bulkier than the male) only achieves a length of nine millimetres, this spider is endowed with Herculean strength and (as far as Hymenoptera and Diptera are concerned) powerful venom, which enable it to immobilise insects larger than itself whilst clinging to the glabrous surfaces that are its home. Misumena is one of the “crab spiders” (Thomisidae), which are like their crustacean namesakes both in locomotion and appearance. Although spiders all have either six or eight eyes, sight is not their strongest sense. The most powerful stimuli are received through something that roughly approximates to our sense of taste, but this sense is not received through receptors in the mouth, but through the appendages, particularly the palps, which perform a similar function to the antennae of insects. This form of hyper-sensory perception is, incidentally, at its most developed amongst another branch of the Arachnid phylum, the mites, which only have rudimentary eyes, or lack them altogether.
Giles Watson (August 2003)
She moves in jerks, and all her eyes
Reflect a patina of rusted leaves,
Stones of bird cherries, rabbit pellets,
Twigs, worm casts, weather-worn
Flints, and acorns grown wrinkled.
Brambles barb her sky, and above
A dim haze of blue and green;
Her bristled legs make rustlings
Like a breeze in miniscule. Beneath
The soft lozenge of her abdomen,
Slung maternally from spinnerets,
The buff orb of her cocoon
Cushions her progeny. Upon it,
Like a spider on a small moon,
A red mite moves in jerks.
Source material: Pardosa (Lycosa) amentata is a small wolf spider. It does not build a web to ensnare prey, but hunts on foot. The female carries her eggs in a roughly spherical cocoon, which she attaches to her spinnerets and drags along beneath her wherever she goes. The mite observed on the specimen described above may have been a parasite, or possibly only phoretic (“hitching a ride”). Undoubtedly this mite was also supporting a flora of phoretic fungi, a phenomenon that Robert Dunn (‘The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide’, BBC Wildlife Magazine, August, 2003, p. 31) whimsically describes as “metaphoresy”.
Giles Watson (July 2003)
Her first labour: making a globe
For the price of a silk-wrapped fly.
Her second, to trundle with it
Over meadow and furrow,
Grass-stem and straw.
Her third, to build for it
A firmament, and hang it there.
Her fourth, to watch, and wait
And guard, a goddess waning.
Her fifth, to tear apart the stars
And set her angels free.
And last, to be no more their world.
Their tabernacle the sky.
Source material. Pisaura mirabilis is a comparatively large wolf-spider, often seen in meadows and alongside hedgerows. The male woos his mate by offering her a dead fly or other insect, wrapped up in a silk parcel. After breeding, the female is very distinctive, for she carries her large, globe-shaped cocoon beneath her sternum, grasped firmly by her falces and palps, and may be seen hurrying about in this fashion over seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Before the eggs hatch, she constructs a silken tent, making use of the tops of grass stems as supports, and hangs the cocoon within it. After hatching, she continues to assist them by tearing the tent open to let them out. The process is illustrated by a series of photographs in Theodore H. Savory, The Spiders and Allied Orders of the British Isles, London, 1945, Pls. 29, 32, 35, 37, 40.
Giles Watson (August 2003)
Abdomen a stretched bladder, leopard spotted
And ponderous, with legs too long, you stalk
The sleeping fly, with only six eyes, in darkness.
Bristles at your jaundiced joints will feel
The hum of her dormancy, sense
The inrush of air through spiracles at rest.
You do not rush, or even touch her yet,
But retch poison web from your open mouth,
A zigzag puke of silk, to stick her to the floor.
The fly wings strum, the feet drum ineffectually,
And Scytodes, tentative spitting spider, bites her,
Apologetically, on one leg. Waits for death,
And then, like a tender embalmer, unstitches
The silk shroud, bears her on the bier of her wings,
Whispers her orisons, while other spiders sleep.
Source material. Scytodes thoracica, the spitting spider, is nocturnal, and ranges widely at night in search of sleeping insects. It has poor vision, and only six eyes, but senses the presence of its prey through bristles on its legs. The cephalothorax of Scytodes is uniquely enlarged, since it has to house additional silk glands, which normal spiders retain in the abdomen only. When the spider wishes to make a kill, it does so by standing at a distance, and spitting zigzags of poisonous, gummy web over its victim, sticking it to the ground. Only then does the spider venture closer to the prey, delivering the death bite. When the prey has expired, the spider frees its body from the web, and carries it off, to suck it dry at leisure. The spider’s appearance is very distinctive, with its yellowish body covered with dark blotches, its domed cephalothorax, and absurdly long legs. The small genus occurs on all continents except Antarctica.
Giles Watson (July 2003)
He wooed me by stridulations, which only I could hear,
Gave me his sperm, then wandered off to die,
And my marbled belly grew round, like a jelly filled balloon.
I have pitched a wide tent for my little ones, tethered
Each end to a twig or leaf, and now they swarm
In miniscule, about their cone of gauze.
I hunt for them, netting insects with combed-out webs,
Vomiting beetle-juice into upturned mouths,
As they swing, in father’s image, from silk that I have spun.
Source material. Theridion sisyphium Clerck. (formerly known as T. notatum Linn.) is a small, colourful spider, common in hedgerows. The males (and some females) of the family Theridiidae have the ability to stridulate like grasshoppers, by rubbing a toothed, chitinous collar on the abdomen against a series of transverse ridges on the cephalothorax. The sound produced is inaudible to human ears, but presumably sounds like a serenade to a female Theridion. This species is one of a small number of spiders that care assiduously for their young after hatching. The greenish cocoons are inserted in a silken tent, which serves as a nursery for the immature spiders, and while they are young, the mother continues to catch food and regurgitate the juices for them individually, while they hang suspended beneath the tent. There is an illustration of this process in W.S. Bristowe, A Book of Spiders, London, 1947, p. 21. In contrast to the intricate architecture of the tent, the web used for hunting is less carefully designed, but its inadequacies are more than compensated by the spider’s ability to throw sheets of web over its prey, combed through specially adapted hairs on its tarsus.
Giles Watson (August 2003)
Revised 5 August 2019