~~Here be spooders!!!!~~ ( and other critters!!)

[TOMTE]

Here's another 2023 video that I just uploaded, this time of an extremely gravid nursery web spider

 

[AntiqueB]

Yours was fast, and a lot neater! Mine has a mess of a web!

 

[AntiqueB]

It must have been amazing to see her build her egg sac. I saw spiderlings hatching once, but never a female making her egg sac.

It makes me wonder how they fit all that silk inside themselves!

 

[TOMTE]

It must have been amazing to see her build her egg sac. I saw spiderlings hatching once, but never a female making her egg sac.

It makes me wonder how they fit all that silk inside themselves!

Crazy isnt it?! That's another super interesting thing about spiders. Their silk starts as liquid protein in their spinnerets, and single threads of silk come out of a bunch of tiny "nozzles" on each spinneret. Depending on the species the spider usually either has to pull the silk out with its legs or attach the end to something and then pull it out by moving forward... Yadda yadda yadda

This article gets a lot more specific