Spider webs - specifically cobwebs - many movies show caves, mineshafts, tombs, and other underground or buried locations with cobwebs. I know it is only the movies and just to illustrate a long abandoned location, but 1) would certain spiders build webs in such places? I would think if there is not a supply of food, spiders would not live there or build webs. Also, even if the place once was inhabited by spiders, 2) how long would the webs last if left undisturbed?
Spider bites - I hear people saying from time to time they got bitten by a spider while they slept. I always tell them it was not a spider, but probably another bug like a mosquito. “No, this is much worse - it was a spider!”. I tell them if they got bitten by a spider they would be in even worse pain (thinking black widow or brown recluse). Will a regular, run of the mill house spider bite someone while they sleep and would it cause a welt and itching (similar to a mosquito)?
I do know that the nocturnal bite I got several years ago had two distinct puncture wounds about a match width apart. I have seen wolf spiders in the house. The bite was not too swilled but it was bruised in a sort of teardrop shape and it looked as though venom had seted downward into the tissue. It was on my forearm. I really can’t think of anything but a spider that would account for the double puncture .
I don’t know, but once we were using a house that hadn’t been inhabited in years. Unfortunately, I can’t remember for how long. It was much worst than what you see in movies. The ceiling was almost hidden from view by layers and layers of webs. So, I guess the stuff is quite resistant. There were webs everywhere (the house wasn’t used but wasn’t empty either : all the furnitures were there). There were spiders everywhere too, of course. They were falling by the dozens when you would remove the ceiling webs, for instance.
Actually, I wondered the same thing you did : what are all these fuckers eating? There can’t be enough insects roaming in the house to feed bataillons of spiders??? Well, I must assume there were.
It’s the only time I heard about such a thing. On the other hand, I don’t usually visit houses that have been left empty for years, so, for all I know, it might be perfectly usual in such a situation.
On the other hand, I did a bit of spelunking, and spiders aren’t common in caves (too cold for them???). I can’t remember seeing spider webs anywhere (well…maybe near the entrance, I guess, but nothing notable).
There are certainly species of spider that will build there. They are the common house spiders. And there is a relative abundance of food for them. In the days before fly screens, or in houses don’t have them or where they have decayed, houses become filled with insects. A house is dark, and sheltered with a relatively stable temperature and no easy access for predators. Insects love to live in houses. Things like moths and bees will happily go outside to forage and still rest in the house. Then you have animals like bats, cats, possums, foxes, sparrows, pigeons and so forth living in the house, as they commonly do in abandonded houses. These vertebrate squatters are a constant supply of food. They produce hair and feathers for mites, clothes moths, carpet beetles and the like. They crap and prvide food for a whole range of invertebartes from flies to woodlice and they drag in their kills and food scraps which provide fod for a whole lot more.
So when a house has been abandoned for a few years you can get quite a little ecosystem flourishing. The floor can become a literal carpet of droppings and carcasses.
And the spiders, of course, flourish on all the invertebrate life. You tend not to get so many spiders in caves because a cave that provides enough shelter for larger animals will tend to also be shelter for bats, which break down the webs in most caves. Houses have an advantage that the bats tend to leave via the roof or high windows, leaving plenty of well lit room undisturbed at ground level.
I can’t say for sure, but I would imagine a great many years. They are probably more likely to be disturbed by some passing animals than to decay in situ.
The other point to remember is that spider webs are dense everywhere in the natural world. They are, however so fine that they are normally invisible. It’s only when they get covered in something that they become visible: gossamer. Note that the cobwebs in those photos are not atypical. They are that thick for much of the year. It’s only the coating of dew/fog that has made them visible. Old houses tend to be dusty, and the dust coating the old webs makes them highly visible, giving the impression that the house has a lot of webs. There may not be many more webs than in any occupied house, but they are more visible.
2)I tell them if they got bitten by a spider they would be in even worse pain (thinking black widow or brown recluse).
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While those species can be painful, I have also been bitten by a wolf spider with a four inch legspan, and it felt like a very tiny needle prick that wouldn’t have woken me up had it happened at night, but it raised a nasty (though painless) blister the following day. There is also the phenomenon of necrotising arachnidism, which is essentially where an otherwise fairly harmless spider bite develops into an ulcer of various sizes, it’s probably caused because the digestive enzymes in the venom cause enough damage to allow an infection to enter. But it can certainly develop from an utterly painless bite into an ulcer anywhere from a zit to an amputated leg.
IOW, there are lots of types of spiders, and plenty of them are capable of raising a severe welt without causing much immediate pain.
They certainly could. If you were to roll over on a spider while you were asleep, it would almost certainly respond by biting.
It would be amazing if spiders of a large range of species couldn’t cause those symptoms at some point in the life cycle. Remember, large spiders come from small spiders, and not all bites are on skin the same thickness. So almost certainly a spider of the right size injecting into skin of the right thickness will produce a localised reaction that is initially painless.
That’s not to say that 99.99% of these mystery bites are not caused by other animals, specially ants, but almost certainly someone somewhere has had a spider bite that produced the symptoms you describe.
In addition to everything else said, it’s good to note that one supply of food for many spiders is…other spiders. You get spiders who specialize in hunting other spiders (araneophages) and then there are thesexual cannibals
And spiders have lots of babies:* " One female may produce as many as 3,000 eggs in a series of several sacs over a period of time. Eggs may hatch a few weeks later (three weeks or the following spring) and reach adulthood in one year."*
I thought it was a rule of nature that if you have a quiet, sheltered spot, it will fill with cobwebs. I have spiders in my cellar. I have spiders in my attic. I have spiders in my shed. I see the spiders far more often than I see insects in these places (although spiders will eat each other, too). Some spiders, such as Pholcidae, which you are probably familiar with, naturally live in caves or similar places. Quiet, dark houses must simulate this very well.
Thank you for the great posts! Blake - always fighting ingorance.
This question came to me as my son was watching National Treasure. Near the end they enter a large cavern deep under NYC, where the treasure was stashed long ago. I noticed some cobwebs and thought - how would spiders have survived down there after it was sealed off? Of course, they could have accompanied the treasure when it was placed there, and their webs would have been coated in dust. Lot’s of other movies have this effect. It made me wonder if any of the real Egyptian tombs had any cobwebs when they were opened.
Yeah, I know. I am always paying attention to the wrong thing.
The question about spider bites was based on a discussion I had with my daughter, who claimed to have a spider bite on her foot. Red, itchy patch of skin with a slight welt, received during a camping trip. I find it unlikely that she got that from a spider, seeing as she slept in a sleeping bag, and spiders were not evident. We all got bitten by mosquitoes and other biting flies, which were plentiful, so I assumed it was something else.
Which is pretty much exactly my reaction to mosquito bites. If you get bitten by something that you’re sensitive to, this will be the reaction you get. Doesn’t require a spider.
I’m guessing paired mandibles which is why I believe it was a spider. I’m not in an area prone to large biting ants, at least not indoors. As I tried to say ( with no help from spellcheck) there was a teardrop shaped bruise kind of sagging away from the punctures. It looked as though the venom had settled into the tissue while my arm was hanging off the bed. Damn, now I need look under the bed tonight!
Spiders are relentless in their drive to have themselves portrayed as harmless wittle buggy wuggies. In addition to their public relations tenacity they clearly have superior web-developing skills. (an unfortunate but unavoidable pun)
“Spiders do not bite” indeed. I don’t know what was wrong with his wolf spider, but I have seen (the action of) and felt the bite of a house spider. It was about as far from a ‘not bite’ as I can image.