I was over at a buddy’s house last night and his mom was visiting and somehow the conversation got on to the subject of spiders. His mother can’t stand them and she made the comment about them, “running around all over the place and pooping.” Naturally, this got me thinking. Not only does this explain a few things about my friend, but exactly how much does a spider poop? I mean, there can’t be a lot of it (if there was, can you imagine people bagging the stuff up and selling it as gardern fertilizer?), so anybody know anything about it? Do they have “firm” bowel movements or are they watery? What does the spider do with its poop? Do they make web “outhouses” that they dump into or do they just dump on to their web, or do they scurry off to a dark corner someplace and do it? I realize that this isn’t one of the greatest academic questions of all time, but considering some of the loonier things that have gotten grant money in the past, someone must have studied this.
Some people have studied this, Tuckerfan. Check out Google, for example, searching “spider” + “excretion”. There are whole papers devoted to the stuff. Good luck understanding them!
From this site:(for pet spiders & scorpions keepers)
Mind you, that didn’t say whether it was coaxal or anal excretion. I think I’ve looked into this long enough.
I hate spider poop. My front porch seems to be some sort of “spider mecca”. The little bastards hide during the daytime, but I can tell where they’re hanging out by all of the poop on my porch railings.
They leave little off white to dark brown little specs of poop. Probably the size of this “O”. It’s liquid as it’s “pooped”, but quickly dries. I swear, the crap is like paint. No amount of scrubbing seems to get it off my railings. I just give up and repaint periodically.
Creepy little buggers.