I have never seen an obese spider, though I suppose it is possible they exist. So I suppose all those extra little flys and gnats and such is the spider equivilant of a storage cellar.
But really, how much and often do spiders eat? Three round meals a day? [sub]you better eat your veggies, no pudding if you don’t eat your grasshopper[/sub] Or are they like snakes, and can live off one kill for several days?
By the amount of spiders I have seen in cupboards, cellars, lofts and loos, one wouldn’t believe that there would be any food sources at all. Perhaps the bathroom dwellers eat smells! I’d like to know too. (It probably depends on breed!)
This month’s National Geographic (August) had an artical about spiders. That’s all I’m saying. You’ll have to read it yourselves. Go to the library and read it. It was cool.
-Rue.
Spiders eat each other, as well–same species, different species, they don’t care.
As for whether spiders can be obese, wasn’t there a thread not long ago about whether insects get fat? (The search enginge hates me–can’t find it.)
Some spiders go days to weeks without eating. Probalby depends on the species.
You’re probably thinking about this Staff Report artcile.
In my garden, we get lots of orb-web spiders of species Araneus diadematus; They do paralyse and store insects if they are lucky enough to catch a lot in a short space of time, but they don’t store them for very long.
In the autumn, the females will usually mate, lay eggs and die and within the species, there is quite a range of size variations in the females that can be observed doing this, females who didn’t put on enough bulk during the year may apparently overwinter and reproduce the following autumn.
(Warning! anecdotal:)I’ve often caught wasps and fed them to a particular spider in my greenhouse and I’d say that spiders treated in this way tend to get bigger (note bigger, not fatter) than those I didn’t feed.
Those awful spindly ones that we get on the ceilings over here in the UK are active hunters, they eat other spiders.