The title about covers it, except let me add that this is a very small spider. From front to back body is about 1-1/2 mm (1.5mm) I just love mixing metric and fractions. Side to side his body is about 3/5 of a mm.
He was walking accross my desk just now. I was going to put him or her outside, but I am lonely, so I couth him. I do not want him to die. He has some dirt, a strick to climb on. A piece of grass. Then I thoight about food. He is so small. Do spiders have mouths? What should I gave him to eat? What is the standard food stuffs, and what could I give him as an occasional treat, when he is good.
Very very small insects. A spider that size might have trouble even with fruit flies though, which are about the only thing you could easily obtain. You should probably let him go, unless you want him to starve to death.
I’m paid daily visits by a small jumping spider. We’re not on a first name basis yet, but I’m careful about moving papers when she/he is around.
Jumping spiders display characteristic jerky movements when approached by a finger or other object. They tend to subsist on small live insects and other small spiders.
I’m no biologist, but I agree - turn it loose and be satisfied with occasional visits. It’ll find its own food.
heh Those jumping spiders almost seem to move as if they have little short-range teleporters strapped to their backs. One moment they’re here, and the next instant they’ve moved a couple inches…
Many years ago I captured a black widow. I put it into a large glass jar. Inside the jar (and before putting the spider into it) I ran a length of masking tape up one side and across the bottom (sticky side down, of course), to give the spider a surface to climb, because the glass would be too slick. In the mouth of the jar I put a paper cone with a hole in the tip. Once the spider was inside, I captured flies and released them into the jar, through the hole in the cone (the cone prevented them from making their way back out of the jar). Before long, the spider had made use of the masking tape, and had a web stretched across the inside of the jar. Soon, she was catching flies and feasting like a queen. I kept her for a few weeks, but Autumn came and the flies population began to dwindle, so I turned her loose outside.
ok, I let her go. I was hoping that she would return, but she did not even look back as she ran away. Now I worry. I will never know what has become of her.
I had friends in college who kept a black widow in a jar. They caught insects for it, but there was an epic battle with a moth. The spider would throw web on the moth, but the moth was twice its size, and would break the strands while there were only about four of them. Finally they had to kil the moth with scissors, and then the spider sucked it.
As for the very tiny spider, I would bet that it would be very hard to find enough small insects for it. You might catch some ants and hope that they just died in the web, but that would risky, and if they were starving, there wouldn’t be much for the spider left over.
Your little spider friend was probably too large, but what the heck. Isn’t the human body teeming with microscopic little mites & lice & other little buggers? Maybe you could have let the little guy (or gal) just hang out on your arm for awhile and feast on all your arm hair microfauna?
I say, let this day be noted and commemorated. Let it be circled on calendars and be made a school hoiday. This is the day when, on the SDMB, someone took the time to ask… do spiders burp?! I venture to suggest, with an air of certainty, that no-one in history has ever asked this question before, and that it could only happen here on the SDMB.
Pause for genuflection in front of paul’smars.
Lots of discussion at the moment about the intro of subscriptions. As far as I’m concerned, I can’t get this level of genius anywhere else, so it’s pay and stay for me.
Sorry for the slight hijack, but I just felt moved to add this.