10 Amazing Facts About Spiders

Spiders eat more insects than birds and bats combined, so they should be considered one of human's best friends. They play a big role in controlling insect populations.

Spider silk is incredibly strong and flexible. Some varieties are five times as strong as an equal mass of steel and twice as strong as an equal mass of Kevlar. This has attracted the attention of scientists in a number of applied science fields, but up until recently, humans haven't been able to get much out of this natural resource. It's simply too hard to extract silk from spiders, and each spider has only a small amount of it.

Spiders use their silk in a variety of ways, as we see in the video, but orb weavers are the spiders most of us are familiar with: the type that builds webs in trees and bushes and the corners of our ceilings. When the Orb web has deteriorated and is no longer useful, many spider species will destroy it, eating up all the threads so it can recycle the raw silk material. Spiders may leave the heavy bridge thread so that they can easily rebuild the web at a later point.

While many spiders use their silk to trap their prey, protect their young or build their nests, the bolas spider uses it as a range weapon. These spiders do not spin the typical web. Instead, they hunt by using a sticky "capture blob" of silk on the end of a line, known as a "bolas." First, they attract their prey (usually moths or moth flies) with potent pheromones designed specifically for luring their victims.

Then, swinging the bolas around and letting it go, the spider may snag its prey rather like a fisherman snagging a fish on a hook. The net-casting spider also uses its web for more than hanging. She will spin little nets that she will then hold with her front legs, suspended above the forest floor, waiting. When she sees her prey, she uses the net exactly as one would trap a cat with a pillowcase.

Spiders in eight of the world’s 109 arachnid families can catch and consume small fish. Some of them can even subdue fish five times heavier than they are. At least 18 species can actually catch fish. Some can even swim, dive, and walk on the water's surface. These particular hunters anchor their hind legs to a stone or a plant, with their front legs resting on the surface of the water and then patiently wait to ambush their prey. Just like with their webs, the slightest movement in the water or under their legs can spur them into attack. Beyond water-side hunters, there are several amazing species of spider that can actually swim underwater.  They can submerge themselves for 20 minutes to an hour, actually creating a "diving bell" of air that surrounds their book lungs.

Jumping spiders, one of the more common types of spiders worldwide, have the ability to jump great distances — as far as 50 times their own length. The thing that is the most amazing about these jumpers is that they don't have particularly strong muscles in their legs. They actually spring forward using hydraulic pressure. A powerful muscle in the cephalothorax squeezes fluids from the body into the legs to make them expand. With more than 5,000 species around the world, jumping spiders are one of the more common spider varieties around. They're characterized by large eyes, which help them spot potential prey at a good distance. In contrast to web-spinning spiders, most jumping spiders hunt sort of like cats, stalking their prey and then springing on them at high speed.