- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's October and Arachtober: the month to celebrate spiders and other arachnids.
As arachnologists will tell you, arachnids are arthropods that include spiders, scorpions, ticks, mites, pseudoscorpions, harvestmen, camel spiders, whip spiders and vinegaroons.
Arachnids need love, too, especially in October when spiders compete with ghosts, goblins and ghouls for your attention.
Meanwhile, scientists and arachnid fans are posting their favorite eight-legged images on their websites and social media.
Even Flickr celebrates Arachtober via a photography pool formed in September 2008. "The pool is open! Thanks everyone for participating, spreading the spider love, and making this fun!...This group is similar to a 365 group, the goal is to post spiders to Flickr daily during October. When you shot them is less important...Post what you have. You can either post them daily till you run out, spread them out every few days, or save them till Halloween week for Spider Blitz. Spiders are especially popular around then."
His five good reasons to love spiders?
- Spiders consume 400-800 million tons of prey, mostly insects, each year. Humans consume somewhere around 400 million tons of meat and fish each year.
- Spider silk is one of the strongest naturally occurring materials. Spider silk is stronger than steel, stronger and more stretchy than Kevlar; a pencil thick strand of spider silk could be used to stop a Boeing 747 in flight.
- Some spiders are incredibly fast – able to run up to 70 body lengths per second (10X faster than Usain Bolt).
- Although nearly all 47,000-plus spider species have venom used to kill their insect prey, very few actually have venom that is harmful to humans.
- Some spiders are really good parents –wolf spider moms carry their young on their backs until they are ready to strike out on their own; female trapdoor spiders keep their broods safe inside their burrows often longer than one year, and some female jumping spiders even nurse their spiderlings with a protein rich substance comparable to milk.
Happy Arachtober! Here are three jumping spiders that you can love, or try to love....Then on March 14 you celebrate Save a Spider Day.
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