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RE: The life cycle of spiders

I enjoyed these pictures, but there are a few mistakes in the text that I'd like to correct (beyond the simple mis-classification that everyone else is talking about), and some fun facts I'd like to add as well.

  1. Jumping spiders have four pairs of eyes as well, the third pair is simply much smaller than the others. The anterior median eyes are unique among spiders, as they are tetrachromatic, like avian eyes. Humans, by comparison, have trichromatic eyes. This means that jumping spiders, like birds but unlike humans, can see in the ultraviolet spectrum. Jumping spiders, like the insects that they prey upon, actually have better vision than humans. Huntsman spiders have the second-best vision of the spiders, and wolf spiders have the third-best.

  2. Only araneomorph spiders (a.k.a. "true spiders") use their webs to catch prey, and not all of them do that. Fishing spiders (family Pisauridae), wandering spiders (Ctenidae), wolf spiders (Lycosidae), huntsman spiders (Sparassidae), and jumping spiders (Salticidae) are all araneomorphs that are active hunters, some of which have a lifestyle similar to mygalomorphs (the infra-order that includes tarantulas). While tarantulas may construct silk-lined underground burrows with trip-lines to alert the spider inside to passing prey, no tarantula is known to construct snares. By the way, spider silk has a greater tensile strength than steel... just putting that out there.

  3. Spiders are not immune to spider venom, not even venom of the same species. Spiders can (and do) use their venom with the exact same effect on their kin as on other animals.

We should all get to know the spiders, they are our friends. Unlike the insects that they prey upon, spiders don't spread disease, they don't ruin our crops, and they prefer to stay out of our way.

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Thanks for good comments steampunkkaja.