Nick Baker takes a look at the behaviour of the spitting spider <\/p>
One spider that stands out from the eight-legged crowd, due to the fact that it\u2019s rarely found outdoors and doesn\u2019t use silk much, is the spitting spider, Scytodes thoratica<\/i>. <\/span><\/p>\n Spitting spiders are particularly fond of old buildings and museums. It has been suggested that they may well be non-natives imported on construction materials and have since become naturalised in the southern half of the UK. Whatever their origin, they\u2019re a fascinating addition to our more furtive fauna.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> I found my first spitting spider by accident: a late-night B-movie and a thirst for an accompanying beer had me heading for the kitchen. I snapped the light on and it immediately caught my eye. I always \u2018twitch\u2019 spiders, but this one was different to anything I\u2019d seen before. It was the way the spider was moving that made me do a double-take \u2013 it walked with a deliberate, stealthy cat-crawl over the white-washed stone wall.<\/span><\/p>\n Those eight legs \u2013 spindly and smooth save for a scattering of sensory hairs called trichobothria \u2013 were distinctive, as was the colouring of its body, a waxy, jaundiced-yellow speckled with brown.<\/span><\/p>\n But it was the unmistakable humped appearance of the cephalothorax (the front portion of a spider\u2019s two main body divisions) that clinched the identification. No other British spider bulges with such intent.<\/span><\/p>\n The hunting strategy of this arachnid puts you in mind of a more vicious Peter Parker. For just as Spiderman, Parker\u2019s superhero alter ego, slings webs to ensnare villains, so our spider relies upon a similar approach to catch its prey, but with one crucial difference: the spitting spider\u2019s webbing isn\u2019t just sticky, it\u2019s venomous.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n They are called spitting spiders because they spit out a sticky venom onto their prey. Protruding from its head are two sacs, one containing a venom, the other a silky glue-like substance. When the spider stumbles into a booklouse or similarly small invertebrate, it contracts the muscles of these sacs. The goo they contain is then forcibly ejected through the tips of the raised chelicerae (the spider\u2019s \u2018fangs\u2019). <\/span><\/p>\n The attack is fast and deadly accurate: the goo fires from the tips of the chelicerae at a speed of around 30m per second and can pin down a future dinner standing more than 1cm away. It\u2019s almost incredible, given the spider is doing this in the dark by detecting the minuscule vibrations caused by the prey.<\/span><\/p>\n The two times I\u2019ve seen spitting spiders hunting, the catch happened so quickly that it didn\u2019t register. One moment there was a spider and a booklouse; the next the booklouse was pinned to the ground under a delicate zig-zag of grey stitches.<\/span><\/p>\n The process that produces the zig-zag pattern is even faster than the speed at which the venomous silk is spat out. As the spider lifts its fangs, they vibrate at a rate of 300\u20131,800Hz, causing the strands of fluid to flick from side to side. The final, beautiful detail is that, upon impact, the strands contract by 50 per cent, tightening the net around the spider\u2019s next meal.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Main image \u00a9 Andr\u00e9 Karwath aka Aka, CC BY-SA 2.5 <https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.5>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n Nick Baker takes a look at the behaviour of the spitting spider <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":25087,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"3"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/02\/spitting-spider-guide-where-they-live-how-they-kill-their-prey-and-why-theyre-called-spitting-spiders.jpg",2044,1632,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/02\/spitting-spider-guide-where-they-live-how-they-kill-their-prey-and-why-theyre-called-spitting-spiders-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/02\/spitting-spider-guide-where-they-live-how-they-kill-their-prey-and-why-theyre-called-spitting-spiders-300x240.jpg",300,240,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/02\/spitting-spider-guide-where-they-live-how-they-kill-their-prey-and-why-theyre-called-spitting-spiders-768x613.jpg",768,613,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/02\/spitting-spider-guide-where-they-live-how-they-kill-their-prey-and-why-theyre-called-spitting-spiders-1024x818.jpg",800,639,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/02\/spitting-spider-guide-where-they-live-how-they-kill-their-prey-and-why-theyre-called-spitting-spiders-1536x1226.jpg",1536,1226,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/02\/spitting-spider-guide-where-they-live-how-they-kill-their-prey-and-why-theyre-called-spitting-spiders.jpg",2044,1632,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Nick Baker takes a look at the behaviour of the spitting spider","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/25086"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Where do spitting spiders live?<\/h2>\n
\n
What do spitting spiders look like?<\/h2>\n
How do spitting spiders hunt?<\/h2>\n
Why are they called spitting spiders?<\/h2>\n
","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"