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Tell me about it

Old news.

Nothing gets between a fiercely protective mother spider and her children. Dripping tree resin trapped adult female spiders and baby spiderlings about 99 million years ago, forever showcasing the maternal care exhibited by these arthropods, according to new research.

One of the awkward things about raising spiders is that they don’t just have a few babies, and they don’t just dribble them out a few at a time over a long period…no, when spiders have babies they have a whole lot of them all at once. Yesterday, on top of all the teaching I do on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I had to feed all the spiderlings I’ve sorted out into individual vials, and then I noticed another egg sac had hatched out into a vast cloud of hungry, tiny arthropods, demanding a meal too. I’m nearly out of flies! I’m going to have to double the quantity of flies I grow just to keep up with the ravenous horde!

Good work, California » « Futile whining

Comments

  3. Mobius says

    When I was about 6 years old I was playing with my army men and saw a spider with about a gillion (or at least several dozen) tiny baby spiders clustered on her abdomen. This was the first time I was aware of the maternal care spiders give to their young.

  5. davidc1 says

    Talking of big bastard spiders did you know there are species that lets tiny frogs share their burrows .
    The frogs eat all the little critters that want to eat the spiders eggs and little babies