Spiders That Bite And Buzz

Press, Issue 31095, 25 June 1966, Page 5

Spiders That Bite And Buzz

(Specially written for “The Press” by E. G. YARHAMI 'JHE bite of some spiders can be fatal, so perhaps you have not thought about keeping any as pets. However, the “Medical Journal of Australia” advises housewives to overcome their fears of huntsman spiders, wrongly called tarantulas, and keep them as fly-catchers.

Spiders have been kept like house-dogs, for some are of immense size. A naturalist, H. W. Bates, who explored the Amazon, one day saw the children of an Indian family, who had captured one of those monsters for him, leading it about the house by a cord round its waist.

I once heard of a lady, a church organist in Cornwall, who said that when the choir was practising, large spiders came down from the roof beams and settled on the backs of the choir stalls until the music finished. They then went back to their webby haunts.

Paderewski’s Pet

This seemed somewhat farfetched until I was told that Paderewski had a pet spider, and when he started tb play it would come down from the ceiling and sit on the piano. But this happened only when he played a certain composi-

tion. As soon as he sarted on something else, the spider went back. Paderewski came to the conclusion that his spider could distinguish music.

Halted Traffic

A spider once halted Londons traffic. Dr. W. S. Bristowe, records that, in 1936, a London policeman held up the traffic at Lambeth Bridge to allow an outsize house-spider this species may have a leg-span of five inches—to cross the road.

Spiders, are mostly friends of man; some scientists believe that human life could not exist without them for a spider’s entire life is devoted to snaring and devouring insects which might otherwise multiply and desolate the earth. It has been estimated that every year spiders in England and Wales destroy insects more than equal in weight to the entire human population. Bristowe took a spider census on a grassy plot which showed that 2,265,000 of the creatures were living on a single acre. But there are some spiders whose bite can be excrutiating, and even fatal. One is the black widow of America, which has caused many deaths. The venom is about 15 times as potent as the rattlesnake’s but fortunately its supply is small. A rabbit injected with some was dead within two minutes. A doctor allowed a black widow to bite his finger.

Within two hours he was suffering from severe pains, resembling angina pectoris, and his body went rigid. Soon afterwards he could not move his lips. The shock was so severe that it was three weeks before his condition improved, and two months went by before he was again normal.

Spiders’ silk was once used experimentally in France for making stockings and gloves, but eventually the idea was dropped because it was difficult to keep the creatures fed.

Some persons are afflicted with a horror of spiders, and this fear was responsible for one of the most amazing myths of the Middle Ages.

Dreaded Complaint

“Tarantism” was then one of the most dreaded complaints, and it was so called because it was believed to originate from a tarantula spider, which got its name because it was seen in great numbers at the Italian seaport of Taranto. The bite of the spider was believed to be poisonous—it can be painful—and it was supposed to produce tarantism, a dancing madness in which the vitctim leapt and whirled until exhaustion or death ended his efforts. It is now known that the spider was not responsible, but that the disease was an epidemic of emotional hysteria which lasted for many years. All kinds of

remedies were tried, such as burying the victims up to their chins in the earth, but the only certain cure was music. So bands of musicians called Tarantists travelled from country to country, playing the healing melodies. Tarantism passed, but the dance survived, and lives now in the dance known as the Tarantella.

Snared Snake

Spider silk is tremendously strong and this was evident in a remarkable spider-snake duel in Baltimore. A fourday battle in a basement ended when the S.P.C.A. killed the snake. The reptile was slowly strangling beneath the web which the spider, no bigger than the snake’s eye, was relentlessly weaving around it.

The spider Is the robber baron, the pirate, the solitary bandit of the natural world. It is found all over this planet, specimens varying in size from microscopic to those having bodies as big as a man’s hand. Some, reaching three and a half inches in body length, are calculated to be 100,000 times heavier than the smallest of the tribe. Their variety is almost infinite. There are male spiders which tie their mates down and so avoid being eaten; spiders which spit gum over their prey; spiders that buzz, and spiders that pretend to be flies in the webs of other spiders so that they can kill them when they emerge to inspect the “catch."