Does ANYONE have any knowledge of spiders and baby spiders?

[Emzay]

HELP!!!

Just went into living room to find this huge very very fine spiders web has been created over night on the sofa, its got lots of little black spot things all over it. Now... my mum decided the best thing to say was 'Ooh my I think its baby spiders' .

I am TERRIFIED of spiders.

Does anybody know how spiders have their babies? All I know is that they have hundreds and they all crawl all over the place and if we end up with a living room infested with spider babies I will seriously MOVE OUT of my house.

Pleeease tell me we just have one spider who has an odd habbit of pooing on its web or something

[Knoxville]

sounds like a possibilty we had a spiders nest in our garage a while ago like that :/

[Elmo]

:O! call the spider exterminators!

we had a wasps nest in our sofa a couple of years ago! i wouldnt go in the living room for months!

[Barry]

Originally posted by Emzay

Just went into living room to find this huge very very fine spiders web has been created over night on the sofa, its got lots of little black spot things all over it.

not nice, it sounds like the spider has picked your place to spawn it's family

may sound cruel but the best thing you could do it use a hoover to suck them all up and bin the hoover bag

[Emzay]

grrrrrrrr .

My mum n dad claim that all the possible baby spiders were on the one web that they've binned but they wont blimin hoover the sofa - ffs why wont they listen to meeeee *cries*

[Knoxville]

hoover the sofa your self

[Stubzz]

And ignore any more babies you may find

[Emzay]

im not going near that room!

[Knoxville]

jeez............women

[Anders]

I thought baby spiders came from egg sacks pulled by the mothers. From a quick look around on Google I found:

"Baby spiders are called Spiderlings. Many babies are born from eggs in an egg sack. After one gets out of its egg, it may "balloon" or shoot out a strand of silk that helps it float away on a breeze. Spiderlings have no colour at all. This may help them hide from predators (animals that might eat them.)" From http://pelotes.jea.com/spiders.htm. the two source pages have pictures of a spiders on, so you might not want to view these page with pictures turned on

"Spiderlings and dispersal

After hatching from the eggs the spiderlings stay within the egg sac until they undergo their first moult - their small cast skins can be seen inside the old egg sac. After this they emerge, having cut a neat hole in the sac with the fangs (perhaps aided by a silk digesting fluid and sometimes helped by the female from outside). The spiderlings cluster together initially, still living largely upon the remnants of yolk sac in their abdomens.

After several days (or weeks in the case of some mygalomorph spiders) and sometimes another moult, the spiderlings begin to disperse gradually away. This is necessary to avoid competition for food and prevent cannibalism among the hungry siblings. Some species, especially ground and burrow dwellers, disperse by walking, often over only relatively short distances. Others, especially foliage dwellers and many web builders, but also wolf and mouse spiders, disperse by bridging and ballooning. Bridging is a means of travelling by repeated climbing up through foliage and then dropping down on a silk line to cross to adjacent branches, often with some breeze-assisted swinging. Ballooning involves ascending to a high point on foliage and letting out fine silk lines that catch the breeze and eventually gain enough lift to waft the spider up and away. While long distance flights can occur (Charles Darwin noted spiderlings landing on the rigging of the Beagle, 100 km out at sea), the more usual outcome is for spiders to be deposited anything from a few metres to a few kilometres from the start point.

Simultaneous ballooning by thousands of spiderlings can result in a remarkable carpet of silk, called gossamer, covering shrubs or fields.

Having survived the perils of wasp, fly and mantispid lacewing egg parasitism in the egg sac, the life of spiderlings remains beset with dangers. Only a few will avoid being eaten and find adequate shelter and food to ensure their survival to adulthood, so any help is useful. The first orb webs of St Andrew's Cross spiderlings have a 'doily'-like patch of white silk at the centre which may be both attractive to insect prey and provide a 'hide' for the spider to disappear behind when predators appear. Some spiderlings simply don't leave home and grow up in communal webs and dispersing just before maturing (e.g., Phryganoporus candidus). Sticky web building spiderlings can partly support themselves simply by eating their own webs. Sticky webs like orb webs pick up valuable nutrients such as pollen grains that simply get windblown onto them - and, because sticky silk absorbs moisture from the air, which also condenses as dew on silk lines, the spiderling gets a drink as well." From http://www.amonline.net.au/spiders/l.../dispersal.htm

It seems unlikely that the spiderlings would sit around in the open all over your sofa ready to eaten by predators. Also it says spiderlings are normally colourless (white in the pictures), so I don’t think the black spots are spiderlings. I’m just going from what I found in Google though

A link to a picture of Spiderlings. It’s not scary, they look like rice or something.

[Arien]

I have a father and mother spider in the corner of my room.. only spindly spiders and they get rid of the mossies so i leave them be.. i think they made an egg sack though.. i'll let you know if they hatch .

[Ferral]

Spiders do usually make an egg sac. Usually looks like a white ball about quarter of an inch in size, looking closely at it you can see little black spots inside it.

[[GSV]Trig]

I drop spiders in my fish tank, the bosemans rainbow gets them before there 1cm from the surface

[silent ben]

Emzay, have you never read charlottes web ???. You should all read it.

Ben

[Bindibadgi]

Emz, just go get the hoover and vac the whole sofa up (not literally). Then ull be fine. TIP: Laugh evilly as you are doing it and youll feel better

[Arien]

And then squiel as you find a spider running up the hose towards your hands .