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Monday, April 22, 2013

Wonders of the world: Spiders

Tree spider


When I was a child like my other friends, I was scared of spiders. Even now when I see a spider in my room, certainly I do not scream, but yet, I avoid them and try to chase them out from my room. When I grew up little by little, I wanted to get rid of this fear and crazy imaginations about spiders, so I started reading about spiders in order to get familiarize with these little fascinating creatures.
We all know that spiders are disliked by many people due to their lack of knowledge about spiders. According to the taxonomy of spiders, they belong to the class Arachnida Phylum Arthropoda. These spiders are carnivores which mean they feed on small insects or flesh. They do it by trapping their pray using their web or by hunting on ground. In addition, these spiders can be seen all over the world except in air since they do not have wings to fly and in ocean since they are air-breathing animals. Yes, there are some spiders who can live under water such as Diving Bell Spider ( Argyroneta Aquatica) but they also need air. In this case they trap air in a bubble held by hairs on its abdomen and legs.
Another reason is their size and the appearance which give an expression that they should not be petted or loved, they are venomous and dangerous. When we consider about their size, most spiders are relatively small (2-10 mm) but there are exceptions like Tarantula whose body length will extend up to 80-90 mm. Even though size varies from one spider species to another, their body consists of two main parts. First part is the “Cephalothoraxe” (Prosoma) which is the anterior part and the other part which is the posterior part, known as “Abdomen” (Opisthosoma)