Hairy, ugly, brown spiders with webs that seemingly defy physics.

I am speaking, of course, of a spider species belonging to the orb weaver group. This group has over 2800 species and over 160 genera. In this group, we have such spiders as the garden spider, which is very colorful and whose web has a zig-zag running through the middle. Here:

But we're not gonna talk about those today. We're going to talk about the much less cool species of orb-weaver. The ugly, brown, and hairy one whose webs can span entire roads.

I got email today asking for information on the webs that are everywhere right now. It seemed relevant enough to give everyone information on it. So get ready to be informed, you lucky readers. :)

They live most commonly in fields, forests, and gardens. Definitely not an inside spider. If you see one inside, it's lost, and therefore has flawed instincts. Thus you will be doing the species a favor by killing it and thus weeding its inferior genes out of the population. You'll be helping evolution along - Darwin will love you. ;)

What these beasties do is let out a strand of very strong silk, and they let it fly until it lands somewhere. Normally somewhere on the ground or (if the wind is strong) on a nearby branch/tree/car hood. This is called their "anchor strand". They build their web around that anchor strand. And they make them big without any thought to the larger animals that might walk through them.

If their web becomes severely damaged during the night, the spider will eat its web in the morning and remake it during the evening. I've yet to see this, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen (after all, I don't spend much of my time studying them).

As far as I know, the spider's bite won't cause much damage to humans - aside from maybe a welt/swelling you would expect from any non-venomous-to-humans spider bite. Whenever I've run into one, or even come close to running into one, the spider - which hangs out in the middle - will creepily run for cover.

They webs are just annoying! The spiders seem to be running amok this year (or spinning amok, rather), and I can only assume that's because of the wet summer we Oklahomans have had.

It most likely goes something like this:

Wet summer + more standing water = More insect food & more insect habitat = more bug sex = more bug babies (this is esp. true for mosquitoes/dragon flies/damsal flies/some flies (bugs that hang out around water)).

Wet summer = more food & habitat for insect spawn = higher numbers of successful, surviving insects

More bug sex + more surviving bug spawn = more spider food = more spider sex (Since they don't have to work so hard for food, they can concentrate on the procreation side of things. The other explanation is that more spiders are surviving long enough to have sex - no starvation here.)

(interesting side note here - there are some spider species - like the Black Widow - where the female will kill/eat the male after mating with him. Students have asked me why and I tell them that the male has served his purpose, and is encroaching on the female's territory - so she simply gets rid of him. You see, in some species (in general, not just spiders) the male will harass and cling to the female after mating with her to ensure she doesn't replace his sperm with some other male's (he wants his genes to be spread, not some other guy's). There are many ways males can get this "sperm insurance" - plugs, scrub brush penis, and the ever popular never-leaving-the-female-alone. Very annoying and often harmful to the female.)

more spider sex + higher insect (spider food) numbers = higher numbers of surviving, successful spider spawn = TOO MANY DAMN SPIDERS

Here's a picture of one of those ugly, brown, hairy things. This shows the underside:

Enjoy because this is most likely the only time I will post pictures of spiders. *Shudder*