Coconut’s Corner:

Hey kids! When you see a spider are you usually a little afraid? If your answer is yes, then you are not alone. The fear of spiders, or arachnophobia, affects millions of people. But while some spiders are dangerous, even deadly, most of them are perfectly harmless. In fact, they are quite fascinating and interesting creatures.

For instance…

Spiders are everywhere—in the corners of your room, behind the walls of your house, under your bed and even in your flower garden that smells so sweet!
Spiders can survive on the seashore, in the desert, in caves, in ponds and even on the top of Mount Everest!

Scientists have found 37,000 different species of spiders in the world, with 2500 species in the USA and Canada alone. Scientists think that spiders appeared on the earth about 170 million years before the first dinosaurs.

The largest spider is the South American Tarantula, as big as a dinner plate.The smallest spider is the Comb-Footed spider, smaller than the head of a pin! Most spiders have eight eyes. These are arranged on top and near the front of the head, usually in two rows of four eyes each.

While it is an arachnid, a Daddy Long-Legs is not really a spider. It has different organs than a spider, and it is a scavenger and not a predator.The venom of a Daddy Long-Legs is poisonous, but they cannot bite humans or most animals because their jaws won’t open wide enough.

Tarantulas are mainly found in South America and the western United States.
Unlike most spiders spin flat webs, the Grass Spider makes a funnel-shaped web.You can always identify a Black Widow spider by the red hourglass shape on its stomach.

The Wolf Spider can change its appearance to look like other spiders. A Jumping Spider is called a Jumping Spider because that is how it catches its prey. If basketball player Michael Jordan could jump proportionately as high as a Jumping Spider, he would be able to dunk on a 260-foot-high rim!

While more than 150 spiders were used in the laboratory scene in the movie, SpiderMan, the movie’s bug consultant, Steve Kutcher, said that no spiders were harmed during the filming!