Golden Silk Orb-Weaver (Trichonephila clavipes)
The body is approximately 3 cm long, with legs approximately 11-12 cm. It also known as Banana Spiders, their metallic gold webs blocking off pathways entirely. There’s support strands, sticky catch strands, they even set up a 3-D array of strands outside of the web itself to act as a warning for you, so that you don’t walk the rest of the way through it and ruin all of their hard work. As for why they need a web that is so strong, keep in mind that their prey is also large, such as dragonflies, and very rarely hummingbirds and even small snakes. One of their favorite food items are horseflies, which are possibly the fastest flying insects clocking in at 90 miles per hour. At that speed, horseflies punch through lesser webs like bullets, but when your web is as strong as Kevlar, not even they can escape.
They are not known to be aggressive towards humans, only biting out of self-defense if touched, and their relatively harmless venom has a low toxicity, posing little health concern to healthy human adults.
beidler.audubon.org/news/species-spotlight-golden-silk-or...
Golden Silk Orb-Weaver (Trichonephila clavipes)
The body is approximately 3 cm long, with legs approximately 11-12 cm. It also known as Banana Spiders, their metallic gold webs blocking off pathways entirely. There’s support strands, sticky catch strands, they even set up a 3-D array of strands outside of the web itself to act as a warning for you, so that you don’t walk the rest of the way through it and ruin all of their hard work. As for why they need a web that is so strong, keep in mind that their prey is also large, such as dragonflies, and very rarely hummingbirds and even small snakes. One of their favorite food items are horseflies, which are possibly the fastest flying insects clocking in at 90 miles per hour. At that speed, horseflies punch through lesser webs like bullets, but when your web is as strong as Kevlar, not even they can escape.
They are not known to be aggressive towards humans, only biting out of self-defense if touched, and their relatively harmless venom has a low toxicity, posing little health concern to healthy human adults.
beidler.audubon.org/news/species-spotlight-golden-silk-or...