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Garden Orb Weaver

 

European garden spider (orb-weaver) varieties are very commonly found throughout Europe and North America. In America, their range extends from New England and the Southeast to California and the Northwestern United States. They can also be found in parts of southern Canada adjacent to the United States

 

The third pair of legs of garden spiders are specialized for assisting in the spinning of orb webs. These spiders also use them to move around on their web without getting stuck. These legs are very useful only in the web; while on the ground, these legs are of little value.[citation needed] Since this tends to be a passive animal, it is difficult to provoke to bite—but if it does, the bite is just slightly unpleasant and completely harmless to humans.[3]

 

The webs are built by the larger females who usually lie head down on the web, or in a nearby leaf (with a signal thread attached to a leg), waiting for prey to get entangled in the web. The prey is then quickly captured and wrapped in silk before being eaten. Like many other orb weavers, the spider will use its legs to violently oscillate its web if it feels threatened, in an attempt to ward off potential predators. Orb spiders are said to eat their webs each night along with many of the small insects stuck to it. They have been observed doing this within a few minutes. A new web is then spun in the morning

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Uploaded on October 25, 2014
Taken on October 25, 2014