Spinning Spiders

Spinning Spiders

Spiderwebs are everywhere. You find them high up on walls and windows, on lamps and lights, in dark corners. Sheds, barns, and garages are favorite places for spiderwebs. Outdoors you find them on trees and plants, on swings and slides, on poles and fences, and even in the grass. New spiderwebs are beautiful patterns of thin threads. old webs may be covered with dirt and dust. We call them cobwebs.

There are more than thirty thousand kinds of spiders. They can be small or large, fat or thin, short or long. Most are brown, gray, black, or other dull colors. But a few are as bright and colorful as flowers.

Most people confuse spiders and insects. Spiders are not insects. Spiders are arachnids (uh-RAk-nids)Some other well-known arachnids are mites, ticks，and scorpions. Arachnids differ from insects in a few ways. Arachnids have eight legs. Insects have six legs. Adult arachnids have no wings. Most adult insects have wings. Arachnid bodies have two main parts. Insect bodies have three main parts. Arachnids have no feelers or antennae. Insects have antennae

Spiders are the only arachnids that spin webs of silk threads. They make the silk with special organs at the end of the body. These organs are called spinnerets. Most kinds of spiders have six spinnerets. Some have four or two.

A liquid comes out of the spinnerets. Outside the body, the liquid hardens into a solid thread of silk. The thread is very thin. But it is very sticky. It is also stronger than a steel thread that size, and it can stretch. The silk thread can stretch to almost twice its length! Many spiders use the silk to make webs. The webs are to catch the insects they eat.