Probably everyone in his life has seen a house spider at least once. Ordinary inhabitants know little about these insects - they have eight legs, weave cobwebs and feed on flies. But is it? Spiders can often be found in apartments, even in winter, but the population of flies tends to seasonality. So what does the house spider eat?
What do you need to know about these spiders?
The Latin name for the species of this spider is Tegenaria domestica. Despite the fact that it is called "brownie", you can see it not only in the dark corners of apartments, but also in closets and sheds around the globe. This spider is practically not afraid, because it is a fairly common occurrence in our homes, and besides, its poison is not dangerous for humans, although it bites, and it hurts quite a lot.
Features of the home and hunting of the house spider
It will be helpful to know where this spider usually lives. His home is a special cobweb tube that leads from the net to the shelter.
Of course, these spiders weave a web, but it is somewhat different from the one that its street relatives weave. Its web is thicker and looser, and "street spiders" weave a thin, viscous web with sticky nodules. Thus, his future food literally drowns in a loose web and, of course, tries to get out of his captivity. Attempts to get out of the web is noticed by a spider. Its web is almost flat, but its center sharply goes down at a slight angle, forming the very living cobweb tube in which the spider waits for signals from the victim. As soon as the victim begins to try to get out of the web, he quickly runs out of his shelter and pounces on her, plunging hook-shaped jaws. Inside them is a poison that infects the victim to death. However, the spider cannot eat the dead victim - it has a small mouth, chewing jaws (used for grinding food) are also absent. Therefore, the spider has to suck out nutrients from the victim due to the fact that the body, under the influence of the poison, begins to digest itself.
Thus, it destroys such harmful insects as flies, fruit flies, wood lice larvae or moths. In general, he makes a feasible contribution to the fight of humans against harmful insects.
However, the spider does not always manage to eat its prey. For example, if an ant falls into its net, it will most likely survive - after all, the house spider cannot swaddle its prey, and the poison has a rather weak effect on large ants.
Another feature of the food of house spiders is the absence of the need to weave a large net - some individuals, especially males, can manage with several signal threads, but they need a larger "working" area on which they will fix their net.
