Spiders are fascinating creatures that are essential for maintaining balanced ecosystems through their control of pest populations. Spiders exist in varying amounts in gardens, forests, urban homes, and just about every other place imaginable.
Though most people may not be fond of having spiders as roommates, they are quite effective predators in ridding the premises of unwanted insects. Understanding what spiders eat and how they find their food goes a long way toward understanding their role both in your home and yard.
What Do Spiders Eat in Your Home?
Most spiders are carnivores - and they eat all sorts of insects and other arthropods that get trapped in their webs. The kind of foods that spiders feed on in your home depends on the variety of spiders and their availability.
Let's take an insight into some of the dietary items you may have around the house that attract spiders:
Insects are a common staple food most house spiders would live on. These spiders are specifically good at catching flying or crawling insects that happen to get into their webs.
While some spiders go out hunting for prey, others simply wait patiently for their prey to get into their sticky webs.
Termites
Termites are especially drawn to the light and represent a major food source for spiders inside the house. These insects are normally caught in the nets of nocturnal spiders.
Termites are rich in protein and provide a substantial meal to a spider to maintain its energy level. It also helps to control the population of these wood destroying creatures.
Cockroaches
These are big meals for spiders that comprise a lot of protein, especially for larger species. These nighttime insects will be found in kitchens and basements-common areas where spiders hunt.
The web-spinning spiders could catch them, while the more aggressive spider species actively hunt them.
Ants
Though ants are not the main diet for the majority of house spiders, they are an important resource for spiders when other prey items are less common.
Some species of spiders, such as the jumping spider or the cobweb spider will actively hunt ants. Some other species capture any ants that fall into their webs, especially if they don't have food with them.
Beetles and Fleas
Other house insects like small black beetles, fleas, and aphids are also commonly caught by spiders. Since these insects do not fly, they are easier to catch by a spider waiting around in its web.
Beetles and fleas are very nutritious since they have a high amount of protein. It is crucial for the metabolic reaction pathways of a spider's growth and reproduction cycle.
Flies, mosquitoes and fruit flies are some of the most sensitive to losing their lives to spiders as they fly most of the time. There are those spiders who build their webs to capture flying insects, once they are coated on those webs they can easily be trapped.
How Spiders Capture Flying Insects
Most spiders make their webs where they expect to trap flying insects such as corners of a room, window and door frames, and lamps. The webs are made from sticky silk that captures flying insects should they fly into the web.
The spider then quickly moves to paralyze the prey by encapsulating it in silk - and to be eaten when it feels hungry.
Web-building Strategy
Different species of spider employ unique methods to secure flies. For instance, the orb-weaving spider has large and rounded webs which are actually very efficient to capture flying insects.
These webs are usually constructed preferably in areas that are full of insects, such as around a porch light or a garbage bin. Other species such as the funnel-web spiders make webs of the funnel shape in order to capture crawling insects.
The larger or more aggressive ones even feed upon other spiders. This behavior is called cannibalism, and that can happen in circumstances such as when food becomes scarce or one spider enters another spider's territory or web.
Cannibalism is not the normal thing in spiders, but rather a good part of their behavioral insights.
Cannibalism in Free Space: Cannibalism usually occurs when any spider perceives a threat from other spiders trespassing into their territory. Some spider species may consume other spiders as a common diet. In cases of starvation or when food is scanty, a spider may consume its own offspring to survive.
Cannibalism in Captivity: Even in captivity, spiders can be cannibalistic. It may be due to overcrowding problems or competition for food. It is not unusual that, in captivity, big spider-like tarantulas eat small or weak spiders kept within the same cage.
Mate Cannibalism: A most intriguingly odd form of cannibalism in spiders is related to mating. For example, it can occur in species like the black widow. The female spider may at times eat her mate after copulation. Though this might sound bizarre, it is believed to give extra nutrition to the female.
What Spiders Eat in Your Yard?
Spiders are mainly present in the yard, around the gardens, under rocks, piles of leaves, or near plant roots. The volume of insects and other small creatures present in these areas makes it pretty simple for spiders to find food.
The diet of outdoor spiders is like that of house spiders but also includes a wider availability of prey. Outdoor spiders feed on the following:
4. Yard Insects (Grasshoppers, Beetles, and Larvae)
The spiders in your yard prey on common garden pests like grasshoppers, beetles, and aphids. These insects are in plenty in gardens and fields and hence easy targets for spiders.
Grasshoppers
Grasshoppers are in plenty in the gardens and grassy areas, where almost all spider species relish their meals. Due to their big size and active movement, grasshoppers are difficult to get prey.
But because of their excellent hunting techniques, wolf spiders and funnel-web spiders are capable of catching and subduing them.
Beetles
Several types of spiders present in your yard will readily feed on beetles since they are rich in protein and fat. These beetles are normally present in the soil, under rocks, or on plants, hence offering a continuous food source for spiders.
The ground spider is an example of a spider that hunts beetles at ground level.
Caterpillars and Larvae
Spiders are much capable of catching caterpillars and larvae of insects. These soft-bodied insects are found mostly on plants and could be an easy catch for spiders that build their webs in foliage.
Also, caterpillars and larvae easily into their webs - making them one of the easiest prey available in nature.
Wasps and bees are also some of the common food sources spiders have in your yard. They are larger and more difficult to catch, but certain spiders like the orb-weaving spider can overpower them. Bees are smaller and easily caught by jumping spiders and other active hunters.
Wasps: Not typically considered a source of food for the majority of spiders, many will hunt wasps or catch them in their webs. Wasps can generally be found flying around flowers, fruit trees, or places where spiders normally build a web to catch prey.
Bees: Bees are one of the busiest creatures. They are always in search of pollen in the yard. While searching for pollen, bees fall into spiderwebs, making a plentiful diet for spiders.
6. Dead Animals
Species of spiders that are mainly those found in basements or under tree bark, can survive on dead insects and sometimes even small vertebrates. This is most likely the case for larger spiders, such as tarantulas and wolf spiders, whose size would easily accommodate catching and digesting larger prey.
Spiders are scavengers and will often feed on dead insects, birds, or small mammals. In fact, some species, such as whip spiders, and solifuge are known for their ability to hunt and scavenge dead animals.
Though being carnivorous, spiders sometimes can also be found feeding on flower nectar or decaying fruit. This may happen when there is a scarcity of other food, which is more relevant to small and young spiders.
However, this behavior is not quite common compared to their insect-eating habits. Spiders' stomachs are also not built to digest fruits and nectar heavily, but they can consume it within certain quantities.
Spiders are strictly carnivorous and known for consuming a wide range of tiny insects and other arthropods. However, there are certain foods spiders don't like or won't eat due largely to their natural diet preferences and physiological limitations.
Vegetables and Grains
Spiders are not herbivores; therefore, they don't have the enzymes responsible for the digestion of plant material. They are adapted to feed specifically on other animals, especially insects.
Vegetables and grains are also not suitable for spiders due to their inability to digest plant matter.
Processed Foods
Spiders are specialized predators that hunt living prey. They cannot digest non-living human foods, which are usually too rich in sugars or fats for their digestive systems.
Cookies, chips, candy, or anything designed for human consumption is not something a spider would be attracted to.
Large Vertebrates
Spiders similarly are known to feed on mice/frogs/lizards and other small vertebrates despite being relatively of larger size than insects. Most of the spiders cannot even hold larger animals like birds, fish, and mammals due to lack of strength, web or venom.
The ordinary house spider will not eat birds or mice because it is immensely big, also it will be too large for the spider’s ability.
Hard or Inedible Objects
Spiders do not consume inedible objects. Their diet consists only of prey that is soft-bodied or could be liquefied by digestive enzymes.
Spiders will not eat plastic, rubber, or wood. Anything non-organic or hard would thus be indigestible to them.
Interesting Facts About Spiders
Here are interesting facts about these so-misunderstood creatures:
1. Spiders Are Not Insects
The spiders, although many people call them insects, are in a class of their own known as Arachnida. Other members of this group include scorpions, ticks and mites.
Spiders and insects are another two related groups of species that differ only in the number of legs that a given species possess; spiders have eight while insects have only six.
Another favorable feature of the spiders is that they are capable of producing silk which they may use in different ways. It is made from proteins that are produced by organs known as spinnerets.
In general, people think of spiders primarily in the context of web spinning yet silk has far more uses than snaring food. Some spiders, for instance, the trapdoor spider, make silk borders round their holes.
Female tarantula spider employs silk to build cocoons in which their offspring hatch. When the jumping spiders move from one place to the other they use silk to create a safety line.
3. Just a Few Spiders Pose Harm to Humans
The overwhelming number of spiders are not dangerous to man and the few that are not usually lethal. It is believed that there are over 40,000 species of spiders and only about 12 of them are said to be dangerous.
Some of the most famous spider bites are the black widow and the brown recluse spider. Although these species are capable of biting and do bite, they only bite when they are threatened.
Spiders are for the most part not dangerous and will attempt to stay out of sight of humans. Indeed, they are beneficial to humans because they assist in controlling the insect numbers.
Most spiders have 8 eyes, though some species may possess fewer eyes than that. Most of them have eyes of different arrangement especially used by arachnologists that specialize in the various kinds of spiders.
It has great vision while seeing movement, but they do not depend on their eyes to hunt for food. There are other species of spiders that are almost blind, such as Web-spinning spiders rely on the vibrations in the web to inform them that something has been caught.
5. Spiders Can Regrow Limbs
The feature of regeneration of limbs is characteristic of most of the spiders. This is especially useful because like any other arthropods the exoskeletons of spiders also have to be shed in a process known as molting.
As an example for this, a spider might lose a leg, and will be able to grow a new one when it molts for the next time. However, the new limb may be initially a smaller one than the original limb.
What we need to understand is that spiders only can regenerate a limb in some stages of their life cycle.
