Diet and Feeding Process:
Cellar spiders have a varied diet that includes small arthropods such as moths, other spiders, beetles, and more. Interestingly, they are known to capture prey much larger than themselves, including crane flies, click beetles, and house flies. These unsuspecting insects often wander into the cellar spider's large, intricate webs found in various nooks of nature or even within your own home. Once caught, the prey is wrapped in silk, injected with venom, and gradually broken down. The spider then consumes the resulting "bug smoothie," storing the nutrients in its abdomen and eventually discarding the carcass. Additionally, cellar spiders possess specialized organs that produce malleable material, which is skillfully pushed out through their spinnerets to create spider silk. This silk serves not only to repair their webs but also for other purposes.
Native Areas:
Cellar spiders can be found in more than 20 different variations spread across various regions of both the United States and Canada.
Predators and Defensive Measures:
Despite their small size and delicate appearance, cellar spiders face numerous predators that view them as a potential meal. These include birds, lizards, and geckos, with some predators being highly adapted for capturing them, such as the house centipede. One of the main defensive strategies of cellar spiders is their ability to willingly sever one or more of their legs when caught by a predator. Remarkably, these legs will regrow with each molt, ensuring the spider's continued mobility. However, if the spider is already an adult, it will remain legless until its eventual demise.
Life Cycle:
The mating process of cellar spiders involves the male depositing a droplet of sperm onto the web near the female's head. The female collects and stores this sperm in a specialized appendage called the pedipalp until it is needed for fertilizing the eggs. Throughout her lifetime, the female will encounter multiple males, storing their sperm. The last male's sperm is most likely to fertilize her eggs. The female then lays a batch of 10 to 27 eggs, which she fertilizes with the stored sperm. She holds the eggs in her jaws until they hatch, usually after 2 to 3 weeks. After hatching, the spiderlings remain in the mother's web for several days or even weeks before venturing out on their own. During this vulnerable phase, they search for a suitable location to create their own webs and continue their life cycle. Along the way, they will molt five times before reaching maturity. Unfortunately, the majority of spiderlings will fall prey to predators before reaching adulthood.
Danger and Removal:
Cellar spiders pose no significant danger and are generally docile and timid. Even if they were to bite, their short mandibles and relatively harmless venom make them virtually harmless to humans. To remove them from your home, a simple method involves using a disposable cup to gently scoop them up, ignoring the web, and then releasing them outside. Alternatively, you can clean up their cobwebs using a stick or feather-duster and then safely remove the spider. Finally, it is important to debunk the urban myth that these spiders are deadly, as they pose no such threat.
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