Create a text feature that helps support “Spiders: Predators with Personality.” Examples of text features include illustrations, graphs, tables, and timelines.
Imagine flying over the Earth on silk
balloons, surviving 25 days without food to
make long journeys, or jumping 40 times your
own body length. Spiders might seem like a
common creature since they can be found on
every continent except Antarctica, but look a
little closer.
Unlike humans who have two knees and two eyes, spiders have 48 knees, and some
even have eight eyes. Since spiders don’t have ears, they depend heavily on their tiny leg
hairs, known as hearing hairs, that sense movement.
But spiders are most known for their
spinning abilities. All spiders were born with
the instinct to spin. They use their silky
threads for things such as scaling walls,
weaving webs, and catching food. Their silk is
so strong that scientists claim it’s tougher
than steel wire of the same thickness.
Around the globe, there are about 43,000 spider species, each with their own unique
abilities. One example is the orb-web spider, who weaves elaborate wheel-shaped webs to
capture insects. Funnel-web spiders create webs that look like funnels. These spiders hunker
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down and wait at the funnel’s base until their prey flies into it. Web-spinning spiders crush
their prey with their teeth and then drain their digestive juices over the insect’s body to
transform their prey into liquid. Since spiders can’t chew their food, they slurp up the gooey
liquid. Insect slushie, anyone?
Some spiders are like stunt artists. Using their silky threads, they travel by dropping
draglines that act like ropes to allow the spider to climb and drop with ease. Gossamer
spiders are known for “ballooning,” in which they release a silk sail and jump off a platform
to glide through the air.
Other spiders even love to fish! Just not
for fish, or by using fishing poles. Instead, bolas
spiders spin a line of silky thread with a sticky
blob at the end. They fish for insects by
swinging the thread through the air until it
sticks to the insect’s wings.
Loved and loathed, these predatory eight-legged creatures continue to fascinate and
inspire humans with their extraordinary abilities