All of my life I have had arachnophobia. At this point in my life, I never thought I’d love gardening so much. So at some point this summer, I came to a cross road: Either stay in the house and avoid spiders at all cost or learn to respect them and move past my fear of them. For the most part I have done well. Of course this week I found this monster in my side yard several weeks ago and could have easily stepped back into my old way of avoiding them altogether.
What I have learned is that spiders are very very beneficial to the garden. There are thousands of species of spiders and for the most part, they are very shy, unaggressive and usually non-poisonous. Spiders help control the insect population and keep pests from devouring your garden. The banana spider (above) unfortunately eats both beneficial bugs as well as pests. I haven’t decided whether I plan to let it stay around, but I just noticed there are 2 more around the yard and they all have an egg sack the size of regular chicken eggs! Needless to say, I was able to photograph it without feeling sick on my stomach from fear and anxiety.
The banana spider does bite; however, their bites only cause mild irritation in humans. Banana spiders are actually afraid of cockroaches; however, they aid in keeping mosquitoes, wasps, flies and beetle populations low. Their webs are some of the strongest webs in the world, some have webs tougher than Kevlar, the material used to make bulletproof vests. The male banana spider is completely different and much smaller than the female spider. When a male is so much different than the female to a point where they do not look like the same species it is known as sexual dimorphism.
Banana spiders molt several times. On the last molt, she is fertile for only 48 hours. Needless to say, the male moves in and makes a special noise (so she knows not to eat him, but to mate with him). After she is inseminated she spins two large egg sacs containing hundreds of eggs (I’m sorry, but I think mine have thousands of eggs inside!). Unlike the tarantula, the female spider doesn’t devour her man like a happy meal. The male moves about two inches up above her on the web and guards her and the sac until they both die (I guess chivalry is still existent in the spider world).
What’s really fascinating about banana spiders is their webs. They are absolutely gorgeous. The webs have a sticky substance on it that helps bugs to become entrapped. They can spin webs up to 3 feet wide! They are truly cool to watch (from a distance) although I’m not sure how long they plan to be my roommates.