Spider webs

Andrew Staib runs Glorious Gardens, which is a garden design company based in Brighton. Below he talks about spiders and their webs.

Quite a few people have asked me why there are so many spiders this year and why they are so big. A warm summer will increase the availability of food sources allowing them to put on more weight. The other reason is that as the autumn has been so warm they haven't felt the need to go indoors and hibernate. So the males are still roaming around looking for females.

Notes on Webs. Did you know that the tensile strength of spider webs is actually stronger than steel cables? Also a spider has at least three different types of web - one for throwing out into the wind to start up a new web, another stickier one for trapping insects and another finer one for wrapping up its’ meal. The spider webs loose stickiness quite quickly and as they are rich in protein it is not uncommon for a spider to eat its web each day and then make a new one!

To contact Andrew, email andrewstaibuk@yahoo.co.uk or visit the Glorious Gardens website. Andrew updates his blog every week with beautiful pictures of nature, you can subscribe to the blog via the website.

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