- Spiders cannot bite or chew. They suck their prey.
- No spider ever gets stuck or trapped in its own web!
- Some kinds of flowering plants are named on spiders.
Giant Wood Spider
Mumbai’s most famous spider spins one of the largest webs. The big spider is a female. Her body nearly two inches long. Her web is huge, often several feet in diameter, across forest streams and paths. The male is a tiny fellow, one-seventh the female’s size.
Mobile Mama
Many years ago, during the first week of the monsoons, when millions of leaves on the forest floor had just got soaked, this Mama Wolf Spider was sighted, carrying dozens of baby spiders on her back, miniature replicas, traveling with her.
Spider-Wealth
Of an estimated 40,000 kind of spiders discovered worldwide so far, at least 5,000 could be found in India. In Mumbai’s National Park, a spider-enthusiast, Dharmendra, discovered 250 varieties. In fact, there could be many more.
Kolis-The Fisher folk
Like Mumbai’s famed fisher folk, spiders too are known as Kolis in Marathis. It is because of the snares common to both, the fisher folk’s fishing net and the spider’s silky web. Amazing but true!
