A Spider's Life
A Spider's Life Thousands of species of spiders exist. Each is unique, but spider lives do follow certain patterns: Like Charlotte in CHARLOTTE'S WEB, many spiders die in autumn after producing an egg sac. But some adults live through the winter, mate in the spring, and then die, and some survive for two or more years. Large wolf spiders may live for several years, and tarantulas have lived as long as 20 years. Most baby spiders hatch when the weather gets warm, but a few hatch from their eggs during fall or winter. It's hard to notice that they've hatched, though, because they stay quietly inside the egg sac until spring. The first thing most kinds of spiderlings do after emerging from the egg sac is to spin a dragline and balloon away. While spiderlings are still very tiny, they climb to a branch, fencepost, or other tall object and tilt their spinnerets up into the air. The breeze pulls silk threads out of the spinnerets. These threads form a "dragline." Th...