“We just naturally fear what we understand least.”
For Cheyenne Gonzales, a biologist with the Wildlife Department, Merlin Tuttle’s quote about fearing what we don’t understand rings true at a personal level and has shaped how she approaches conversations about poorly understood species like bats, snakes, and even spiders.
“I was terrified of spiders growing up,” Gonzales said. “And I had a negative view up until college. Thankfully, a teaching assistant for one of my wildlife classes was really into spiders and helped me understand that spiders aren’t terrifying. They’re trying to survive, just like we are.”
Unlike web-building spiders, jumping spiders actively hunt for prey like flies and bees. Free and natural pest control is one of the many perks Gonzales appreciates about the spider community.
Gonzales knows feelings about spiders can be as sticky as the silk the eight-legged creatures produce. To help people overcome their discomfort or begin to address their fear of spiders, she often leans on facts and identification tips.
Untangling a Web of Misunderstandings
“Spiders are a vital part of almost every ecosystem, and they’re a source of food for many species,” Gonzales said. “You don’t have to like spiders. But learning about their biology and how to identify the two Oklahoma species that are medically significant can remove some of the mystery, which may eventually lead to an appreciation for spiders.”
🕷️ Spiders aren’t insects. Like scorpions and ticks, spiders are arachnids and have eight legs, two body segments, and no sensory antennae. Insects have six legs, three body segments, and a pair of antennae.
🕷️ All spiders make silk, but not all build webs. Webs that entangle and snare food may be a familiar spider byproduct, but not every spider species builds a traditional web. Tarantulas may use silken tripwires to ambush unsuspecting prey, active hunters like wolf spiders simply chase down their prey, and jumping spiders may use a silk dragline as a “safety” while leaping for prey.
🕷️ Food digestion begins outside the body…with vomit. Insects, small animals, and even other spiders are all on a spider’s preferred menu. And while most of their hunting strategies are relatively straightforward, a spider’s consumption of food is a bit more complicated. The process begins outside of the body when digestive fluid is vomited on the captured prey. Spiders then begin chewing with their mouthparts, all the while sucking in the digestive fluid with any liquified food and reapplying the digestive vomit as necessary. Inedible remains are then discarded.
🕷️ Not all spider venom is medically significant to humans. Spider bites are no joke, but two puncture wounds do not always equal a spider bite. Though individuals may have varying reactions to spider bites, recluses and widows are the only two spider groups found in Oklahoma considered to have venom that is medically significant to humans. If you’re concerned about a bite, seek medical attention.
Though the terms “poisonous” and “venomous” are often used interchangeably, the difference is in the toxin delivery. If you inhale, swallow, or absorb something that makes you sick, it’s poisonous. But if the toxin is injected – through a bite or otherwise – it’s venomous.
Name That Spider
More than 50,000 spider species have been scientifically identified and documented in the world, but species lists by region or state are difficult to come by. Instead of attempting to identify each spider she encounters to the exact species, Gonzales often stops at the family level or even the guild.
Wildlife enthusiasts have shared more than 17,000 “research-grade” spider observations in Oklahoma – representing 232 species – on the free nature-sharing platform, iNaturalist. While this isn’t a complete list of the state’s known spiders, it does reveal a more diverse spider community than many Oklahomans may realize. The top five species encountered in the state and shared by iNaturalists include two jumping spiders, the yellow garden spider, Texas brown tarantula, and a wolf spider. The more infamous brown recluse and black widow are the sixth and seventh most reported spiders in Oklahoma on the site, respectively.
iNaturalist isn’t just a good place to share or store your sightings, it’s a great starting point for identifications. The app automatically recommends family or species identifications when you upload a photograph with your observations, and members of the iNat community can weigh in once the observation is posted. Another app, Seek by iNaturalist, provides identification recommendations but doesn’t post the details on the community-based iNaturalist platform.
“Spider identification is challenging, but it’s a good skill to have even if you only focus on the species you may encounter in your house,” Gonzales said. “If you can rule out the two species that are medically significant to humans – recluses and widows – it’s easier to live with spiders. You might be able to shift your perspective from 'this is a spider that might hurt me or my family' to 'this is a spider that can take care of the flies or gnats or other spiders in my home.'"
When first encountering a spider, Gonzales considers its lifestyle.
“There are two major umbrellas: web builders and hunters. You can put a spider into one of those two categories just by thinking about how it catches its prey. Once you’ve identified the category, you can drill a little deeper to identify the guild.
“If it’s a web-building spider, does it have the classic wheel-shaped spiderweb or is the web more messy, or funnel-shaped with a dense platform? If it’s a hunting spider, is it a ground spider, an active hunter, or does it ambush its prey?”
Black widows are considered web-building spiders while brown recluses are in the ambush hunter guild. Both species prefer darkened and secluded areas.
After considering the potential guild based on the spider’s lifestyle, Gonzales then looks at the eye arrangement.
“This may be hard to see, but the eye arrangement can help you identify a spider at least to the family.”
Most spiders have eight eyes arranged in two to three rows. But brown recluses, or “fiddlebacks,” have only six eyes. Though these medically significant spiders often have a distinctive fiddle shape on the cephalothorax, this feature may not be as apparent on certain individuals or during the spider’s molt. Black widows have eight eyes arranged in two rows. Females of this species have a distinctive red hourglass on the abdomen.
A wide mix of other web-building spiders can be found in or around the home. Orb-weavers, with their classic wheel-shaped webs, have eight eyes separated into three groupings and two rows. Funnel weavers build dense webs with an exposed “sheet” and a funnel-shaped retreat and have eight equally sized eyes in two or three rows.
As for hunting spiders, the cartoonish jumping spider’s eyes are arranged in two rows with two centrally located, larger eyes. Lynx spiders may hunt in tall grass or on other herbaceous vegetation and have noticeably spiny legs. For this family, six eyes are arranged in a hexagonal pattern, offset by two smaller, forward-facing eyes. Ground spiders can vary in coloration and patterning, but most are plain and, as the name suggests, chase prey on the ground. Wolf spiders, known for the females carrying their egg sacs with their spinnerets and the recently emerged young hitching a ride on the female's abdomen, have three rows of eyes with two enlarged eyes in the middle row. And crab spiders may camp out on flower blooms and have two rows of eyes that resemble a smiley face in their arrangement.
"There are so many cool spiders out there, but they can be easily missed or overlooked," Gonzales said. "Even though I was terrified of spiders growing up, I now enjoy looking for spiders wherever I am and even like having spiders in my house. Sometimes removing the mystery of spiders can open the door to appreciation."
For some people, spiders have an “uncanny ick” about them. Get tips for living – or at least existing – with eight-legged visitors to our homes and spaces from two spider enthusiasts in another Outdoor Oklahoma Journal.