How can you tell if a spider is playing dead or really dead?
This is Skeletor, my P. irminia. In August of 2016, a couple of months after pairing him with my females, I found him dead. He died at the ripe old age of three years. He had a good life.
Can you see how his legs are curled up underneath him? That’s what happens to spiders when they die. Their legs work on a hydraulic system, and when they “power down”, the legs contract inwards towards the body like this.
That’s how you can tell a spider is dead.
This is one of his mates, Tigger, when I startled her. I wouldn’t call it “playing dead” exactly, but she has frozen in place and is “hiding” behind her front legs. When this failed to deter me, she ran for her bolt hole.
You can see her legs have not curled underneath her body. She is still very much alive, and probably will be for another few years.
If in doubt, blow gently on the spider in question. This will almost always get it to move, even if only a little bit. If it blows away, you’re looking at a shed exoskeleton (skin). If it doesn’t flinch and its legs are curled underneath, it’s dead. If it’s alive it will either run away or pull its legs in closer to its body to try and appear smaller.
Try and make it laugh or hold a tiny mirror over it to see if it's breathing.
Stick it down your pants and find out…🤔
Unless you have a personal interest in the said creature why would you care? I do as i own one of these:
Avicularia avicularia. The beautiful pink toe tarantula. My spider is a 2 year old named ‘Venus’, she is a marvel of evolution, spiders are at the top of the game when it comes to cunning, stealth, and deception among arthropods. This is the common house spider (Parasteatoda tepidariorum).
This little beauty is completely harmless unless you are an insect. However, if you try to pick her up she will firstly try and run, if you persist in annoying her she will eventually just stay still, now you can poke her but she won't move, her life depends on it. Often they will curl their legs beneath them, so they cant be grabbed by the paws. Many spiders have poor eyesight so they rely on other senses, the hairs on my tarantula are not for warmth, they detect the slightest of changes in air pressure around her, ever wondered why some spiders turn very quickly in the direction you are annoying them? They feel the sudden shift in air pressure, they know you're there make no mistake. When a spider actually dies it becomes dessicated, its legs curl up and inwards, flipped onto it's back there is no movement, however if the girl is blagging there will be a small movement of the pedipalps(front paws), she is sensing the air around her. Dead spiders make no paw movements.
If a spider is playing dead it is because something has knocked it out of its web. When that happens, most spiders will “ball up,” and they may stay that way until there has been no further disturbance for a few minutes.
When I’ve poked a spider like that with a blade of grass they usually get up and run. But it would be more kind to wait them out.
Picking up a “dead” black widow would not be a good idea.
There are a few tell-tale signs that can help you determine whether or not a spider is playing dead.
If the spider's body is limp and it's legs are splayed out, then it's likely that the spider is faking its death.
On the other hand, if the spider's body is stiff and its legs are close to its body, then it's more likely that the spider has actually died.
Another thing to look for is whether or not the spider has lost control of its bladder or bowels - this will often happen when a spider dies.
Lets dispel with the first myth: spiders don't get bored. They are highly successful hunters, but why use up your energy knocking on your enemy's door? Let your enemy come to your turf. Second myth: They are not watching you, the only spiders that actually see you and watch your movements are these chaps:
The beautiful Salticidae aka the jumping spider, these little marvels will watch you, they see in colour, and their vision is top notch. They can't bite you.
Spiders stay still, but isn't that what a sniper is trained to do, don't give away your position. Now I've kept tarantulas for a long time, and I can tell you this… spiders sleep. No! Well here's a lesson, if my tarantula are awake and alert and I put my finger near them they will react in some way, either they know I'm going to pick them up in which case they walk toward my hand, or they raise their pedipalps (paws).
To tell me …not today. However, sometimes i go to pick them up and they are pretty much flaccid…is that the right word?..but i can tell when they've realised whats going on. Knowing my own tarantula as i do, i know they were asleep. Their reactions tell me so. But make no mistake if they feel the vibrations of prey they are alert. The same applies to house spiders, there is a time when they are just at rest.
Peace.
Good question…and lucky you. I’ve seen this particular experiment play out first hand.
For starters, your 10,000 spiders will be cut in half after the first day. Once they realize that their environment is completely closed off from outside stimuli and alternate living options, there will be a massive internal struggle as they attempt to create some sort of structure for their new home.
Most of the smaller arachnids will push for a democratic government with freely elected leaders. However, the larger spiders will have other ideas. Using brute strength and brutal tactics, they will first attempt to silence the vocal majority through violence. Before too long they will realize that ‘free speech’ cannot be quelled (even in an empty fridge) no matter how much they beat down the voices of the so-called “Freedom Fighters”.
So instead they will just eat them.
Once all the detractors are gone, the strong (but not necessarily the brightest) spiders create a system that falls somewhere between 9th century European feudalism and the warlord classes from the world of “Mad Max”. Eventually, turmoil will fade into routine and one King Spider will rule the fridge with an iron mandible.
After a period of quiet and relative peace, King Spider will begin hearing rumors of a rebellion within the slave-like serf class. He realizes that in order to keep his thousands of subjects from overthrowing him and his appointed ruling class, he had to give them some sort of entertainment. A distraction, if you will, from just how mundane their pitiful little, 8-legged lives really were.
This is where, through both a need and an epiphany, the “Arachnid Gladiator Games” were born. Soon all the best athetes were training and each region was tasked with presenting their greatest champion for the final, to-the-death competition.
After several seasons of different winners, one spider will begin to win over and over again. It will be a specimen of superior talent and DNA. In the previous experiment it was “Alex of the Butter Tray Colony”.
When you have your own Alex winning death-match after death-match inside your fridge, the little guy will…at some point…take a mate and reproduce. Two days later, there will be a litter of several hundred baby Alex’s, each with the same strength, agility and vicious mentality of their papa.
Once grown, this particularly dangerous family will bond together to form a super death squad; raping, pillaging and murdering all the way to the King Spider himself. The few spiders that the death squad allows to live will be forced to press the mangled corpses of all those that did not into the joints and crevices of the refrigerator door.
Slick with cold spider-blood and being pushed slowly outward by the ever growing mass of gooey body parts, the door will eventually open…just a bit. Just…enough.
Climbing over the dismembered faces that had always been so kind when they were babies, the death squad exits the fridge in the dead of night.
At this point, a normal spider might’ve been inclined to just run outside, happy to be free at last. What you have to remember, however, is that these are not “normal” spiders. These are spiders bred from special stock, created through repeated violence and the dramatic slaying of many, many equally tough arachnids.
These guys have no interest in building webs on a pretty flower and fishing for flies. No…all they desire is to cause pain. The bigger the prey, the better. Did I mention that they could smell warm-blooded animals from a long way away? No? Sorry. Yeah…that’s just another thing to add to the list.
I only bring it up now because that’s how they’ll be able to find your bedroom. Where you’re sleeping soundly. For now.
Does that answer your question?
It will slowly open all its eyes and stand upright. Before you know it, it will start to change and grow gigantic. It transforms into a behemoth zombie tarantula and is staring right at you.
Realizing that you are food, it lunges at you and eats your head out!!!
Well, that is, if you are high.
If you are’nt, well, you’ll mostly just see a dead spider.
If that spider has been that way for 2 weeks it. is. dead. Spiders will generally play dead until they think the threat is gone. One black widow played dead on me for a couple of hours while I (thinking it was dead) prodded it with a pencil, studying its legs and various appendages and photographing them. She looked deader than a box of ashes until I placed her back in her jar and went outside to give her a decent resting place. Didn’t have to worry about getting her out! She marched out of there on her own, healthy as an Olympic athlete. I had to stand there and take in my stupidity before I slinked off to my car feeling like a complete idiot!
