Nature Near You: Spiders – From Fear to Fascination

In this episode of Wildly Curious (formerly For the Love of Nature), Kim Baker shares her personal journey of overcoming a fear of spiders, turning what was once a source of dread into a fascination with these many-legged creatures. From backyard orb weavers to the impressive dark fishing spider, learn about the surprising behaviors and roles that spiders play in our ecosystems. Whether you're a fellow spider skeptic or an arachnid enthusiast, this episode will have you looking at spiders in a whole new light.

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to For the Love of Nature, a podcast where we tell you everything you need to know about nature, and probably more than you wanted to know. I'm Kim Baker, and it's miniseries time. For those of you just joining us, I'm filling in for a couple of weeks while Laura and Katy take a break and prepare for the next footlong season.
Throughout this miniseries, we're talking about nature near you, taking a closer look at the plants and animals right outside our front door. In today's episode, I wanted to talk about a many-legged friend who's likely has a tumultuous relationship with many of us, the spider. Let's jump into it.
Spiders and I have had a rollercoaster relationship. It's a real enemies to friends storyline here. Like many people, I've always been wary of them.
I think it's the multiple leg situation and that they can scoot so fast when they have to, or that they can defy gravity, or perhaps that I was socialized to shout eek a spider from a very, very young age. My fear was exacerbated by two, let's call them core memories. Memory one, in late elementary slash early middle school, I was walking around my backyard looking for something to do when my mom came out of our house to talk to me.
Do I remember what we were talking about? Of course not. What I do remember, however, is her shouting, you have a huge spider on your neck.
I screamed, get it off, get it off, get it off, while she swatted at me, eventually sending the spider airborne. Looking back, it was probably a chunky orb weaver that hitched a ride when I was walking through the woods in our front yard, but you know, also an unwanted accessory. Memory two, for a few years while I was in college, my whole dad side of the family, uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, would drive down to Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri for a long weekend on the lake.
My grandpa would don an obnoxious shirt, like, you betcha dupe I'm Polish, and we'd spend the whole day water skiing and joy riding on our trustworthy watercraft, Kilbasa 1 and Kilbasa 2. I can't make this stuff up. Anyway, after a long day of getting burnt, wear sunscreen, people, protect your skin, we'd retire to our condo for bed.
I had just texted my boyfriend goodnight, flipped my cell phone shut, and was about to close my eyes when gracefully falling from the heavens was, again, a gigantic spider, about to use my face as a landing pad for its silk acrobatics. I ran out of my room, screaming and waking up my dad and sister. I was petrified, and my poor dad took one for the team and switched rooms with me for the rest of the trip.
So, yeah, not a spider fan. My opinion of spiders changed dramatically when I started volunteering at the zoo. And for those of you keeping score at home, this is the same zoo where I met Katy and Laura.
For me, the best part of volunteering was training to handle animals and subsequently participating in on-site and off-site programs with said animals. When I made it to the appropriate level, some lovely, lovely keepers at the zoo taught me how to properly coax, pick up and hold the Chilean rose-haired tarantulas. I learned what stress behaviors to watch out for, how unbelievably fragile they are, and some sweet facts to share with visitors.
Most of the time, they were super chill and a super easy ambassador animal to work with. And they elicited a pretty solid crowd response. You want to feel power?
Watch a grown ass man start to walk toward you, freeze, then make an about face because he saw you were holding a tarantula. Muahahaha. I got way comfortable with tarantulas, and after that, living with our friendly neighborhood spiders also got way easier.
I became known as the trap and release wait-lady at my office job. We worked in the front half of a warehouse, so there were many creepy crawlies to release into the parking lot. And I even kept a jumping spider for a bit.
Shout out to Josh, our requisite art and bug guy, for teaching me how to keep it alive. All these skills did not prepare me for the day literally a month ago when I walked downstairs to grab a box of food from the freezer, looked up, and about jumped out of my skin, seeing a palm-sized fishing spider straight chilling on my basement wall. But instead of freaking out, I took a breath, unclenched my clenchables, texted Josh, the bug guy, to confirm what the heck I was looking at, and went on an informational deep dive.
The spider on my wall was a dark fishing spider, Dolomites tenibrosis, which is one of 101 species in the genus. Dolomites is derived from a Greek word that means wily and deceitful. And why Disney hasn't decided to pick up 101 Dolomites as a spinoff to 101 Dalmatians is beyond me.
Listen, I am full of good ideas here. The dark fishing spider is, well, large. It's often misidentified as a wolf spider or tarantula.
Male bodies range from a quarter to a half inch, while female bodies can be up to an inch long. Now, add two to three and a half inches for legs, and you have yourself a beefy spider. Their coloration is mostly dark brown, with an almost chevron-like brown and black pattern on the legs.
Like other Dolomites, they're covered with short hairs that are hydrophobic, so they can quite literally walk on water. But unlike other fishing spiders who actively hunt insects and in some cases fish from the edge of a water source, the dark fishing spider prefers to live near-ish water or in dry wooded areas and spends most of its time on rocks or trees, or apparently basement walls. There, they hunt insects like crickets and other spiders and, per Josh, sometimes tiny snakes.
And because they're running spiders, like wolf spiders, they have pretty good vision to hunt and pounce on prey at night. They are large enough to bite through human skin, but reports of that happening are really rare. Remember, we're a pretty large predator, even for that large species of spider.
And I'm ending on what I think is a hilarious fun fact from the Missouri Department of Conservation. Quote, a 2013 study found that male dark fishing spiders spontaneously die when they copulate, meaning that the males can only ever mate but once. I'm sorry.
Spontaneously die? What an awful reward for doing your spider duty. Now, it goes on to say that because females generally eat the deceased males, the death of the male both contributes to the health and well-being of the female, as well as increases the number, size, and well-being of her offspring.
So it turns out it's okay for the species, but still, humans would not be into that. Once I was done with my info spiral, I sent spider pictures without consent to all of my friends who indulged me with a lot of questions. And that was that.
I let it hang out on the cinder block wall, and it was gone the next day. Back out into my backyard, or maybe my coral space. Both are probably a meet-and-three for dark fishing spiders.
I have to admit, I'm proud of how far I've come with spiders as a whole. They still may give me a jump scare now and again, but I'm grateful that these days, I can approach them with curiosity instead of a shriek. Thank you again to Josh for always answering my questions, sending me cool pics of praying mantises.
Mantids? I don't remember. And creating wonderful art for the podcast.
We appreciate you. And remember, sometimes you don't have to go outside to find nature. Nature can come inside to find you.
Not in a horror movie way, either more like an odd couple or unlikely roommates sort of thing. If you want to hear Josh and herpetologist Steve go head to head to see which creature category ranks supreme, check out The Specialty Battle from season 3. That's all for this episode.
Thank you all for hanging out with me these past few weeks while we explored all sorts of nature near you. Laura and Katy will be back next week with the first episode of season 6, and I know it's going to be a blast. Alright, everyone, until next time, bye!
Bye!