Spiders

Spiders are special animals. They have many special features and can do many wonderful things. Spiders are even helpful to people.

Spiders cannot chew food. They use their poison to melt the insects into a juice. This is why spiders wrap the insects they catch in silk. It's like spiders make their own box drinks. 

How many bugs can a spider eat in one year?

Spiders can eat 75 lbs. of insects in one year. That is about the same weight as a medium-sized dog.

Spiders eat lots of insects like flies, mosquitos and moths. They help keep the number of bugs down. If there weren't any spiders can you imagine how many more bugs there would be in the world?  

There are many types of spiders. There are about 40,000 different types of spiders that are known. 

Spiderwebs are like a spider's home. But spiders use their spiderwebs to catch and keep food. Spiders are smart hunters. They create their webs in places that attract insects and wait for food to come to them. 

Most spiders make webs. Spiderwebs are made of a special material that spiders make. This special material is called silk. Spider silk is stronger and can hold more than steel.

All spiders are venomous. This means that spiders poison the things they bite. Fortunately, very few spiders can bite people.

Dying from a spider bite is very rare. In fact, you have a better chance of getting hit by lightning than dying from a spider bite.

Spiders have been on Earth for a very long time. They have been around for more than 165 million years. This means that spiders were around when the dinosaurs walked the Earth.

Spiders are not insects. Spiders are a type of animal called an arachnid. Arachnids include animals like scorpions and ticks.

Spiders are different from insects. Spiders have eight legs and eight eyes. Insects have six legs and compound eyes.

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