Roberta Writes – Reblog: In Touch With Nature – Golden Orb Spiders #spiders #southafrica #wildlife

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Picture caption: close up of a Golden Orb Spider. You can clearly see the orb in the centre and the golden thread

Spiders get a lot of negative press everywhere. Recently, there have been a number of poems about spiders on WordPress and all of them paint spiders as scary creatures which do much harm to humans. I decided to write this post as a tribute to spiders which actually do a lot of good in this world. There are some venomous spiders, but these are in the minority. Thousands of spiders die at the hand of humans due to ignorance and unfounded fear.

The spider I am focusing on for this post is the South African Golden Orb Spider. From March to May, the Golden Orb Spider is an outstanding feature of the NorthWest province in South Africa. Hundreds of these large spiders can be seen everywhere, spinning and guarding their webs, and doing what spiders do which is catching and consuming prey, usually insects, and reproducing.

The female of this species is 1,000 times bigger than the male. The female spins the web and allows several males to cohabitat on the web. The males are usually found at the top of the web while the female sits at the hub, facing downwards, and waiting for insects to become trapped in the web. She then wraps the insect in web to immobilise it, kills it with one bite, and moves it to the centre of the web for immediate consumption or to store in her ‘larder’. I know you are thinking this is cruel but think about the contents of your own freezer. I often think that if the Martians from War of the Worlds arrived on Earth now, they would have had no conscience about eating people after peeping into the average freezer which is stuffed full of meat.

Continue reading here: https://writingtoberead.com/2025/08/27/in-touch-with-nature-golden-orb-spiders-spiders-southafrica-wildlife/

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Published by robertawrites235681907

I am a writer of young adult fiction and poetry

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69 thoughts on “Roberta Writes – Reblog: In Touch With Nature – Golden Orb Spiders #spiders #southafrica #wildlife”

  6. Lovely post, Robbie! My granddaughter Autumn loves creatures of all kinds. She caught a injured spider last week and tried to provide a home for it. Sadly, it died the next day. There’s a spider web between the side of my house and the green house about one foot away from it. A spider built a web in the gap. I didn’t disturb it. The first spider seemed to be gone. Now the web is owned by a bigger spider. I love watching spiders spinning the webs. It’s fascinating.

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  14. Thank you for the interesting information. The 1,000 ration between female and male is amazing. Spiders are fascinating. A few days ago we had a garden orb spider in our backyard here in Texas and he/she spun a beautiful web that was about one meter in diameter, maybe bigger. She/he took it down every morning and put it back up in the evening. But now the spider seems to be gone. We have a lot of so called rabid wolf spiders and my daughter might have been bit by a brown recluse, which kind of looks like wolf spider but is smaller, but a lot more dangerous. That is a great photo of a Golden Orb Spider. I am not sure if I’ve seen one, but I’ve seen many kinds of garden orb spiders.

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    1. HI Thomas, you get orb spiders everywhere and their webs are beautiful. These ones don’t take their webs down. They can last for years. I’m sorry your daughter was bitten by a spider. I hope she wasn’t very sick. My mom was bitten by a venomous violin spider and needed medical attention. As with most wild creatures, you have to exercise care around spiders. My favourite short story I wrote is The Bite which is based on spiders.

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      1. Yes, you are right there are even orb spiders in Sweden despite the northern latitude. The brown recluse is frequently called the violin spider. Maybe it is the same. Brown recluse / Violin spiders are common here in Texas, and considering that her reaction to the spider bite was strong, the doctor thought my daughter might have been bit by a brown recluse. We have a lot of wolf spiders but their bites are mild. She could, of course have had an allergic reaction to wolf spider bite. Anyway, there are a few spider poems/stories in Lion Scream, and they are all great. But maybe this is a different short story?

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          2. That is no problem, Thomas. I think that collection is my best work to date. I’m glad you enjoyed the stories. I’m working on another South African based historical collection of short stories. I have been side tracked by my cake art trilogy though – grin!

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