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The spider is an air breathing creature but like insects their blood which is known as hemolymph doesn’t carry oxygen. But did you know that spiders can go for hours to days without breathing. When it comes to how long spiders live there is no one answer fits all species.
The black widow can live for one to three years and that is the female. The brown recluse spider lives for a shorter period of one to two years and the Goliath bird eater spider can live to the ripe old age of 25 years. Scientists believe that spiders do not die of natural causes. They are killed by predators or they fight each other to their death or natural phenomena does them in.
The oldest spider in the world to ever be recorded to have lived long was an Australian trapdoor spider that lived to 43 years before dying in the hands of a wasp, giving credence to the theory that spiders do not die of natural causes.
The spider’s life cycle
The spider goes through three stages in its life cycle. It is hatched as an egg. As an egg it is protected by the mother which carries her eggs on her back in special sacs she has created. This gives the eggs a higher chance to survive. They remain as eggs for a couple of weeks ranging from two to four and in some cases six weeks.
When the eggs are ready to hatch they bit through the sac and free themselves. They come out as spiderlings and not larvae. The spiderlings are tiny little creatures and they move around by crawling or by ballooning. Ballooning is actually climbing onto surface or a twig and releasing silk thread from the abdomen which they swing around with.
They swing with this silky thread from one place and this is their favorite way of moving around for long distances. Spiderlings will continue to molt over and over until they reach maturity and during the molting period they remain vulnerable to predators until they grow a new exoskeleton. The exoskeleton will take a while before it becomes harder and it take five to ten molts across species to reach full maturity and have a well formed exoskeleton.
How do spiders survive?
They survive by building themselves a warm pod to live in until the harsh seasons like winter are done. If they remain outside they will probably make a meal for another insect or creature. To make the pod the spider chooses a secluded corner and they web themselves into the corner with a strong webbing that even predators cannot penetrate.
Also to survive they use adaptations like camouflage and building webs like other insects. This can help them remain undetected by predators like lizards and geckos. The season with the highest mortality for spiders is autumn when they have produced an egg sac. If they are unlucky to get caught by a predator they can sacrifice a leg to escape the predator.