References Bird TL, Moeti S, Hitchcock RK, Kelly MC, Chobolo LL, Gotcha N, et al. (2023) Orb-web spider Argiope (Araneidae) as indigenous arrow poison of G/ui and G//ana San hunters in the Kalahari. PLoS ONE 18(1): e0276557. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0276557 Blackledge T (1998). Stabilimentum variation and foraging success in Argiope aurantia and Argiope trifasciata (Araneae: Araneidae). Journal of Zoology 246(1): 21-27. Bush AA, Yu DW, Herberstein ME (2008). Function of bright coloration in the wasp spider Argiope bruennichi (Araneae: Araneidae). Proc. R. Soc. B 275, 1337-1342. Eisner T, Dean J (1976). Ploy and counterploy in predator-prey interactions: Orb-weaving spiders versus bombardier beetles. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 73(4):1365-1367. Eisner T, Nowicki S (1983). Spider Web Protection Through Visual Advertisement: Role of the Stabilimentum. Science 219(4581): 185-187. Enders F (1973). Selection of Habitat by the Spider Argiope aurantia Lucas (Araneidae). The American Midland Naturalist 90(1):47-55. Foellmer MW, Khadka KK (2013). Does personality explain variation in the probability of sexual cannibalism in the orb-web spider Argiope aurantia? Behaviour 150(14): 1731-1746. Foellmer MW, Fairbairn DJ (2004). Males under attack: sexual cannibalism and its consequences for male morphology and behaviour in an orb-weaving spider. Evolutionary Ecology Research 6(2):163-181. Foradori MJ, Kovoor J, Moon M, Tillinghast EK (2002). Relation Between the Outer Cover of the Egg Case of Argiope aurantia (Araneae: Araneidae) and the Emergence of its Spiderlings. Journal of Morphology 252(2):218-226. Friedel T, Nentwig W (1989). Immobilizing and lethal effects of spider venoms on the cockroach and the common mealbeetle. Toxicon 27(3):305-316. Gorham JR, Rheney TB (1968). Envenomation by the Spiders Chiracanthium inclusum and Argiope aurantia: Observations on Arachnidism in the United States. JAMA, 206(9), 1958-1962. Herberstein M (2000). Foraging behaviour in orb-web spiders (Araneidae): do web decorations increase prey capture success in Argiope keyserlingi Karsch, 1878? Australian Journal of Zoology 48(2):217-223. Kerr A (1993). Low Frequency of Stabilimenta in Orb Webs of Argiope appensa (Araneae: Araneidae) from Guam: An Indirect Effect of an Introduced Avian Predator? Pacific Science 47(4):328-337. Li D, Kok LM, Seah WK, & Lim ML. (2003). Age-dependent stabilimentum-associated predator avoidance behaviours in orb-weaving spiders. Behaviour, 1135-1152. Lüddecke T et al. (2020). An Economic Dilemma between Molecular Weapon Systems May Explain an Arachno-Atypical Venom in Wasp Spiders (Argiope bruennichi). Biomolecules 10(7):978. Nyffeler M, Dean DA, Sterling WL (1987). Feeding ecology of the orb-weaving spider Argiope aurantia (Araneae: Araneidae) in a cotton agroecosystem. Entomophaga 32(4):367-375. Olive CW (1982). Sex pheromones in two orb-weaving spiders (Araneae, Araneidae): An experimental field study. Journal of Arachnology 10(3):241-245. Pasquet A, Leborgne R (1998). "Behavioural tactics for prey capture and prey ingestion in two sympatric spiders." Netherlands Journal of Zoology 48(1): 39-52. Reed CF, Witt PN (1972). Growth Rate and Longevity in Two Species of Orb-weaving Spiders (Araneae: Argiopidae). Bulletin of the British Arachnological Society 2(6): 111-112. Schneider J, Uhl G, Herberstein ME (2015). Cryptic Female Choice Within the Genus Argiope: A Comparative Approach. Cryptic female choice in arthropods: patterns, mechanisms, and prospects, 55-77. Walter A (2024). The function of web decorations in orb web spiders. Frontiers in Arachnid Science, 3:1384128. Walter A, Elgar M (2011). Signals for damage control: web decorations in Argiope keyserlingli (Araneae: Araneidae). Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 65, 1909-1915. Warren AD, Severns PM (2024). Fatal Attraction: Argiope Spiders Lure Male Hemileuca Moth Prey with the Promise of Sex. Insects 15(1):53. Wignall AE, Herberstein ME (2013). The Influence of Vibratory Courtship on Female Mating Behaviour in Orb-Web Spiders (Argiope keyserlingi, Karsch 1878). PloS One 8(1): e53057.
Could you do a video on the Metaltella Simoni? The Hacklemesh Weaver? Please? It's one of my favourites! I usually find it under logs sometimes in the summer.
I have a sentimental attachment to these spiders. When I was four, maybe five years old, I was helping my grandmother work in their field when we had to retrieve something from her shed. She absolutely adored spiders, and wanted to desenitize me to them at an early age so I would not grow up to kill any spider I saw on sight. There was a massive female garden spider that had built a web within the rafting. It has been over twenty years, and I no longer remember exactly what she said, but I remember being enamored by the beautiful colors of the spider's abdomen as my grandmother gently explained to me their great importance in protecting our food. This is one of my earliest memories of encountering a spider. I don't know how it happened, but I did eventually develop a slight fear of spiders. However, when I started to tend a personal garden, I held this memory at the forefront of my mind whenever I saw a variety of other species make their home in my planters and small bed. It was an ember that slowly rekindled my love for them over the next half a decade. Now I can pick many species up by hand whenever I need to transport them to safety. Thanks grandma!
@@dworf543 I was gifted with one her built her web so low off the porch I could easily provide her with regular feedings. And she was desensitized enough to me I could stroke the back of her abdomen. She felt like paper-thin leather. She produced 3 egg cases that I guarded all winter.
Not sure why the algorithm sent this video my way, but I'm so glad it did. I live on the Texas prairie and during the summer these spiders are along every fence line. They build webs along the eaves of my house and if I don't relocate them every week or so, they take over my front and back porches. I've always found them fascinating. In one instance I rescued a hummingbird that was trapped in a web, which is very strong compared to other spider webs here. Everyone out here mows their fence line very carefully so as not to drive through a web face-first, which will cause even the toughest rancher to hop off the mower and do the "is it on me?!?" dance. Great video, and subscribed!
I've held many of them before. Once you touch them, they run up to a corner of their web, where you can safely scoot them onto your hands. It feels so cool, their spindly legs walking all over you while they lay a dragline of silk in case they fall/jump off.
I had a pet yellow garden spider and named it Orb. I don't think I over fed it, but one day i found her dead right outside my backdoor. kinda creepy lol
Yes! When I was 9, living out in the country, I had one of these build a web in my window, I've never been afraid of spiders, so I just thought it was cool, and would put flies in it's web.
8:00 a hypothesis for how the markings attract more prey: If spiders have more vibrant(yellow) markings, then they will reflect more light causing light-sensitive insects to b attracted towards them.
Awesome. I "keep" one of these almost every year (meaning I just catch insects to feed her, and do what I can to make sure she doesn't get disturbed). They're one of my favorite spiders. Edit: speaking of the males, I've only ever seen one individual. He was in a much smaller, more inconvenient and less organized web about 8ft from the female. I just thought it was neat that he had set up a temporary home rather than go straight to her first.
Im a grown adult and i dont really get that excited about bugs but this has been my favorite spider since i was a kid. Widows, trapdoors, and wolf spiders never came close to yellow orb weaver, and these things get over 1.5 inches, dont be fooled, i grew one over 3 inches one year with the spot i had. They never get enough love and im glad to get a video on these spiders
Okay guys, I've made an observation about these spiders where I live in Oregon and want to know if anyone else has noticed this too (specifically for Argiope aurantia). On our family farm we see a massive spike in the number of these spiders approximately every 5-7 years followed by a massive reduction in sightings. Has anyone else noticed this where you live? Also thank you so much for covering aurantia, it has always been my favorite spider!🤩
Fellow Southern Oregonian here. I used to live on a farm, when I was younger, and would see them out hiking the property, mainly in the summer months. I would notice them in wild apple trees on the property, or close to our produce we grew in the yard (grew hay, but, hey, when in Rome, right?). Since I was petrified of spiders for a long time in my life, I learned where to look for them at what times, but, when I left the farm in my 20’s, I noticed towards the end, I’d see them less and less, but this could be because we stopped growing produce before the property was lost. It may be that the ones you have in your area were preyed on by other insects or birds more often because of some shift in the local ecosystem. That’s my guess, though, can’t say for sure.
@@K12machinima We did grass seed ourselves, almost entirely fescue during my lifetime. While we certainly saw them near the orchard the predominant locations were in the briars and bull thistle around the perimeter of the fields.
we are babysitting 2 egg cases left on our porch by one of these beauties a few months ago. Thank you for the timely information on one of my favorite spiders!
Hey, Travis. The Yellow Garden Spider was probably the first spider that I had ever seen back in the 1960s growing up in Chicago, IL. We had quite a few vacant lots with tall weeds and grasses. They always amazed me. I love the way that you explain your subjects. (Spiders) I would have loved to have had you as an instructor in high school or college. You make your whole presentation interesting, enjoyable, and understandable. I also noticed that the Cellar Spider does the shaky thing when bothered in its web.
I saw one of these in my aunt's garden in Indiana when I was 10 or so. I have never forgotten that huge gorgeous creature. What a treat to learn about her family! Thanks!
Those terrified me like all other spiders did until I was about 17. Now I try to keep all spiders safe, I even have celler spider broods in the basement and garage, jumping spiders are my favorite, they can wander in the bed room too.
The first time I saw one of these garden spiders I was stationed at the US Army's Fort Sill, in Oklahoma. I captured one and put her in the space between the window glass and the screen, I tossed insects in for food and she thrived there for a few months until one day, when our barracks was inspected by the HQ personnel, who told me, "You haven't cleaned your window in so long there's a spider living in there!". Had to return her back to her habitat. 🥲
I found one of these spiders in my work truck. She had somehow made her way into the truck and built her web in the passenger window over night. I drove around doing my job for a few hours the next day before I noticed her sitting in her web. Oh and just to be clear. Once I saw her a scooped her up and let her go in the garden of the house I had just pulled up to.
Had one make a web on my front door this last Spring. She hung out all the way till two weeks ago. I think she is gone now and I miss her terribly. She left an egg sac that I'm letting remain. Hope to see more of them next spring!
So glad to have one last spider video this year from you :D I've never seen one of these, I feel like I'm missing out! Tangentially related, I really have to thank you for your role in getting me through my second ever college class. It was a public speaking class with a multipart project spanning the whole semester of 3 different speeches on the same topic. While deciding what I wanted to cover, your video on orb weaver webs came out, and I suddenly decided to do my presentations on spiders, particularly the value of amateurs as citizen scientists. In the span of a few months, I've bought 5 different books on spiders, generally those in NA. Some guidebooks, others more broadly about spider biology and such. Many were from your own suggested reading or I found through sources in your videos. The end result was so much more valuable to me than if I'd picked a topic I thought most people already cared about. I learned so much, and I witnessed some of my classmates really change their minds about spiders. Even those who were still scared of them appreciated what they learned from my speeches. I don't mind public speaking at all, in fact I quite enjoy it. However, my professor made interacting with the subject unexciting and frustrating, mismanaging our time and poorly explaining our assignments. I was really close to dropping the class before I could even do my first presentation. But I stuck it out long enough to see the results of that first speech - my classmates were thrilled! I decided then and there that I would hang in there if for no other reason than to finish what I'd started. In theory the class was about public speaking, but to me, it was about educating myself and others about spiders and changing people's perspectives on these fascinating and important creatures. I am truly, genuinely grateful to you for planting the seed of curiosity and respect in me. I would have quit this class if I hadn't felt so inspired by what you do with your videos. My final grade? 100%! Here's to another year of learning about our friends, the spiders :)
I remember the first time I came across one of these lovely critters. I was a horticultural student, working as a gardener for a bunch of lakefront properties on the west island of Montreal. I was blown away to find this big, beautiful yellow spider hanging out on a web made in between bright yellow rudbeckia flowers. I really wish I saw more of them. That property was magic to work at with so much invert diversity. It was the same place that I also saw a hummingbird moth for the first (and only) time in my life.
In the 50's there were a bunch of PSAs aired in the US telling people not to use gasoline as a degreaser while doing laundry. Back then it must've been a bit of a swiss army knife.
This is one of my favorite episodes so far. I was fortunate enough to have one of these big beautiful ladies make her web right in front of my bedroom window. I was fascinated by her and memorized every detail about her that I could. So I was super excited when I saw that you'd made a video about this one. I was a little confused when you said that they usually don't make their web at face height. Because that's right where mine was. Until... you mentioned what they usually/often eat. Crickets and grasshoppers. I had a terrarium of crickets at that time. And I had the terrarium on a raised shelf right in front of my bedroom window. My crickets chirped day and night. And they did have an odor of, well, crickets. So, I think that particular mystery is solved. Apparently these lovely ladies are willing to build their web a little higher than otherwise preferred if food is detected in huge numbers higher than usual too. Unfortunately my beautiful spider who I was enjoying so much mysteriously disappeared after my paranoid roommate power washed his house. I specifically asked him to avoid my spider. But my guess is that my spider was the whole reason why he decided to wash his house. (Grrr!!! 🤬) I'll just assume my spider was washed away unharmed and went on to consume all the crickets she could and make many baby spiders somewhere else. Sigh. I'm glad I got to enjoy watching her for a while.
I was very excited to see this episode when I woke up this morning, the yellow garden spider has always been my favorite just because they build such beautiful webs and have such beautiful coloration themselves. I never really knew much of anything about them, though, and now having watched your deep dive into them, I can honestly say this is one fascinating species of spider. I’m pretty sure I have actually seen a male before, I didn’t know the males were just so much naturally smaller until now, and I remember thinking “Wow, that’s the smallest one of these I’ve ever seen.” Some years ago, one of these spiders lived under the edge of my back deck all summer, and I loved seeing it there every day. Just as they build a silken decoration in their webs, their webs make a great decoration on your deck.
i'm moving from the PNW to North Carolina next year and i am going to LOSE MY MIND when i finally find one of these in person ❤ i've never managed to find one where i live. they are so incredible. my partner already sent me a picture of a female that had made a web in their carport there a few months ago. i love how large the females are for an orb weaver, it would be so cool to handle one but i know how shy they can be and i wouldn't want to destroy their web... thanks for another awesome video i always look forward to them and they usually send me into a spider-fixation for the next several days 😂
Here in Germany, in the state of Brandenburg, there are also these yellow spiders (known here as vespa spiders, but still unknown to most people here). They mostly only live on tall grass and are beautiful. And they are not at all aggressive. You can carefully pick them up in your hand to see them better and then put them back in their web. I'm really looking forward to summer because of these spiders. Oh, my mistake...We have the vesp spider and not the North American one.
12:15 is likely a Northern paper wasp, Polistes fuscatus. Also, wonderful video. I wonder if the bright coloration also serves to deter predators, as well as attract prey? Seems to work on us at least, as you mentioned.
Thrilled to see you managed to get this out for the season, Travis. Always lovely to see a video anyway but a good way to end out the year. Well wishes to you, your family and your eight legged visitors for the year to come!
Thanks for going over the pronunciation. In 30 years of reading about this species, I've never heard anyone saying it. I admit, that in my head, I pronounced it AR-ji-ope.
Just like the gif debate. You can pronounce it gif or jif, no one really cares (except the people who do). But you most definitely should not pronounce it yif
@@Sepi-chu_loves_moths except these are Latin names, so there *is* a correct pronunciation. What he says about it being a soft "g" being definitely incorrect does agree with the Latin pronunciation guides that I can find.
@@tichu7 it's Greek. "Scientific latin" often is, besides latin pronunciation is far from consistent because its been around for so long in so many different contexts
I have a very distinct memory of this spider. I have always heard of them referred to as ''writing spiders'' and when I was around 6-8 years old my family visited my grandmas house and in between 2 poles on her porch this spider made its web and being an arachnophobe I just avoided it. Now I must have had the wildest imagination or something because after we got done visiting I swear I saw written in that spiders web something along the lines of ''You Will Die'' now why I imagined this I couldnt tell you but it has been something that has stuck with me ever since
I pick one each year, close or on my porch, that I feed all summer long. At the beginning I have to put the bug in the web while the spider retreats. By mid summer I am having to do it with tongs the spider is so excited. By the end of the year I have to do it with tongs and chopsticks cause the spider won't let go of the tongs and I have to free them from webbing so the whole business doesn't pull her out of her web. These spiders will run out to the edge of the web when they see me coming and wait for me. (And yes, some years there have been multiples on the porch and I am really busy all summer long.) Thank heaven they like grasshoppers. I love them for the fact that they don't seem to want to web up somewhere I have to walk face first into the web like the dratted barn spiders - whom I do not feed. Or take a tennis racket to. I have tried to overwinter them but they just don't survive long after laying their egg sacks. I do make sure the wasps don't get her when she is old and tired and I put the egg sacks in a cool, safe place so they can hatch in the spring. (Last years spider laid three egg sacks in total on my concrete gargoyle.) This whole process happens every summer. For the past 32 years. People think I'm cracked. I don't care, I love these guys.
I wonder if the stabilimentem acts as a vibration damper. If it's loose then it might take up some of the large movements from prey like grasshoppers. There's my 2 minute theory
My favorite!! The colors are so vivid and beautiful. There was a big fat one I kind of befriended as a kid, I would catch grasshoppers and "release" them into her web. Strange to think that she had no idea that she'd be fondly remembered two decades later. Also I know these as "writing spiders" and didn't know their proper name until I was already an adult. I've never been bitten by one, but I also don't handle them. I don't remember how I picked grasshoppers for her. It was over twenty years ago, after all. Maybe I watched her and saw her eat them without my intervention? I did already catch grasshoppers for my own amusement, so it might have been a happy coincidence. About 26 minutes in - are the web decorations to attract mates, bigger ones advertising a better fed female and thus a better choice? Perhaps the North Carolina mental health place did research on spiders to establish a baseline of health and behavior BEFORE giving them drugs XD
(Arkansas) Me and my fiance had a VERY large yellow weaver right beside our front door. We name her “Fury”. She stayed there for about 2 months. She was so Gorgeous that even the pest control guy didn’t knock her down because of how pretty and large she was Definitely was a pretty thing to see every day
I absolutely love seeing these spoods! They're a joy to spot, right up there with the crab orbweaver and orchard orbweaver. Also, good grief, gasoline on a wound? The only time I've ever heard of that being useful was for Juliane Koepcke's plane crash in the Amazon. Please, dear reader, don't use gas on wounds. Thanks for the wonderful and informative videos!
My family keeps at least one of these spiders every year. We treat it like a pet. Catch a grasshopper and toss it in. She keeps the flying bugs in check, we get a fly free outdoor space. Win win. 10000000/10 would suggest.
Hello Travis.Thank you so much for these highley educated,interesting and humoreus video's.Thanks to you the spiders in my house are safe 😉.Can't wait to see the next video.Love,Bodi 🕷🕷🕷
I've always been fascinated by the specialization of male spiders, especially like these ones, where they become as small as possible to successfully reach maturity and mate with a female with minimal resources, as well as minimizing predation odds. It's especially cool that they developed the two shot strategy that they have. All this reminds me of male angler fish, where they basically become a pair of parasitic genitalia attached to a female. Really shows how, over time, nature is very good at filling hyper - specific niches as efficiently as possible.
That's fascinating to me too. Especially the part about their programmed death after the 2nd mating. Since they play no further role in parenting the act of dying right after their mating capability ended eliminated any competition for resources that their continued existence would have posed. Especially for smaller prey which is what their offspring would be needing soon.
So fascinating how in the mammal world, it tends to be "male dominant, female reserved for reproduction" but in many fish and insects it's the reverse. I've always wondered why that is.
19:57 i live here in oklahoma and i was went to grand lake for a vacation this summer and on this little ladder in the lake to get on a dock after i climbed up it onto the dock a massive (and i really do mean massive this thing was as big as my hand) orb weaver came out from underneath it or somewhere im not quite sure where it came from all i know is that i didnt ever touch that ladder again 😅😂 i wouldnt doubt that they eat lizards over here we get some big ones 😭
I remember being a child in Georgia, and me and my younger brothers got lost in the woods like only a few feet from my house and there were a ton of huge spiders surrounding us and we screamed and cried until an older cousin rescued us. I wondered if a few of those spiders were these, or if it was a different type of big spider. Ive been on this channel solely to figure out which spiders traumatized me back then lmao, it couldn't have been these tho because they were in the trees and not low to the ground.
Question... You said the young chew their way out of the sack. Spiders often eat their webs to regain many of the chemicals lost in the web construction if I'm remembering correctly. Do the young simply chew, or do they consume portions of the sack to get a jump start on silk production? Just a thought I had.
I was exploring a heavily grassed valley dense with small trees & shrubs one summer morn. I soon realized these were ALL around me. They saw me, and were "bouncing" at me with their webs. Many did this, I am serious. Crazy! ❤as you explain... bigger lunge tho, 6 inches! (S. Indianna)
YAY! I've been waiting so long to see this one! I need to bring some anecdotal information to the table. I live in the southeastern U.S on the Piedmont plateau (locally pronounced Peedmont). I do not see these spiders all the time. But occasionally when I do the females are much larger than the example you gave, mark 1 eyeball puts it at about 25% larger. I am certain they are an identical species. I have seen a male in the companion web, and it looked about the same size as your video. That female was "normal" sized. The local name for them is "writing spider" and instead we call Agelenopsis "garden spiders" or at least my family did. The old legend/saying goes that if you destroy its (Argiope aurantia) web, it will rebuild the web write your name in it and you will die shortly after. No one takes this seriously but its one of those things the older generation says to scare kids. I'm not aware of anyone who has been bit and no one considers them venomous.
Yet another in a long list of informative, entertaining episodes. Heck, I'll even call them indispensible, so thanks kindly for your commitment. I'd been waiting since forever to find this kind of spider content, and now I sit in front of my computer, my mouth agape, my own work production dwindling... Anyway, yes, the stunning Argiope aurantia has always been my favorite orb weaver in my area. Among the many reasons may be their relative scarcity; I see so few compared to Araneus gemma, another of which I've always been quite fond and whose webs can be enormous. The discussion on pheranomes reminded me: I always found the not-so-cute Bolas spider fascinating. Any chance you might cover this spider?
Your video's are great! I always feel safer from and more protective of each spider you cover after I watch them. I got to see one of these spiders earlier this september for the first time in saskatchewan. It hung on the walls of a hospital near one of it's side exit doors in a shady corner. It was big and the only easily visible part of it's web was it's zig zag web pattern It was quite large and was there all week while I was there. I was able to catch and offer it a large grasshopper from nearby and If I had blinked I would have missed it rush and subdue it. It was super cool!
I had one of these come into my woodshop and lay an eggsac in the corner of one of my skull shelves (I collect and carve animal skulls) Spider was gone after a day or two but the egg sac remains thus far
I love yellow garden spiders(all Argiope are cool, fight me on that!). I had one mom in my garden with like 4 egg sacks that all burst with massive amount of kids that covered all area very nicely few weeks later. I also found two male with pretty nice web and overall size that lived for pretty long time close to female web. One Female Wasp Spider lived for two years that is tad weird when everyone say they live only year, she was super heavy as I had to move her from one spot to another.
Oh man... I revisit that one at least once a year. A timeless classic. I can't believe some people still haven't seen it. Apparently, it's narrated by the same exact guy who narrated the real "Hinterland Who's Who" shorts and that's why it seems so legit at first, until it hilariously goes off the rails. Don't mess with the Crack Spider.
Once I was taking a walk with my ex through some woods in northeast Kansas, it was September, and as we walked, to our horror, we realized that we were surrounded by thousands of (I think?) these spiders. They were EVERYWHERE. As we tried to leave we kept having to brush them out of eachothers hair and backs. Every branch on every tree had an orb web with one of these guys in it. My question is: is this normal? Did I find the secret spider forest? Was it just a bad omen about the relationship I was in? What gives??
They like the edges of woods in southeast Kansas as well. Not so much the dense woods, but the very edge. There are other similarly sized orb weavers in eastern Kansas that don't mind the woods.
What a fascinating channel. When I was in Virginia I used to see many large webs at about head level on the trails with spiders that looked like this, but the seemed bigger than these ones. On early morning hikes, they are unavoidable, on the trails going south from Front Royal, VA. Other hikers called them "banana spiders", yet I have no idea if that is true.
They may have been golden silk orbweavers (Trichonephila clavipes). Locals often call them “banana spiders,” and they’re more likely to make webs at head-level.
I had a yellow garden spider in my yard this September, she was absolutely beautiful and magical. She made a couple egg sacks too, not sure if the spiderlings hatched.
I think there were more of them this year. I have lived in Texas for 10 years and only see 1 or 2 per year, but this year I have seen at least 10 of them, probably more.
References
Bird TL, Moeti S, Hitchcock RK, Kelly MC, Chobolo LL, Gotcha N, et al. (2023) Orb-web spider Argiope (Araneidae) as indigenous arrow poison of G/ui and G//ana San hunters in the Kalahari. PLoS ONE 18(1): e0276557. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0276557
Blackledge T (1998). Stabilimentum variation and foraging success in Argiope aurantia and Argiope trifasciata (Araneae: Araneidae). Journal of Zoology 246(1): 21-27.
Bush AA, Yu DW, Herberstein ME (2008). Function of bright coloration in the wasp spider Argiope bruennichi (Araneae: Araneidae). Proc. R. Soc. B 275, 1337-1342.
Eisner T, Dean J (1976). Ploy and counterploy in predator-prey interactions: Orb-weaving spiders versus bombardier beetles. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 73(4):1365-1367.
Eisner T, Nowicki S (1983). Spider Web Protection Through Visual Advertisement: Role of the Stabilimentum. Science 219(4581): 185-187.
Enders F (1973). Selection of Habitat by the Spider Argiope aurantia Lucas (Araneidae). The American Midland Naturalist 90(1):47-55.
Foellmer MW, Khadka KK (2013). Does personality explain variation in the probability of sexual cannibalism in the orb-web spider Argiope aurantia? Behaviour 150(14): 1731-1746.
Foellmer MW, Fairbairn DJ (2004). Males under attack: sexual cannibalism and its consequences for male morphology and behaviour in an orb-weaving spider. Evolutionary Ecology Research 6(2):163-181.
Foradori MJ, Kovoor J, Moon M, Tillinghast EK (2002). Relation Between the Outer Cover of the Egg Case of Argiope aurantia (Araneae: Araneidae) and the Emergence of its Spiderlings. Journal of Morphology 252(2):218-226.
Friedel T, Nentwig W (1989). Immobilizing and lethal effects of spider venoms on the cockroach and the common mealbeetle. Toxicon 27(3):305-316.
Gorham JR, Rheney TB (1968). Envenomation by the Spiders Chiracanthium inclusum and Argiope aurantia: Observations on Arachnidism in the United States. JAMA, 206(9), 1958-1962.
Herberstein M (2000). Foraging behaviour in orb-web spiders (Araneidae): do web decorations increase prey capture success in Argiope keyserlingi Karsch, 1878? Australian Journal of Zoology 48(2):217-223.
Kerr A (1993). Low Frequency of Stabilimenta in Orb Webs of Argiope appensa (Araneae: Araneidae) from Guam: An Indirect Effect of an Introduced Avian Predator? Pacific Science 47(4):328-337.
Li D, Kok LM, Seah WK, & Lim ML. (2003). Age-dependent stabilimentum-associated predator avoidance behaviours in orb-weaving spiders. Behaviour, 1135-1152.
Lüddecke T et al. (2020). An Economic Dilemma between Molecular Weapon Systems May Explain an Arachno-Atypical Venom in Wasp Spiders (Argiope bruennichi). Biomolecules 10(7):978.
Nyffeler M, Dean DA, Sterling WL (1987). Feeding ecology of the orb-weaving spider Argiope aurantia (Araneae: Araneidae) in a cotton agroecosystem. Entomophaga 32(4):367-375.
Olive CW (1982). Sex pheromones in two orb-weaving spiders (Araneae, Araneidae): An experimental field study. Journal of Arachnology 10(3):241-245.
Pasquet A, Leborgne R (1998). "Behavioural tactics for prey capture and prey ingestion in two sympatric spiders." Netherlands Journal of Zoology 48(1): 39-52.
Reed CF, Witt PN (1972). Growth Rate and Longevity in Two Species of Orb-weaving Spiders (Araneae: Argiopidae). Bulletin of the British Arachnological Society 2(6): 111-112.
Schneider J, Uhl G, Herberstein ME (2015). Cryptic Female Choice Within the Genus Argiope: A Comparative Approach. Cryptic female choice in arthropods: patterns, mechanisms, and prospects, 55-77.
Walter A (2024). The function of web decorations in orb web spiders. Frontiers in Arachnid Science, 3:1384128.
Walter A, Elgar M (2011). Signals for damage control: web decorations in Argiope keyserlingli (Araneae: Araneidae). Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 65, 1909-1915.
Warren AD, Severns PM (2024). Fatal Attraction: Argiope Spiders Lure Male Hemileuca Moth Prey with the Promise of Sex. Insects 15(1):53.
Wignall AE, Herberstein ME (2013). The Influence of Vibratory Courtship on Female Mating Behaviour in Orb-Web Spiders (Argiope keyserlingi, Karsch 1878). PloS One 8(1): e53057.
Could you do a video on the Metaltella Simoni? The Hacklemesh Weaver? Please? It's one of my favourites! I usually find it under logs sometimes in the summer.
Awesome video, Virginia native and you'd have to come here to reevaluate those measurements because our females get very robust
People always asking about spiders. But has anyone asked how Travis is doing? Hope you are well. Thanks for the informative vids.
@ Oh yeah, how are ya Trav?
@ and how are you catcish
fish*
Litterally punching the air in joy because the funny spider youtube man posted again
appropriate username!! :)
I have a sentimental attachment to these spiders. When I was four, maybe five years old, I was helping my grandmother work in their field when we had to retrieve something from her shed. She absolutely adored spiders, and wanted to desenitize me to them at an early age so I would not grow up to kill any spider I saw on sight. There was a massive female garden spider that had built a web within the rafting. It has been over twenty years, and I no longer remember exactly what she said, but I remember being enamored by the beautiful colors of the spider's abdomen as my grandmother gently explained to me their great importance in protecting our food. This is one of my earliest memories of encountering a spider.
I don't know how it happened, but I did eventually develop a slight fear of spiders. However, when I started to tend a personal garden, I held this memory at the forefront of my mind whenever I saw a variety of other species make their home in my planters and small bed. It was an ember that slowly rekindled my love for them over the next half a decade. Now I can pick many species up by hand whenever I need to transport them to safety. Thanks grandma!
@@dworf543 I was gifted with one her built her web so low off the porch I could easily provide her with regular feedings. And she was desensitized enough to me I could stroke the back of her abdomen. She felt like paper-thin leather.
She produced 3 egg cases that I guarded all winter.
Not sure why the algorithm sent this video my way, but I'm so glad it did. I live on the Texas prairie and during the summer these spiders are along every fence line. They build webs along the eaves of my house and if I don't relocate them every week or so, they take over my front and back porches. I've always found them fascinating. In one instance I rescued a hummingbird that was trapped in a web, which is very strong compared to other spider webs here. Everyone out here mows their fence line very carefully so as not to drive through a web face-first, which will cause even the toughest rancher to hop off the mower and do the "is it on me?!?" dance. Great video, and subscribed!
Used to be so scared of them as a kid. They are perhaps the most polite spider you can find.
Love these! I think they're the most docile of the bigger garden spiders. Sounds crazy but you can feed them like a pet, their behavior is pretty neat
I've held many of them before. Once you touch them, they run up to a corner of their web, where you can safely scoot them onto your hands. It feels so cool, their spindly legs walking all over you while they lay a dragline of silk in case they fall/jump off.
I had a pet yellow garden spider and named it Orb. I don't think I over fed it, but one day i found her dead right outside my backdoor. kinda creepy lol
Yes! When I was 9, living out in the country, I had one of these build a web in my window, I've never been afraid of spiders, so I just thought it was cool, and would put flies in it's web.
8:00 a hypothesis for how the markings attract more prey: If spiders have more vibrant(yellow) markings, then they will reflect more light causing light-sensitive insects to b attracted towards them.
Awesome. I "keep" one of these almost every year (meaning I just catch insects to feed her, and do what I can to make sure she doesn't get disturbed).
They're one of my favorite spiders.
Edit: speaking of the males, I've only ever seen one individual. He was in a much smaller, more inconvenient and less organized web about 8ft from the female. I just thought it was neat that he had set up a temporary home rather than go straight to her first.
ok, seeing that Yellow Garden swing back and forth in her web in slow motion was actually pretty cute
YESSS NEW SPIDERS IN YOUR YARD
Im a grown adult and i dont really get that excited about bugs but this has been my favorite spider since i was a kid. Widows, trapdoors, and wolf spiders never came close to yellow orb weaver, and these things get over 1.5 inches, dont be fooled, i grew one over 3 inches one year with the spot i had. They never get enough love and im glad to get a video on these spiders
Okay guys, I've made an observation about these spiders where I live in Oregon and want to know if anyone else has noticed this too (specifically for Argiope aurantia). On our family farm we see a massive spike in the number of these spiders approximately every 5-7 years followed by a massive reduction in sightings. Has anyone else noticed this where you live?
Also thank you so much for covering aurantia, it has always been my favorite spider!🤩
I've anecdotally noticed a similar population oscillation here in Oklahoma.
Fellow Southern Oregonian here. I used to live on a farm, when I was younger, and would see them out hiking the property, mainly in the summer months. I would notice them in wild apple trees on the property, or close to our produce we grew in the yard (grew hay, but, hey, when in Rome, right?).
Since I was petrified of spiders for a long time in my life, I learned where to look for them at what times, but, when I left the farm in my 20’s, I noticed towards the end, I’d see them less and less, but this could be because we stopped growing produce before the property was lost.
It may be that the ones you have in your area were preyed on by other insects or birds more often because of some shift in the local ecosystem. That’s my guess, though, can’t say for sure.
@@K12machinima We did grass seed ourselves, almost entirely fescue during my lifetime. While we certainly saw them near the orchard the predominant locations were in the briars and bull thistle around the perimeter of the fields.
the "Don't put gasoline on wounds" got me good lol
🎵 Don't put gasoline on wounds 🎵
I loved this so much
Now is EXACTLY the time I want to learn about the spiders in my yard
2:28 thanks for including a reference most people actually can understand.
As someone from the ancient Roman Empire c. 270-273 AD, I was very glad he provided a reference I could understand!
we are babysitting 2 egg cases left on our porch by one of these beauties a few months ago. Thank you for the timely information on one of my favorite spiders!
Love the Carmen sandiego hat😅,only certain peeps get that,I miss the 80s and 90s😊
Hey, Travis. The Yellow Garden Spider was probably the first spider that I had ever seen back in the 1960s growing up in Chicago, IL. We had quite a few vacant lots with tall weeds and grasses. They always amazed me. I love the way that you explain your subjects. (Spiders) I would have loved to have had you as an instructor in high school or college. You make your whole presentation interesting, enjoyable, and understandable. I also noticed that the Cellar Spider does the shaky thing when bothered in its web.
I saw one of these in my aunt's garden in Indiana when I was 10 or so. I have never forgotten that huge gorgeous creature. What a treat to learn about her family! Thanks!
Every time I tell people "There's new Spiders in Your House!" they're like "!!!!?"
Those terrified me like all other spiders did until I was about 17. Now I try to keep all spiders safe, I even have celler spider broods in the basement and garage, jumping spiders are my favorite, they can wander in the bed room too.
The first time I saw one of these garden spiders I was stationed at the US Army's Fort Sill, in Oklahoma. I captured one and put her in the space between the window glass and the screen, I tossed insects in for food and she thrived there for a few months until one day, when our barracks was inspected by the HQ personnel, who told me, "You haven't cleaned your window in so long there's a spider living in there!". Had to return her back to her habitat. 🥲
hahahahah im sorry for your loss. on the bright side you have a good wholesome story to tell hahaha
Sorry if you got in trouble for that, and grateful the CO didnt just squish her and THEN chew you out 😅
"Sir, this arachnid was tactically placed to improve barracks morale!" is what you should've said back!
@@bugjams Yes, that would have been the proper retort! 😀
I found one of these spiders in my work truck. She had somehow made her way into the truck and built her web in the passenger window over night. I drove around doing my job for a few hours the next day before I noticed her sitting in her web.
Oh and just to be clear. Once I saw her a scooped her up and let her go in the garden of the house I had just pulled up to.
Had one make a web on my front door this last Spring. She hung out all the way till two weeks ago. I think she is gone now and I miss her terribly. She left an egg sac that I'm letting remain. Hope to see more of them next spring!
So glad to have one last spider video this year from you :D I've never seen one of these, I feel like I'm missing out!
Tangentially related, I really have to thank you for your role in getting me through my second ever college class. It was a public speaking class with a multipart project spanning the whole semester of 3 different speeches on the same topic. While deciding what I wanted to cover, your video on orb weaver webs came out, and I suddenly decided to do my presentations on spiders, particularly the value of amateurs as citizen scientists. In the span of a few months, I've bought 5 different books on spiders, generally those in NA. Some guidebooks, others more broadly about spider biology and such. Many were from your own suggested reading or I found through sources in your videos. The end result was so much more valuable to me than if I'd picked a topic I thought most people already cared about. I learned so much, and I witnessed some of my classmates really change their minds about spiders. Even those who were still scared of them appreciated what they learned from my speeches.
I don't mind public speaking at all, in fact I quite enjoy it. However, my professor made interacting with the subject unexciting and frustrating, mismanaging our time and poorly explaining our assignments. I was really close to dropping the class before I could even do my first presentation. But I stuck it out long enough to see the results of that first speech - my classmates were thrilled! I decided then and there that I would hang in there if for no other reason than to finish what I'd started. In theory the class was about public speaking, but to me, it was about educating myself and others about spiders and changing people's perspectives on these fascinating and important creatures. I am truly, genuinely grateful to you for planting the seed of curiosity and respect in me. I would have quit this class if I hadn't felt so inspired by what you do with your videos. My final grade? 100%!
Here's to another year of learning about our friends, the spiders :)
It's always a pleasure to see you upload a new video!
I remember the first time I came across one of these lovely critters. I was a horticultural student, working as a gardener for a bunch of lakefront properties on the west island of Montreal.
I was blown away to find this big, beautiful yellow spider hanging out on a web made in between bright yellow rudbeckia flowers. I really wish I saw more of them.
That property was magic to work at with so much invert diversity. It was the same place that I also saw a hummingbird moth for the first (and only) time in my life.
I love orb weavers
In the 50's there were a bunch of PSAs aired in the US telling people not to use gasoline as a degreaser while doing laundry. Back then it must've been a bit of a swiss army knife.
Oh lovely, probably leaded gasoline too.
And some of these people still vote, of course.
@@delphicdescant these people will deny climate change, but believe gasoline disinfects wounds. Lovely people.
I have a couple every year. They thrive in gardens with all the pest insects garden plants attract. 🥰
This is one of my favorite episodes so far. I was fortunate enough to have one of these big beautiful ladies make her web right in front of my bedroom window. I was fascinated by her and memorized every detail about her that I could. So I was super excited when I saw that you'd made a video about this one.
I was a little confused when you said that they usually don't make their web at face height. Because that's right where mine was.
Until... you mentioned what they usually/often eat. Crickets and grasshoppers. I had a terrarium of crickets at that time. And I had the terrarium on a raised shelf right in front of my bedroom window. My crickets chirped day and night. And they did have an odor of, well, crickets.
So, I think that particular mystery is solved. Apparently these lovely ladies are willing to build their web a little higher than otherwise preferred if food is detected in huge numbers higher than usual too.
Unfortunately my beautiful spider who I was enjoying so much mysteriously disappeared after my paranoid roommate power washed his house. I specifically asked him to avoid my spider. But my guess is that my spider was the whole reason why he decided to wash his house. (Grrr!!! 🤬) I'll just assume my spider was washed away unharmed and went on to consume all the crickets she could and make many baby spiders somewhere else.
Sigh. I'm glad I got to enjoy watching her for a while.
I was very excited to see this episode when I woke up this morning, the yellow garden spider has always been my favorite just because they build such beautiful webs and have such beautiful coloration themselves. I never really knew much of anything about them, though, and now having watched your deep dive into them, I can honestly say this is one fascinating species of spider. I’m pretty sure I have actually seen a male before, I didn’t know the males were just so much naturally smaller until now, and I remember thinking “Wow, that’s the smallest one of these I’ve ever seen.”
Some years ago, one of these spiders lived under the edge of my back deck all summer, and I loved seeing it there every day. Just as they build a silken decoration in their webs, their webs make a great decoration on your deck.
i'm moving from the PNW to North Carolina next year and i am going to LOSE MY MIND when i finally find one of these in person ❤ i've never managed to find one where i live. they are so incredible. my partner already sent me a picture of a female that had made a web in their carport there a few months ago. i love how large the females are for an orb weaver, it would be so cool to handle one but i know how shy they can be and i wouldn't want to destroy their web... thanks for another awesome video i always look forward to them and they usually send me into a spider-fixation for the next several days 😂
Here in Germany, in the state of Brandenburg, there are also these yellow spiders (known here as vespa spiders, but still unknown to most people here). They mostly only live on tall grass and are beautiful. And they are not at all aggressive. You can carefully pick them up in your hand to see them better and then put them back in their web. I'm really looking forward to summer because of these spiders.
Oh, my mistake...We have the vesp spider and not the North American one.
YES MY FAVORITE SPIDER!!!! I'm getting one of these lovely ladies as my first tattoo in January!!!! I'm so excited!!
Dropped 15 secs ago, been a while. Gonna watch peak again.
I live in Ohio and I see these around a lot. These are my personal favorite spiders. 😊
They are always pretty friendly.
Yay! A new spider video for the holidays? Thank you so much! 🎉
Great information on these cool AR-GEE-OPE spiders awesome vid.
12:15 is likely a Northern paper wasp, Polistes fuscatus.
Also, wonderful video. I wonder if the bright coloration also serves to deter predators, as well as attract prey? Seems to work on us at least, as you mentioned.
Thrilled to see you managed to get this out for the season, Travis.
Always lovely to see a video anyway but a good way to end out the year.
Well wishes to you, your family and your eight legged visitors for the year to come!
Thanks for going over the pronunciation. In 30 years of reading about this species, I've never heard anyone saying it. I admit, that in my head, I pronounced it AR-ji-ope.
Same here, I pronounced it Ari Gop ee
Just like the gif debate. You can pronounce it gif or jif, no one really cares (except the people who do). But you most definitely should not pronounce it yif
@@Sepi-chu_loves_moths except these are Latin names, so there *is* a correct pronunciation. What he says about it being a soft "g" being definitely incorrect does agree with the Latin pronunciation guides that I can find.
@@tichu7 it's Greek. "Scientific latin" often is, besides latin pronunciation is far from consistent because its been around for so long in so many different contexts
This was the species of spider that first made me fall in love with spiders.
I have a very distinct memory of this spider. I have always heard of them referred to as ''writing spiders'' and when I was around 6-8 years old my family visited my grandmas house and in between 2 poles on her porch this spider made its web and being an arachnophobe I just avoided it. Now I must have had the wildest imagination or something because after we got done visiting I swear I saw written in that spiders web something along the lines of ''You Will Die'' now why I imagined this I couldnt tell you but it has been something that has stuck with me ever since
Evil Charlotte's Web 💀
As usual, very entertaining. I love the sophisticated graphics, keep them coming! Never thought I'd want to learn so much about spiders.
I pick one each year, close or on my porch, that I feed all summer long. At the beginning I have to put the bug in the web while the spider retreats. By mid summer I am having to do it with tongs the spider is so excited. By the end of the year I have to do it with tongs and chopsticks cause the spider won't let go of the tongs and I have to free them from webbing so the whole business doesn't pull her out of her web. These spiders will run out to the edge of the web when they see me coming and wait for me. (And yes, some years there have been multiples on the porch and I am really busy all summer long.) Thank heaven they like grasshoppers. I love them for the fact that they don't seem to want to web up somewhere I have to walk face first into the web like the dratted barn spiders - whom I do not feed. Or take a tennis racket to. I have tried to overwinter them but they just don't survive long after laying their egg sacks. I do make sure the wasps don't get her when she is old and tired and I put the egg sacks in a cool, safe place so they can hatch in the spring. (Last years spider laid three egg sacks in total on my concrete gargoyle.) This whole process happens every summer. For the past 32 years. People think I'm cracked. I don't care, I love these guys.
That is amazing!
10:50 everyone knows that it's absolutely crucial for mental wellbeing to look at cool spiders!
I was introduced to these spiders as a child in Michigan. The ditches were full of these guys and they are impressive girls
I wonder if the stabilimentem acts as a vibration damper. If it's loose then it might take up some of the large movements from prey like grasshoppers. There's my 2 minute theory
My favorite!! The colors are so vivid and beautiful. There was a big fat one I kind of befriended as a kid, I would catch grasshoppers and "release" them into her web. Strange to think that she had no idea that she'd be fondly remembered two decades later.
Also I know these as "writing spiders" and didn't know their proper name until I was already an adult. I've never been bitten by one, but I also don't handle them. I don't remember how I picked grasshoppers for her. It was over twenty years ago, after all. Maybe I watched her and saw her eat them without my intervention? I did already catch grasshoppers for my own amusement, so it might have been a happy coincidence.
About 26 minutes in - are the web decorations to attract mates, bigger ones advertising a better fed female and thus a better choice?
Perhaps the North Carolina mental health place did research on spiders to establish a baseline of health and behavior BEFORE giving them drugs XD
Excellent as always. Love this channel, much appreciated!
(Arkansas)
Me and my fiance had a VERY large yellow weaver right beside our front door. We name her “Fury”. She stayed there for about 2 months. She was so Gorgeous that even the pest control guy didn’t knock her down because of how pretty and large she was
Definitely was a pretty thing to see every day
You have the coolest office mates, man.
I absolutely love seeing these spoods! They're a joy to spot, right up there with the crab orbweaver and orchard orbweaver. Also, good grief, gasoline on a wound? The only time I've ever heard of that being useful was for Juliane Koepcke's plane crash in the Amazon. Please, dear reader, don't use gas on wounds.
Thanks for the wonderful and informative videos!
I love garden spiders it helped me get over my arachnophobia. I always thought they were so pretty.
Saw the thumbnail and I was so excited! I’ve never seen one of these in person in my area but find them so gorgeous 😊
My family keeps at least one of these spiders every year. We treat it like a pet. Catch a grasshopper and toss it in. She keeps the flying bugs in check, we get a fly free outdoor space. Win win. 10000000/10 would suggest.
Always makes me happy when I see one of these beauties. 😎👍👍
Another fabulous spider dive! Thanks!
Thank you fine ser, always a pleasure!!!! I REALLY want to see one next summer >:(
I was so happy to see this one come up in your videos! My second favorite spider, the queen of my gardens.
Hello Travis.Thank you so much for these highley educated,interesting and humoreus video's.Thanks to you the spiders in my house are safe 😉.Can't wait to see the next video.Love,Bodi 🕷🕷🕷
I've always been fascinated by the specialization of male spiders, especially like these ones, where they become as small as possible to successfully reach maturity and mate with a female with minimal resources, as well as minimizing predation odds. It's especially cool that they developed the two shot strategy that they have. All this reminds me of male angler fish, where they basically become a pair of parasitic genitalia attached to a female. Really shows how, over time, nature is very good at filling hyper - specific niches as efficiently as possible.
That's fascinating to me too. Especially the part about their programmed death after the 2nd mating. Since they play no further role in parenting the act of dying right after their mating capability ended eliminated any competition for resources that their continued existence would have posed. Especially for smaller prey which is what their offspring would be needing soon.
Do you know about bone worms? Anglerfish are crazy with the dimorphism but bone worms are a whole other level lol
So fascinating how in the mammal world, it tends to be "male dominant, female reserved for reproduction" but in many fish and insects it's the reverse. I've always wondered why that is.
I enjoy this so much! Amazing content, best wishes to you and your future projects! 🌻
19:57 i live here in oklahoma and i was went to grand lake for a vacation this summer and on this little ladder in the lake to get on a dock after i climbed up it onto the dock a massive (and i really do mean massive this thing was as big as my hand) orb weaver came out from underneath it or somewhere im not quite sure where it came from all i know is that i didnt ever touch that ladder again 😅😂 i wouldnt doubt that they eat lizards over here we get some big ones 😭
I remember being a child in Georgia, and me and my younger brothers got lost in the woods like only a few feet from my house and there were a ton of huge spiders surrounding us and we screamed and cried until an older cousin rescued us. I wondered if a few of those spiders were these, or if it was a different type of big spider. Ive been on this channel solely to figure out which spiders traumatized me back then lmao, it couldn't have been these tho because they were in the trees and not low to the ground.
Could be these or Joro Spiders if it was in northern Georgia. Do you remember if the web had a yellow tint?
Question... You said the young chew their way out of the sack. Spiders often eat their webs to regain many of the chemicals lost in the web construction if I'm remembering correctly. Do the young simply chew, or do they consume portions of the sack to get a jump start on silk production? Just a thought I had.
I like the explanation station animation. It genuinely made me laugh.
I was exploring a heavily grassed valley dense with small trees & shrubs one summer morn.
I soon realized these were ALL around me. They saw me, and were "bouncing" at me with their webs. Many did this, I am serious. Crazy! ❤as you explain... bigger lunge tho, 6 inches! (S. Indianna)
YAY! I've been waiting so long to see this one!
I need to bring some anecdotal information to the table. I live in the southeastern U.S on the Piedmont plateau (locally pronounced Peedmont). I do not see these spiders all the time. But occasionally when I do the females are much larger than the example you gave, mark 1 eyeball puts it at about 25% larger. I am certain they are an identical species. I have seen a male in the companion web, and it looked about the same size as your video. That female was "normal" sized.
The local name for them is "writing spider" and instead we call Agelenopsis "garden spiders" or at least my family did. The old legend/saying goes that if you destroy its (Argiope aurantia) web, it will rebuild the web write your name in it and you will die shortly after. No one takes this seriously but its one of those things the older generation says to scare kids. I'm not aware of anyone who has been bit and no one considers them venomous.
Another excellent video, thank you.
18:36
I love this description so much
An awesome video again! Keep it up, man!
As always, great stuff!
Absolutely fascinating, as always. 😊
Ohhhh, a christmas gift!!!
bf just heard me drop a loud let's fucking gooooooo when i saw a new video from you. thanks for more spider facts dude
Yet another in a long list of informative, entertaining episodes. Heck, I'll even call them indispensible, so thanks kindly for your commitment. I'd been waiting since forever to find this kind of spider content, and now I sit in front of my computer, my mouth agape, my own work production dwindling...
Anyway, yes, the stunning Argiope aurantia has always been my favorite orb weaver in my area. Among the many reasons may be their relative scarcity; I see so few compared to Araneus gemma, another of which I've always been quite fond and whose webs can be enormous.
The discussion on pheranomes reminded me: I always found the not-so-cute Bolas spider fascinating. Any chance you might cover this spider?
Your video's are great! I always feel safer from and more protective of each spider you cover after I watch them.
I got to see one of these spiders earlier this september for the first time in saskatchewan. It hung on the walls of a hospital near one of it's side exit doors in a shady corner. It was big and the only easily visible part of it's web was it's zig zag web pattern It was quite large and was there all week while I was there. I was able to catch and offer it a large grasshopper from nearby and If I had blinked I would have missed it rush and subdue it. It was super cool!
Finally, the "our guy" spider!!! 😮
I had one of these come into my woodshop and lay an eggsac in the corner of one of my skull shelves (I collect and carve animal skulls)
Spider was gone after a day or two but the egg sac remains thus far
I love yellow garden spiders(all Argiope are cool, fight me on that!). I had one mom in my garden with like 4 egg sacks that all burst with massive amount of kids that covered all area very nicely few weeks later. I also found two male with pretty nice web and overall size that lived for pretty long time close to female web. One Female Wasp Spider lived for two years that is tad weird when everyone say they live only year, she was super heavy as I had to move her from one spot to another.
30:43 I had a flashback to "spiders on drugs".
Oh man... I revisit that one at least once a year. A timeless classic. I can't believe some people still haven't seen it. Apparently, it's narrated by the same exact guy who narrated the real "Hinterland Who's Who" shorts and that's why it seems so legit at first, until it hilariously goes off the rails. Don't mess with the Crack Spider.
Yea! He’s back!
Once I was taking a walk with my ex through some woods in northeast Kansas, it was September, and as we walked, to our horror, we realized that we were surrounded by thousands of (I think?) these spiders. They were EVERYWHERE. As we tried to leave we kept having to brush them out of eachothers hair and backs. Every branch on every tree had an orb web with one of these guys in it. My question is: is this normal? Did I find the secret spider forest? Was it just a bad omen about the relationship I was in? What gives??
They like the edges of woods in southeast Kansas as well. Not so much the dense woods, but the very edge. There are other similarly sized orb weavers in eastern Kansas that don't mind the woods.
@@briebel2684 Yeah were were just in the woods right on the edge of Clinton Lake, a fairly large body of water. Thanks for the insight!
What a fascinating channel. When I was in Virginia I used to see many large webs at about head level on the trails with spiders that looked like this, but the seemed bigger than these ones. On early morning hikes, they are unavoidable, on the trails going south from Front Royal, VA. Other hikers called them "banana spiders", yet I have no idea if that is true.
The term "banana spider" is used to refer to several different species, so it's not very useful and experts don't use it.
They may have been golden silk orbweavers (Trichonephila clavipes). Locals often call them “banana spiders,” and they’re more likely to make webs at head-level.
I had a yellow garden spider in my yard this September, she was absolutely beautiful and magical. She made a couple egg sacks too, not sure if the spiderlings hatched.
Yes!!!!!! Thank you for this!!!!
My favorite spiders!
love these ladies
I’ve got a question, do mosquitoes bite spiders?
Yessss, my favorite!❤
I love these guys
I think there were more of them this year. I have lived in Texas for 10 years and only see 1 or 2 per year, but this year I have seen at least 10 of them, probably more.
Would love a video about Oblong Running Spiders, if there's enough info about them!
Thanks for the bedtime spider video!
Great video! Always love seeing these girls around,beautiful spiders!
SPOOODEER TIME :]
spider video yippee
Wouldnt hungrier spiders opt not to build web decorations even if it increases prey capture, because they have less protein to spare on the silk?