365 Urban Species. #019: Cellar Spider

Urban species #019: Cellar spider Pholcus phalangioides

These spiders are almost always found indoors, almost always in cellars (though these photos were taken in a cellar-like bathroom). Perhaps this begs the question: Where were they found before the invention of cellars was introduced to North America? Brief, haphazard research has not revealed a definitive answer, but one can imagine that they must have originally inhabited caves, and perhaps large hollow trees. Thinking about it for a moment, the development of buildings with cellars (nearly all buildings in the northeast have them) must have meant an explosion in the population of cellar spiders. Few animals have benefitted so much from the spread of humans into their territory.

Cellar spiders hang upside down in their tangled cobwebs waiting to prey on insects or other spiders. They are unusual among spiders in that males and females live near one another. Reportedly their venom is powerful, but their fangs are incapable of penetrating human skin. Like nearly all spiders, they are harmless to humans, and helpful consumers of insect pests. (In a nasty kind of irony, the two dangerous kinds of North American spiders--the black widow and the brown recluse--are also urban species that prefer to live near humans.)

some of my "peeps"

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Guess what this is for.