Spiders in Massachusetts

I know that some people are afraid of spiders. Spiders are wonderful creatures! They catch bugs for us. They eat annoying flying gnats. We should all treasure and appreciate spiders. Many Native American cultures have wonderful stories about spiders and how they help nature. Massachusetts spiders are our friends 🙂
In biologic terms, spiders are of the order Araneae. They all have 8 legs. There are over 40,000 different species of spiders. Finding any book that shows “all spiders” is literally impossible! That’s why I’m trying to focus on one area – just the Massachusetts spiders I’ve found in Sutton. You have to catch them when you can – most spiders only live for 1-2 years.
Some of the spiders I will write about in the next few days are common spiders of Massachusetts. For example, we see orb weavers with their brilliant spiral webs all the time, and most school children would identify orb weaver webs as being spider webs. On the other hand, we’ve only seen the stripey ground crab spider once!
http://www.suttonmass.org/animals/spiders/