by Jonte Rhodes

Created on: July 21, 2010

When most people think of spiders and how they eat, they picture an orb shaped web with a housefly stuck fast, and a spider lurking in the middle ready to devour it. However there are actually a great range of different ways that spiders both hunt and eat their food.

A common misconception is that all spiders can only ingest completely liquefied food, although this is not strictly true. Although spiders generally have very narrow digestive tracts, they can in fact consume small pieces of solid food that have been sufficiently cut up.

The major difference in how spiders ingest food lies in what kind of fangs they have. Most spiders have fangs that point inwards towards each other, and many can use them to cut pieces of a prey item into smaller pieces. While most will use venom to liquefy their prey as well, they are known to eat smaller solid pieces if they are sufficiently small.

Species of spiders belonging to the infraorder Mygalomorphae though have fangs that point downwards, and as such cannot be used in this manner. Mygalomorphae species include tarantulas, funnel webs and trapdoor spiders. They tend to hunt using an ambush method and their fangs tend to be much bigger in relation to their body size. Because they have no means of tearing their prey into edible pieces, they instead have to wait until their venom liquefies the insides of the prey.

In addition there are several other groups of arachnids that can often tend to be confused with spiders although are in fact from a different order. Solifugae for example are commonly called sun spiders, and are also known by the notorious and somewhat misunderstood name of camel spiders. They in fact do not have fangs or venom, but jaws which they do use to tear their prey into pieces. however they are not true spiders and cannot produce silk.

Rather than the method of actually ingesting their prey though, the methods of hunting among spiders is where the real variety can be found. Of those that build webs, they generally tend to either paralyze or kill their prey with a bite after it has been caught. If the prey is either too large or presents a threat to the spider, for example something like a wasp that has a sting, they may leave it for some time to tire before they attempt to bite it.

The venom of most spiders will then liquefy the insides of the prey, although some also inject or vomit digestive enzymes either separately or instead. The spider then ingests this liquid, leaving behind the empty husk. If you look

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