Welcome to spiderday. THE place to get all the stories about arachnids, from the past week. And boy oh boy it was a good week!

Let’s get started:

A spider from Singapore: it vibrates its web at high speed if it’s threatened. Wow. Photo by Chthoniid, reproduced here with permission.

• Perhaps the best news of the week: a critically endangered spiders is saved from a planning development in the UK. Spider conservation FTW! That’s my read of the week.
• You must see this: from Nicky Bay (on Facebook) – a spider with an extended ‘tubercle’ on its abdomen. What’s it for??
• The Hippie Spider. That is all.
• Some surprising animals that like water. Spiders are on that list, don’t you know.
• Wonderful photos of a running crab spider mom.
• What happens if you ask undergraduate students to draw a spiders? The results are quite something! Some are amazingly accurate. Some are, well, not so accurate:

A spider of sorts.

• This is a simply fabulous post about figuring out whether or not you might have a brown recluse (spoiler: it’s #notabrownrecluse)
• Want to go on a safari? How about a spider safari? Sounds like fun to me.
• This is neat: spider and centipede venom evolved from insulin-like hormone.
• Cobweb Hotel (1936) – Um, it’s one of the oddest spider-themed youtube videos you will ever come across.
• This is a mitey good pun:

A mitey good pun.

• Family flees home after finding a spider egg sac. That’s an overreaction. Sigh.
• Tick watch: beyond Lyme disease
• Canadians: here are your high risk areas for Lyme disease
• Ticked off: here are things we DON’T know about Lyme disease
• Finally, your friendly Public Spider Announcement: