Well, this isn’t exactly a Gatineau story, but it is outside and near Ottawa.
I took my dog for a walk the other day. The temperature was just below freezing, it was snowy. As I walked I noticed dozens of tiny little spiders hanging by their silk.
It’s hard to take a picture of them like that but here’s an image of a couple of little frozen spider corpses.
I wondered what business they had out in weather like that. So I did two things. I went to get my camera and I sent an email to Bob Anderson at the Canadian Museum of Nature asking him why the spiders were out in the snow.
“I’m suspecting some spiders pass the winter in an egg sack stage. What happens is that a female will lay an egg sack filled with eggs at the end of summer or early fall and the spiderlings will hatch out but they will actually stay in that egg sack throughout the winter. They’re clumped together and they are sort of hibernating or in a depressed metabolic state. If they get exposed to sunlight that might be warming, or maybe it’s a warmer day they might become active. And if the egg sack is ruptured they might spill out and that might be where you saw them dangling around.”
I asked Bob if this was a survival strategy of some kind or if the spiders had just made a mistake.
“A lot of insects pass the winter in an adult stage. Morning Cloak butterflies are the first butterflies you see out in the springtime, you sometimes see them out when there’s still snow on the ground. That’s because they pass the winter as an adult and so as soon as the temperature warms up the adults are out right away flying around. This can be a strategy for some so that they can get out and search for mates and search for food as soon as the temperatures are warm enough. But if you mess up then you’re messed up and I think your little spiders might have messed up.”
So I guess the early spider doesn’t always get the worm.
