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Spiders in Singapore
4 January 2023
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📷: The Cosmophasis umbratica is part of the jumping spiders family (Salticidae). It can be found in parks, gardens, and forests but rarely in the home. Jumping spiders can jump up to 50 times their length! (Mohamad Azlin, NParks Facebook)
#TIL There are about 900 species of spiders found in Singapore! Most prefer to live outdoors in the jungles and forested areas of Singapore, and not in homes, though one would most certainly have come across a spider which found its way indoors.
The fear of spiders, arachnophobia, is consistently ranked as one of the top phobias and with good reason: some spider bites are poisonous. In Singapore, the Black Widow Spider carries venom with powerful neurotoxins that could cause pain, cramping, sweating and, rarely, death. We have the Brown recluse spider whose bite can cause intense pain, fever, chills and body aches. We also have the Yellow Sac spider whose bite is sharp and causes pain, swelling, sweating and nausea.
The spiders that do find their way into our homes are mostly the Yellow Sac Spider, Wolf Spider and Daddy Longlegs. The Daddy Longlegs spider is totally harmless -- it does not have venom glands or even fangs! These household spiders help to control the population of household pests such as mosquitoes and cockroaches.
In the old kampong days, before there were iPhones or Internet, children entertained themselves by capturing fighting spiders (Thiania bhamoensis) to release them for a combat of speed and strength. The practice has since fallen out of favour because the spiders do get hurt during battle.
Today, spiders are prized by nature photographers in Singapore, who display camera skills by capturing images of undisturbed spiders in the wild, showcasing their fascinating details and sharing their images. A video of a spider in Singapore that looks like a snake was featured in National Geographic magazine, baffling scientists around the world with its “disco” colour pulses.
Our country may be small but our biodiversity is rich and offers a wealth of natural resources we can learn from.
#Spiders #Nature #Singapore #Wildlife
🔗: Video of a spider in Singapore which looked like a snake (National Geographic magazine) https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/spiders-pulsating-mystery-singapore?fbclid=IwAR3pFmQcdL2yfwevvx2-tL6d-bZ236Ca_yAnQNqIoaAqGd-DAafLP_hTWoQ