Spiders Alive! At Royal Botanical Gardens
From January 19th to April 14th, 2019 the Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton, Ontario hosted the “Spiders Alive!” exhibit. The exhibit is located in the main hall of the Royal Botanical Gardens. There is an $18.00 per person entry fee to get into the RBG.
Heading into the exhibit you are greeted by staff members who have some knowledge of spiders and how they process food. There is an interactive display where they explain how spiders trap prey in their web, cocoon them with web material and inject them with a form of acid that liquifies their prey alive for easier eating later. Similar to adding water to a sugar cube.
The display area was fairly small, and past the one person at the entry-way, the tour is self guided.
In the exhibition area were a series of tanks containing various breeds of spiders, many of which were not from the Ontario, Canada area. Pushing your face into the tanks, you can get glimpses of some legendary spiders such as the Black Widow, which as most people are aware, is an incredibly poisonous spider native to the American South West. The tanks had a few sticks and leaves in them, and the spiders were fairly easy to spot.
Slightly less dangerous spiders were on display, along with lots of information, and photographs such as the Trap Door Spider. The Trap Door spider spends most of its life living underground in burrows it creates. There was an enormous trap door spider on display was 50x the size of a real spider.
Wandering around the the spider tanks, and the photographs of some enlarged spider body parts, there was much to read about. Including a prehistoric old tiny spider which became trapped in amber. Amber is fossilized tree sap that turns into beautiful gem-like pieces over thousands of years. Amber is often used as jewelry particularly in Europe. Amber that contains intact bugs is very valuable. Bugs trapped in amber became popular during the release of the 1993 movie Jurassic Park where dinosaurs were cloned from bugs trapped in amber.
Love them or not, the world is dominated by spiders. Appearing over 300 million years ago on the planet, these 8 legged anthropoids have large fangs to inject venom into their prey. Spiders can be found in all areas of the world except Antarctica. Worldwide there are over 45,000 different species of spider. Although most people have an ingrained primal fear of spiders, there are very few venomous species of spider in the world. Almost all spiders will only bite humans out of fear. In the 20th century there were only 100 confirmed spider bite related deaths in humans.
Spiders play an integral part of pest control around the world. It is estimated that spiders eat up to 800 million tons of bugs, and mice each year!
Scientists are researching the use of spider venom in medicine and as non-polluting pesticides. Spider silk provides a combination of lightness, strength and elasticity that is superior to that of synthetic materials, and spider silk genes have been inserted into mammals and plants to see if these can be used as silk factories. As a result of their wide range of behaviors, spiders have become common symbols in art and mythology symbolizing various combinations of patience, cruelty and creative powers. An abnormal fear of spiders is called arachnophobia
The exhibit had tons of large, hairy spiders known as tarantulas on display, and a few large bugs in tanks that you could watch crawling around.
Different times of the day there were presentations, mostly geared towards children.
Although the exhibit was small, there was a lot of information presented. If you were squeamish about spiders, it would have been a great opportunity for growth.
Click below to see the entire photo collection from the Of Spiders Alive Exhibit:
Vetter, Richard S.; Isbister, Geoffrey K. (2008). “Medical Aspects of Spider Bites”. Annual Review of Entomology.
Diaz, J.H. (August 1, 2004). “The Global Epidemiology, Syndromic Classification, Management, and Prevention of Spider Bites”. American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
Nyffeler, Martin; Birkhofer, Klaus (14 March 2017). “An estimated 400–800 million tons of prey are annually killed by the global spider community”. The Science of Nature.