Enticing Mating Ritual Of Garden Spiders Captured On Camera

This close-up footage captures the mating behavior of garden spiders, filmed on July 19, 2018 in New Bern, North Carolina, USA. When this artist found out that a garden spider has made a web on the front door of her gallery, she helped her out by catching and feeding her flies by tossing them in her web. One day, she noticed that the spider had company and decided to capture her romantic encounter on camera. This is the end result!

According to the data listed on Wikipedia, yellow garden spiders usually build their webs in open sunny fields in order to protect their webs from the wind. They have a very distinctive circular web with a dense zigzag of silk stretched in the center. It is believed that it acts as camouflage for spider’s whereabouts, and also attracts insect prey for the spider to catch. After the prey gets entangled in the sticky web, the spider comes out and makes a meal out of it.

In the National Wildlife Federation, yellow garden spiders are described as large, orb-weaving arachnids, with two claws on each foot and an additional claw that helps them spin their complex webs. The top side of the abdomen in females is black with symmetrical patches of bright yellow. Their legs are reddish-brown at the base and black toward the tips, while males are less striking in appearance, with smaller body and brownish legs and much less yellow coloration on their abdomens. A fun fact: females average 0.75 to 1.1 inches in body length, which is up to three times larger than the males. Talk about dominance!

Knowing this fact, about alpha females, we already know who dominates the mating ritual in our video here. Close footage shows a female garden spider standing on top of a male spider in her web and starts vigorously wrapping him with silk. She has him all tangled up in no time!

At first sight, you might think that this is actually a hunter-prey encounter and you start to feel sorry for the tiny fellow, but after reading filmmaker’s description, we found out that this is actually the mating ritual of the yellow garden spider. Who would have thought!

The breeding season for the yellow garden spiders is twice a year. Males go searching for females, and usually build a small web near or actually in the female's web, and then lure the females by plucking strands on her web. Often times, the males have to keep their guard up when approaching the female as a safety precaution in case she attacks him.

Sadly, after transfer sperm to the female, using the palpal bulbs on his pedipalps, the male dies, or is sometimes eaten by the female. She lays her eggs at night on a sheet of silky material, then covers them with another layer of silk, then a protective brownish silk. She then uses her legs to form the sheet into a ball with an upturned neck. Egg sacs range from 5/8" to 1" in diameter. She often suspends the egg sac right on her web, near the center where she spends most of her time. Each spider produces from one to four sacs with perhaps over a thousand eggs inside each. She guards the eggs against predation as long as she is able. However, as the weather cools, she becomes more frail, and dies around the time of the first hard frost.

Talking about spiders and mating, you should also watch the horrifying moment when a man whacks a wolf spider with a broom to kill it and hundreds of babies explode out of its belly. Arachnophobia anyone, this is my worst nightmare! Wolf spiders carry a nursery on their abdomen and with so many little spiderlings it’s a good thing she has eight eyes, four on the top row, and two rows with two eyes each beneath that, to watch over them. You know those nightmares where you kill a spider and suddenly dozens more appear? That nightmare is real for these people!