Spiders are extrodinary insects.

Spiders are creatures that have 8 legs, have no wings or antennae. They have 2 distinct body parts called the thorax or head and the abdomen. Spiders have an exoskeleton, meaning that their skeleton is on the outside.

Fact: There are more than 30,000 species of spiders.

Spiders have as many as 8 eyes, but some spiders have only 6 eyes and several spiders have fewer or even none. All spiders have fangs through which venom is ejected. The tip of the abdomen has silk spinning glands called spinnerets by which a spider can spin a web. However, not all spiders spin webs.

Almost all spiders carry venom. But the female black widow spider of the southern United States is famous for hers. Although she is only about half an inch long, her poison has occasionally hurt humans with effects differing depending on their allergic reaction to the venom. Luckily, the black widow isn't usually found near people.

Wolf spiders don't make webs. Instead, they chase their prey and run it down, the way wolves do.

Wolf spiders often prowl in the dark. They have eight eyes to help them see. Hunting wasps are their greatest enemies.

Daddy-long-legs spiders have venom glands and fangs but their tiny fangs are fused at the base and they cannot open their jaws wide enough to bite humans.

A Brown Recluse has a leg span of about an inch and has a dark brown violin-shaped design on its back. It's found in the dark corners inside a building or outside under rocks. People bitten by the Brown Recluse usually don't feel pain for two or three hours.

The Black Widow spider's bite is much feared because its venom is reported to be 15 times stronger than a rattlesnake's. In humans, bites produce muscle aches, nausea, and a paralysis of the diaphragm that can make breathing difficult; however, contrary to popular belief, most people who are bitten suffer no serious damage—let alone death. But bites can be fatal—usually to small children, the elderly, or the infirm. Fortunately, fatalities are fairly rare; the spiders are nonaggressive and bite only in self-defense, such as when someone accidentally sits on them.

Before a spider can eat its prey, it must turn the meal into a liquid form. The spider exudes digestive enzymes from its sucking stomach onto the victim's body. Once the enzymes break down the tissues of the prey, it sucks up the liquefied remains, along with the digestive enzymes. The meal then passes to the spider's midgut, where nutrient absorption occurs.