Spider Drama

A gigantic spider, high overhead, looked scary at first glance. Zooming in revealed it was actually in trouble.

On the 28th of July 2016, my sister, the oldest of my offspring, and I took a morning nature walk along the Pine Beach Trail at the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge, west of Gulf Shores, Alabama.

A short distance from the parking lot we saw the biggest spider I have ever seen in the wild, its body longer than my hand. We would have been terrified if it were down at our level, but it wasn’t. It was a long way up in the air, hanging on unseen silk between trees, directly over the trail. We soon discerned it was a mama spider, surrounded by its babies.

My sister and I knew the region pretty well, but neither of us had ever encountered a spider of that kind.

As I zoomed in on it with my iPhone camera, numerous little flying insects could be seen close to the huge mama spider. At first I thought the insects had been trapped in the spider’s web, to serve as meals for the mama or her babies.

Then I saw that they were flying freely, forming a cloud around the mama spider. As I watched, a few of them darted in, struck the spider on a knee or a leg, and then darted back away. Though I could not tell exactly what they were, they were clearly attacking the mama spider!

The spider did not try to capture or bite them. Instead, it kept changing its position, trying to dodge its tiny attackers.

Above, I got a good shot of one bug biting — or maybe stinging? — the mama spider’s right front knee.

I shifted my position to get a better view. As far as I could see, none of the babies were under attack. The swarm of little insects left them alone.

However, the assault on the mother continued.

The babies moved closer to their mama, yet seemed unable to help.

I’ve seen ants attack the kind of small spider that closely resembles — and feeds upon — ants. Other than that, I’ve never seen insects gang up on a spider. Certainly I’ve never seen insects that small attack a spider that big.

Unable to see the insects clearly, I cannot say if they were a native or an invasive species, or even whether they were more like flies or beetles or wasps or bees, though I can say they were much smaller than honeybees or yellow jackets.

I could see the mama spider very clearly, especially when using my iPhone camera to zoom in. Despite this clarity, I don’t know if the species was native or invasive in the spider’s case either.

We had places to go, so we resumed our nature walk. We never found out whether the flying insects were able to harm the mama spider seriously.

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