Spiders

by Paul Hillyard

A colorful, authoritative pocket guide to 220 of the world's spiders Published in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, America's foremost authority in history and science.

Genres: Nonfiction, Reference

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Jasmine Karimova · Rating 3 out of 5]

Trying to learn more about spiders? hey hey this is a great book on spiders

[Paul Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author Paul Hillyard has a lovely sense of humour, which I believe must be essential if you are trying to sell spiders to the rest of us. I have over the years overcome my phobia and can now admire the elegance of common garden spiders and their fabulous webs and the vibrating cellar spiders who live in my cellar, where else. But that doesn’t mean I’m ever gonna get up close and personal with these strange cohabitees of our beautiful and terrifying planet.

Here are some favourite quotes from this small but perfect book :

The problem for spiders in general is that they are good to eat

The male has a huge pair of jaws to restrain the female during mating

A bizarre species that at rest resembles a bird’s dropping

The prey is sucked dry rather than mashed up

Giant Huntsman : an impressive species, especially when found in a house

Beautiful, rust-coloured and fast-moving

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A notorious species which causes considerable fear

The small male looks like an ant

The mouse spider : the species appears somewhat “mouse”-like

The spider runs very fast in short bursts with frequent changes of direction



Runs over vegetation with great agility, leaping from stem to stem

Known for its unusual method of courtship in which the female requires a present from the male, before mating, of an insect wrapped in silk

The brown male is so small he can fearlessly climb over the female’s body

Vibrations from a tuning fork can bring a response from this spider

During the day this weird spider resembles a twig

This spider is difficult to see because it is reluctant to emerge from its impenetrable web



When disturbed the spider bounces up and down and becomes a blur

A beautifully-marked but temperamental species

He often lives with the female for some weeks but then dies and she eats him

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heck, there are more spiders than mentioned.

[Isaac Badejo · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book was very fascinating to me because I thought it had lots of interesting facts also I thought that this could have had a little more facts tho also if I could pick a book on spiders I would read this because if you saw a spider in your house or tick than you would want to see what spider or tick just in case it was venomous or something. I was more fascinated in this book.

[Row · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't finished reading it although I marked it as read because I see that it's like a reference you return to if you want to identify a spider or even find a certain species.