Cave spiders relocated back to their underground home
07/12/2009 12:31:32
Cave spiders
With their dark bronze bodies and extremely long legs, and measuring more than seven centimetres across cave spiders are amongst the most striking and largest spiders found in the UK. These gentle giants can occasionally bite if they're really provoked.
Cave spiders are active hunters, normally feeding on small insects. Although cave spiders can be difficult to spot, their characteristic cocoons that look like upside down parachutes hang conspicuously from ceilings giving away their presence.
Cave spiders had been unwittingly
moved by archaeologists. Photo
credit Brian Cleckner.
Arrival of the builders means its relocation time for spiders
November 2009. A colony of mysterious spiders normally found lurking deep underground in caves is being re-housed after squatting in a redundant National Trust building. Ten years ago a team of archaeologists from the University of Bradford carried out a major survey of the nearby Chapel Fell cave. At the end of each day they took some of their equipment to the nearby old orchid house to store overnight.
Malham Tarn
Unbeknown to the archaeologists they had unwittingly brought with them enough cave spiders to start a new colony in the completely new territory of a small and dark building above ground level. The colony of spiders has been living on the National Trust's Malham Tarn estate in the Yorkshire Dales less than a quarter of a mile (half a kilometre) from their natural home.
Malham Tarn is one of the highest lakes in England at 380 metres above sea level. This dramatic landscape includes a National Nature Reserve with a flower rich pastures and meadows in a limestone landscape full of sink holes and caves.
Martin Davies, National Trust Property Manager for the Yorkshire Dales, said: "The time has come for the cave spiders to be relocated back to their natural homes as we're going to convert the old orchid house, which sits along the Pennine way, into a resource for walkers and school visits. The spiders won't be forgotten though as we have plans to use a small outbuilding as a spider house with a window on their mysterious world."
Cave spiders relocated
Cave spiders (Meta menardi and the related Meta bourneti) are rarely seen beyond their natural habitat of caves and tunnels because of their aversion to light.
Staff and volunteers from the National Trust will be carefully transporting this precious cargo - which now numbers more than 150 - out of the old orchid house on the short journey back to where they belong in the caves.
The spiders will be collected using an industrial ‘pooter'. This Heath Robinson contraption, consisting of a vacuum cleaner and old fish tank, will make it easier to collect them in the dark as they'll be sucked up the spout. The spiders are then put into individual plastic boxes and released back into the darkness of the caves.
Read the comments about this article and leave your own comment