IN DEFENCE OF SPIDERS

(Six Legs and Two Wings Bad) Our gardens and homes are swarming with spiders, but there's no need to kill all of them. Without these eight-legged superpredators, blowflies and mosquitoes would, literally, swarm us. And in labs across the world, spider to

Eight-legged freaks? No, spiders are valued members of every household, keeping you safe from pests and even insect-borne disease...

This time of year, you are very likely to feel a cross spider's sticky, wheelshaped web on your skin or see spiders speeding across the living room floor. When they are only one year old, the eightlegged creepy- crawlies are fully grown and ready to mate. So, particularly males are more visible than they usually are, as they need to come out of their hiding places to be able to leave their semen with as many females as possible. The females are waiting in their webs. They have spent the summer getting fat to accumulate sufficient energy for producing new litters. Often, they also consume the male, once the mating has been completed.

The idea that thousands of spiders will very soon turn into even more individuals is enough to make many people break into a cold sweat, but we should rather be pleased. Cross spiders and all their peers are much more beneficial than harmful. They consume millions of pests annually, and according to biochemical studies, scientists can develop medication against many lethal diseases based on spider toxin.