The Survivors

Now that it is winter time, it has been a lot harder to find food for all the spiders to eat. Because of the overpopulation, many of the baby spiders have died and the ones remaining are struggling to survive.
A black garden spider that I have in my bottle habitat is also preying on the baby spiders, eating them for a nice snack. The garden spider and the environment limits of scarce food are controlling the population of the spiders.
Its cool to see how it is all working out. There are now 11 baby spiders left out of the original 38. The mom spider is also still alive. All together there is probably around 40 spiders including the garden spider. The picture is of the mom spider, up at the top of the bottle.

Update

Hey, so haven't had an update in awhile now, so here goes. The tiny baby spiders for awhile did nothing but watch the mother spider and see how she caught the flies I fed her. They then made a ring around her and watched intently as she wrapped up the prey and fled to the bottom of the bottle to eat her food in peace. A few days after that, the tiny spiders molted and I then realized that they could not do much but hang around because they were waiting to molt into better bodies. Their new bodies were more to the proportion of what a normal daddy long leg spider would look like and made it easier for them to move swiftly around the huge web with their longer legs. After the spiders molted, they all became very territorial and aggressive towards each other. They chased each other around to keep their small territory to themselves. They then molted another time getting even a bit bigger but still tiny in comparison to their mom.

The mom during this time has been motherly to her babies but not attached. She shows no signs of aggression towards her little ones but stays out of the way not moving around much.

The Pictures show what the little spiders look like now. Two of them like to hang around on the bottom of the lid. The other spiders are still hard to see through the bottle's surface.

Water Bottle Habitat

Here's what the water bottle habitat looks like! There are some dead moths and other insects in the middle, with most of the dead insects in a pile at the bottom. The spiders hang out at the very top of the bottle seeing that all the food they get comes from there.

There are lots of little breathing holes that I punctured it with using a needle so that they can breathe. Luckily the baby spiders are just a little too big to fit through, or else that would be a disaster!

Here are some pictures of the new baby spiders I've been posting about. Its an above view looking down in on the water bottle habitat(the tiny spiders were hard to see on a side view). You cannot really tell from the picture, but there is about 38 of those little tiny bugs all around the mother spider. Its pretty cool!
The baby spiders still haven't been seen to do very much. Still kind of just sitting around. Maybe they are getting used to their new bodies.

Baby Spiders

The baby spiders are looking a little bit bigger today. They haven't started moving around very much yet, and I'm not really sure what they're eating. They might be eating some of their mom's left over food, but the mom looks very greedy, so I doubt she would share with them. Lol. I'll try and post a pic of them soon.

Spider Food

Cellar spiders wrap up their eggs in a silk sac, and then carry the eggs with them in their mouths. They carry them to protect the eggs and to make sure they can be mobile with them in case of a quick get a way that they must do. What people don't realize is that the spiders never let the egg sac leave their mouths, which means they do not eat anything for about 2-3 weeks. So when the eggs hatch and the mom can let go of the empty egg sac, you can imagine that she must be pretty hungry!
One of the easiest things to feed the spiders that I catch are small house flies. I'm sure you've seen them before, either flying in circles on a porch or in the middle of a room. Because these flies fly in circular or square patterns, it is really easy to catch them. I hit them out of the air with my hand which paralyzes them for a few min, then pick them up by a wing and throw it in with my spider.
I put in one of the flies I caught today and within a minute the mama spider had detected the fly and had wound it up with her silk, eager to have the first meal since her 2-3 week fast. The newly born baby spiders watched with excitedness as their mom attacked the victim and happily ate it.
I put in a second fly a few hours later and the same thing happened with the mom eating it and the children watching. In a few days the little spiders themselves will be trying out different catching and trapping techniques learned from their mom. Hopefully I can catch enough food for all of these spiders! 39 mouths is quite a lot to feed!

Pregnant Spider!

About four weeks ago, I caught a cellar spider with a huge butt and it looked very odd. I put it with my other two cellar spiders and within a few days it had killed the other two spiders it was with. I thought that was weird and didn't really pay attention to the spider for a few days. When I returned to the spider, I found it with an egg sac in its mouth. It was really cool, but I wasn't sure if the eggs were fertilized or not. But just a few days ago, there were little baby spiders that could be seen inside the tiny eggs, about ready to come out. Finally they hatched and there were so many of them. The little spiders stayed on the egg sac where they hatched from for about two days. Then this morning when I checked on them, the little spiders were all spread out around the mom spider which was in the middle top of the bottle habitat. So far Ive counted about 38 little baby spiders. There's SO many! But great satisfaction comes, knowing that I have successfully gone through the circle of life.