CHAPTER 111 



THE BLACK WIDOW 



Record of the Actions of a Spider While Over Two Years in Captivity 



On the 22nd of August, 1916, while 

 rambling over the Pleasanton ridge, I cap- 

 tured a jet black spider, the body of which 

 was about the size of a marrowfat pea. It 

 was while I was overturning objects on the 

 ground to see what character of insect might 

 be found that I discovered the spider under a 

 rock, in a place she made her home, and from 

 whence she went forth to prey upon such 

 forms of insect life as would furnish food for 

 her sustenance. I was not looking for spiders 

 and was not particularly interested in that 

 form of insect life, but this particular spider 

 was so black, neat and clean in appearance, I 

 at once concluded to place her in captivity, so 

 as to have her under observation, and in that 

 way possibly learn something of her habits, 

 traits and manners of capturing the victims 

 upon which she lived. 



I placed her in a large-mouth bottle, with the 

 top so arranged as to have plenty of air and 

 convenient for the insertion of other insects 

 as food. The first thing I did after getting 

 home was to consult books on spiders to ascer- 

 tain what species it was that I had. After 

 some comparisons of descriptions with my 

 captive, I found the latter was known in the 

 classification of the order as Latrodectus 

 ma elans, with the common name of Black 

 Widow," the title she was* known by in my 

 household for the suceeding two years and 

 seventh months, where she remained an in- 

 teresting and seemingly contented guest for 

 the period mentioned. 



What the average length of spider life is I 

 am unable to state, but I am inclined to think 

 that under favorable conditions it might be 

 four or five years at least. The Black Widow 

 was of mature size when I found her, and if 

 a year old at that time, she was not far from 

 being four years old at the time of her demise 

 in the latter part of March, 1919. My reason 

 for fixing a greater age as a possible length 

 of life for spiders than that attained by the 

 Black Widow is that I feel almost certain that 

 she died of starvation. 



Her diet while under my observation con- 

 sisted exclusively of house flies. During the 

 summer months it wats no trouble to find 

 enough flies to feed her quite regularly two 

 or three times a week, but during the winter 

 she was fortunate if fed that often in a month 

 owing to the difficulty in finding flies during 

 cold weather. In the first winter of her cap- 

 tivity I noted that she passed five weeks at 

 one time and over three weeks at another 

 without food, or showing any evidence of 

 hunger or sharpened appetite when fed after 

 the prolonged fasts. 



At this time I had three or four representa- 

 tives of other orders of insects under ob- 



servation at my home, and in the winter ex- 

 perienced a similar difficulty in procuring 

 food for them, which occasioned fasts upon 

 their part of durations equaling those experi- 

 enced by the Black Widow, apparently with- 

 out detrimental effect. 



Contemplating these facts led to the con- 

 sideration of how carnivorous insects under 

 natural conditions live. The irregularity that 

 must frequently prevail in the length of time 

 between meals, especially when conditions arise 

 making food scarce, cause • spiders and other 

 predaceous insects, particularly those forms 

 whose habits of life necessitated their lying 

 in wait for food victims, to undergo periods of 

 irregular lengths of enforced fasting. This 

 being so, nature must endow such forme of 

 life with exceptional powers of endurance. 

 But even here there must be a limitation and 

 the thought prompted me to thereafter record 

 the dates on which I gave the Black Widow 

 and the other insects food. As at this time 

 we are interested only with the career of the 

 Widow, I will give the dates on which she 

 only was fed. The feeding rarely consisted 

 of more than one large fly. The following are 

 the dates: 1918 — July 11, 28, August 5, 28, 

 September 10, 16, 19, 30, October 4, 9, Novem- 

 ber 6, 19, 20, December 22; 1919 — January 16. 

 •From the last date until March 27 there 

 were no flies to be caught in the house. On 

 that date I went to the bottle containing the 

 spider to give her a fly and found that she 

 was dead. She was alive and as active as ever 

 on March 22, when I noticed her working 

 around the web she had made in the bottle. 

 At that time I was conscious of the fact that 

 she had been without food for an unusually 

 long period, and I made a search of the prem- 

 ises, the house and garden for some kind of 

 an insect that would be acceptable to her, 

 but without success. Conceding that she died 

 on that date, she had been without food for a 

 period of two months and one week. If old 

 age did not claim her as a victim, then some- 

 thing like sixty or seventy days may be con- 

 sidered as the probable limit of endurance of 

 the particular species of spider without 

 nourishment. 



While this experience with the Black 

 Widow may throw some light upon the en- 

 durance of spiders in abstinence from food, 

 it is not sufficient to establish a limit, or 

 much less supply a rule in fixing the limit 

 of the power of abstinence in other forms of 

 insect life. In saying this I have in mind that 

 during the experiment with the spider I had 

 placed a larva of an omus (a genus of beetle) 

 in a bottle filled with earth, hoping it would 

 pupate. I dampened the earth after the man- 

 ner of the soil these insects inhabit and 



