Another Hatching

Description:

Another spider hatching in the basement! If you compare this to the earlier picture you'll notice that there were three cocoons and now there's four. Momma spider is being pretty reproductive!This is the Common House Spider, Parasteatoda tepidariorum, weaving their cob webs in the homes of many Americans in the US. My basement seems to be a particularly suitable habitat for them apparently. They are completely harmless for humans or pets, unless of course you consider the other bugs in your house "pets" rather than pests. There's often an impressive graveyard of insect carnage accumulating under a female's web over time. Another indication that there is an inhabited web above are little black dots - presumably spider excretions - on the surface below.The adult females can live for over a year. Each female can produce more than 15 egg sacs over her lifetime, each of them hatching hundreds of baby spiderlings. The babies stay in their momma's web for a few days before moving out. At any given time, I can probably find at least 10 females in their webs, tending to dozens of egg cocoons, often with one or two clouds of freshly hatched spiderlings visible. Many of the mature females will have 4-5 cocoons in their webs at one time if you leave them undisturbed for a while. That probably means there are thousands of these spiders spread out over my basement.