Spiders

Hey, if we're going to have them in our name and logo, they might as well have their own page!

Adopt-a-Haunt: Always wanted to adopt a little cyber-spider for your web page? Now you can! Along with bats, zombies, gargoyles, eyes-in-the-dark and other "lost, abandoned, or lonely denizens of the night." A very cute site, in that Nightmare-Before-Christmas sort of way. Of course, we just had to adopt one of our very own:

~ Seraphina ~

Seraphina is a female spider. She was adopted by Spider Silk Design on Feb 22, 2000 from Nightlyre's Adopt-A-Haunt program.

Adopt a haunt today!

Arachnida

A spider cladogram (evolutionary family tree) from the University of Arizona’s “Tree of Life” project.

Arachnology

“The Arachnological Hub of the World Wide Web”. An academic site in Belgium with an exhaustive collection of links to every imaginable kind of information on spiders!

The “Disgusting” Spider

A psychological paper on arachnophobia (fear of spiders) by Graham C.L. Davey. From the site of Psychologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Spider Crafts for Kids

About.com no longer has their listing of sites offering instructions on spidery crafts for kids, so we did a bit of searching and came up with our own. Most of the sites say they're just for Hallowe'en, but we like spiders all year round.

DLTK's Hallowe'en Spider Crafts for Kids: A handprint spider, yarn web, and spider door wreath.
Enchanted Learning: Spider Crafts: Balloon spiders, pom-pom spiders, glittery webs and a printable spider colouring book.
Insects on the Move: Spider: A model spider that actually moves. But may we point out that spiders are not insects?

Spider Web Ring

The sites we list here are just a small sampling of the web's arachnid offerings. Check out this web ring for many more...

Spiders in the Toilet?

About.com's guide to Urban Legends (one of the best places to go to check out all those scare stories people keep sending around in e-mail) debunks a popular myth... No, there are no "South American Blush Spiders" hanging out in public washrooms. And Craig Shergold doesn't want your business cards. Recently updated to cover a new version of myth circulating in 2002.

Spiders and Other Arachnids

A site from the University of California Riverside department of Entomology, debunking many popular myths about spiders.

Spiders of NW Europe

A Dutch site, maintained by Ed Nieuwenhuys, with lots of lovely pictures of over 170 kinds of European spiders (well, all right, we know that not everyone thinks spiders are lovely, but we do), plus information on their habits and habitats, and more. One of our favourites.

Spiderweb Software

Well, all right. This one doesn't have a lot to do with spiders except for the name, but hey, the same could be said for us. However, we thought we'd list them here because they are the purveyors of some of the finest shareware games — er, stress management software, that is — in existence, if you like the Dungeons & Dragons-ish fantasy role-playing variety, which we do. We are talking, of course, about the fabulous Exile Trilogy — recently remade in a bigger and more graphically impressive version called Avernum — and its infinitely expandable followup, Blades of Exile. We especially liked the Giant Intelligent Friendly Talking Spiders...

Tarantula Planet

A very thorough and in-depth site on the keeping of tarantulas as pets. We do realize that the appropriateness of "exotic" pets is a controversial topic, but if you are thinking of getting one, you should certainly check out the detailed information on this site first. Includes downloadable tarantula desktop images, and a screensaver (the latter for Windows only, alas...).

Twisted Tales from the Nursery

“Introduction to Arachnid vs. Muffit.” Very cute.