Do Spiders Need to Mate to Have Babies?
WouterSpiders are usually solitary animals, and they hunt prey. They are also known to encircle their prey with silk webs, which can be used to trap them. However, they do not reproduce like other animals. They lay eggs, which take time to mature.
Female spiders can lay up to thousands of eggs in their lifetime. Some of these may be fertilized, while others will die before they can grow. Some species can lay more than two hundred eggs in one go, but most will only produce a few.
Female spiders protect their eggs until they hatch. They do this by wrapping them in silk and creating a blanket-like egg sac. The sac is then secured with more silk. When the babies emerge from the egg sac, they crawl away. They are then checked by the parents for several weeks. The larger the size of the female, the more eggs she can lay.
Male spiders often lay sperm on the web before mating, and then pick it up with their pedipalps. They then disperse the sperm over the pedipalps and insert it into the epigynum, which is located in the rear of the abdomen.
The sperm will fertilize the eggs laid by the female. After the eggs are fertilized, the female stores the sperm in receptacles near her ovaries. She will release it later, when she is ready to breed.
Some species can mate within seconds. But other species can take hours.
