Insect Soup for Dinner. Yum! Yum!

Someone probably told you that spiders drink the blood of the insects they catch. Well this is true, but only part of what they eat. Spiders turn their insect prey into a dinner of bug soup. Yum Yum!

Spiders have fangs. The fangs have a sharp end. They are hollow so they can carry the poison from inside the spider and inject it into the insect they catch. Fangs are hard. That way they can poke right through the hard exoskeleton of the insect they want to eat.

The fangs are under the front of the spider. Their points usually come together in the middle. The spider can open them up, and stick them into the bug it is trying to catch.

Each fang is hollow, like a tube through which the poison can flow. The opening is near the tip of the fang.

We normally think of a poison as something that might hurt us, maybe even kill us. And this is true. Poisons can make us sick. They make it so our body does not work as well as it should. If it hurts our body too much, it is then able to kill us.

The word toxin is sometimes used to describe a poison that animals can put into a person when they bite, or when they inject a poison. An example is when a bee or wasp injects poison with its stinger.

Most people use the words poison and toxin to mean the same thing. Both can hurt the body, causing some kind of damage.

Only a few spiders have a poison, or toxin, that can hurt people. These very few spiders are scary to many people, but most are shy and not likely to bite. In the United States only a few spiders have a poison that can hurt people. These include four species of widows (such as the black widow) and the 13 species of recluse spiders (such as the brown recluse).

But what is really in the "spider's poison?"

While there may be a few chemicals that are toxic, most of the poison is actually digestive enzymes. These are the chemicals that breakdown food. In humans these enzymes are in the saliva and all of the fluids in the stomach and small intestine. They break down the food into small parts that can be absorbed into the blood.

Some of the chemicals in the poison actually help put the insect to sleep, cause it to stop fighting. This helps prevent the spider from being hurt.

Spiders feed by biting into the insect. They pierce through the hard ‘skin' of the insect. This exoskeleton is tough and can not be digested by the spider. The poison entering into the insect through the fangs causes the digestion to begin.

With crushing from the mouthparts, the spider can then put stomach secretions into the insect. These secretions are also full of digestive enzymes, helping to fully break down all of the insect into ‘soup.'

All of the insect, except the hard exoskeleton that is. After sucking up this tasty meal, what is left is the crushed exoskeleton. This may be discarded or used in the web for ‘decoration.'

A few spiders are able to pierce a bug, secrete enzymes through these small holes, and then suck the insect dry leaving the insect looking like it did. But now a hollow shell. Crab spiders can catch a bumble bee, suck it dry, and leave it on the flower to scare people away.