SPIDERS can strike fear into many across the world.
So how do these creepy crawlies survive and do they even have a mouth big enough to sip water?
What do spiders drink?
Spiders need water to survive.
But they do not need to drink it every day.
Spiders get a lot of moisture from their diet, by sucking blood and "juices" from insects.
But they do need water to survive.
However, house spiders can spend a few months without water.
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Arachnids can survive even longer without food, but they will eventually need water.
Meanwhile, tarantulas can survive two years with a single meal.
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How do spiders drink?
There's a common assumption that spiders do not drink.
This is because no one has ever seen a spider open its mouth and drink or actually absorb the liquid from its prey.
Even most spider owners have never seen the eight-legged crawly hydrate.
Well, firstly, spiders do not have an actual mouth and they do not have teeth, so they cannot chew.
Their mouthparts are called chelicerae and they act in a similar way to a straw.
The chelicerae have many muscles which work together to suck up water and liquids from prey.
They take several minutes to perform this process and some larger species might even spend hours drinking.
What's a spider's lifespan?
Most spiders in the UK can live up to a year, while female ones can live up to two or three years.
However spiders can live up to 40 years depending on the species.
In fact, the oldest spider on Earth was an Australian trapdoor spider that lived up to 43 years before it was killed by a wasp.
On the other hand, one can also find spiders that leave less than a year, it depends on the species and environment they live in.
Females lay eggs in spring with her spiderlings living in her web.
Spiders moult rather than grow like humans.
Males and females reach maturity in August and September, with the males leaving the web to mate.
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On finding a mate, he will stay with her for several weeks.
The male will die before winter with the female retreating before constructing egg sacs in the spring.
