This interactive exhibition, produced by the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, introduces visitors to the delightfully creepy, endlessly fascinating world of these eight-legged creatures. Visitors will come face to face with live native Hawaiian and introduced species, including the Happyface, Cave, and Cane spiders, and learn all about spider life and the importance of arachnids in folklore and legend. Scientists estimate there may be as many as 170,000 species of spiders, with approximately 34,000 identified to date. A new shift of spiders will magically appear as day cycles into night and back again. In addition, a close-up look at native Hawaiian spiders, most of which are rarely ever seen, will highlight the exhibit.
Spiders make a variety of silks as lifelines to food, survival and communication.
These small creatures engineer fantastic webs such as orbs, nets, tangles, and funnels, plus trapdoors, spring traps, gum-foot webs and draglines. A time-enhanced video will give visitors a detailed look at webs as they are being made. They can then develop their own web-weaving strategies on a computer game or take a crawl across a giant web. Pictures, videos and interactive games will reveal the ways in which spiders obtain food and use their venom to immobilize prey. Spiders have influenced humans and culture in many ways.