Cave Spiders

The cave spider *Meta menardii* is very common in central Europe.

Cave spider *Meta menardii* which just left its old skin.

Spiders are very common in caves. Some spider species live on the surface in dark and damp places, so cave entrances make little difference. Thus, most cave spiders are troglophiles or cave-loving animals. Nevertheless, they are partly adapted to the lightless environment, for example with elongated front legs that improve the sense of touch. Since spiders feed on other insects, their occurrence is obviously limited to caves where there is a sufficient food supply. In Central Europe, these are mosquitoes and moths that spend the night or hibernate in the cave. Cave spiders are also very common in caves with larger bat colonies. The guano, food remains of the bats and also dead bats are the food basis of a whole ecosystem of insects up to spiders.

There is also a rather amusing anecdote to tell about Meta menardii. In 2001, British Telecom engineers working on the grounds of Windsor Castle discovered a colony of cave spiders living in pipes and shafts. These were wrongly described as swarms of aggressive spiders up to 9cm in size. The BBC wrote "Venomous spiders nest near Queen's home". And it quoted a leading entomologist who assumed they were venomous. He speculated, obviously without having seen the spiders himself, that it was "possibly a new species or a species of spider previously thought to have been extinct for thousands of years". This triggered a media spectacle, but the correction was probably somewhat overlooked.