What if you were to put small pieces of meat in the webs? I think they’d eat it if it’s not breaded or something
Generally speaking spiders don't eat stuff that's already dead unless they killed it and stored it for later. Most of them are great at sensing vibrations, bad at other methods of detecting things*. Most find their prey items by detecting the vibrations caused by prey trapped on their web for orb weavers or passing over tripwire strings around their lair in the case of tarantulas and trapdoor spiders.
It's also very hard to trick them by manually stimulating the web, as they can generally recognise what kind of prey they have based on the vibrations it makes and can tell when it's just a big animal touching the web as it goes by.
People who keep captive spiders mostly feed them locusts, crickets and roaches purchased from exotic pet food suppliers. Some people feed their tarantulas mice on occasion, and some can goad them into taking dead ones from tongs, but mice aren't a great meal for spiders in general anyway due to the nutrient ratios compared to insect prey.
If I was feeding a spider I would generally carefully drop a small live locust or small roach into it's web or enclosure and allow things to proceed as normal. From past experience I'm not a fan of crickets, they smell and escape too easily and are hard to catch. Another option which is far more sensible for the average person who doesn't want to buy food or breed food for a random spider would be to go outside and try to find some woodlice under a rock or bit of bark, scoop one up and plop it onto the web.
*
Well, tons of them actually have great eyesight, but they're not the kinds that spin webs. Net-casters, wolf spiders and jumping spiders for example can all see very well and don't make use of what could be considered the iconic spider hunting methods. They still need the prey to move to properly identify it as food though. Though there is a species of jumping spider, B. Kiplingi, that has a primarily herbivorous diet, consisting mostly of nubs produced by certain plants as part of a symbiotic relationship with ants, nectar and the occasional ant larva or other spider. Presumably this spider can identify the nubs despite them not moving.
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Topic: [MILK] There were 12 eggs here what did you do with them? (Happy thread?!) (Read 14511131 times)