The smell of spiders

I've never noticed a smell of spiders. Do you have to be a gray to smell it?

Possibly it's a pheromone they secrete, or maybe it's not really the spiders, per se, but the decaying bodies of insects they've captured? Do spiders secrete anything that would "bait" other insects to the web? I don't know if they rely entirely on chance and a good location to get insects trapped in their webs, or if they have some sort of attractant that helps lure them to it.

 

These spider threads are freaking me out! :yuck:

 

We've always had a spider problem at PF. Slurp spider infestations are common.

 

Math_Is_Hardcore,can you elaborate that?

 

They're just web crawlers. Search engines use 'em for indexing. Apparently they are smarter than they used to be...

http://www.searchengineposition.com/info/articles/YahooReleaseNewCrawler.asp

one really smart one even joined PF and posted for a while! (sorry, I can no longer find that link - it was verrry funny :rofl: )

 

Yikes enough with the spider threads lol. I would imagine it is just a pheromone they are producing.Some spiders will secrete a pheremone that attracts insects, one seems particularily effective against male moths:

"The Bird-dropping Spider also uses mimicry of a quite different sort to capture its prey, which consist almost exclusively of male moths. At night the Bird-dropping Spider hangs from the edge of a leaf or twig on a short silk thread, its forelegs outstretched. While doing this it releases a chemical scent (pheromone) that mimics the airborne sex pheromone released by female moths to attract their mates. The unfortunate male moths that are attracted by the spider's deceiving pheromone eventually flutter close enough to the spider to be grabbed by its strong front legs."

http://www.amonline.net.au/factSheets/bird_dropping_spider.htm