At this time of the year our bushveld is full of Golden Orb spiders (Nephila maculata) webs, these magnificent webs glow with their unique golden strands especially in the early morning sunrise. The strands are very strong and particularly sticky and may stretch up to three to four metres between the trees and I often wonder how a buck or an ostrich in particular gets rid of these webs when they run through them. Also how the spider gets rid of the ostrich.
This reminded me of an incident many years ago in the Mkuze area. Koos Mofokeng and I were doing some mosquito spraying at a very exclusive lodge in the area and the game rangers had offered us a game drive and not being one to turn down a freebie off we went. With us on the trip was a young cigarette rep from Durban. This young man was very full of his own importance and turned out to be a real windbag. Now the Golden Orb spiders in Mkuze are very smart and as the bush is very dense they construct their webs across the game trails just above the height of the open game viewers. The ranger warned us not to stand up as we would get the webs in our faces. The windbag could not resist telling us another of his exploits and stood up to emphasize a point. The ranger seeing this called for him to sit down and at that point he unfortunately turned around and caught a web including the spider right on his nose, with the web holding the spider firmly in place. He yelled and jumped off of the game viewer and just ran into the bush. Having just passed a pride of lions the game ranger brought the vehicle to a halt and jumped out and crash tackled the windbag to the ground. He plucked the poor spider off of the windbag’s nose put the spider on the ground and brought the windbag back to the game viewer berating him every inch of the way. We also noticed that the windbag had had a wet spot in the area of his crotch. He was extremely quiet for the rest of the trip and when we got back to the camp turned down the offer of a great sociable chatty braai, got into his vehicle and went back to Durban.
The final score : Golden Orb Spider -1 Windbag – 0
Golden Orb spider (nephila maculata) Their distribution is worldwide throughout most tropical and sub tropical areas. The female is many times larger than the male who usually lives in her web and often feeds off her prey. The silk of the web is so strong that it often traps small birds which the spider does not eat. The silk is almost as strong as Kevlar the strongest man made material. The good news is that the venom is generally harmless to humans and they rarely bite even if you do get tangled up in their webs, the bite is just like a small scratch.
Derrick Cochran – Tamboti Bush Lodge
Golden Orb Spider
Golden Orb Spider and Groceries