Holes are normally found in moist, shaded areas like rockeries, dense shrubs, logs and leaf litter. Funnel-web spiders may also forage on the surface in the vicinity of the burrow. The prey is quickly subdued by an injection of venom from the spider's large fangs. When a beetle, cockroach, or small skink, typical items of funnel web food, walks across the lines, the spider senses the vibrations and races out to grab its meal. The spider (hunting mostly at night) sits just inside the entrance with its front legs on the trip-lines. The burrow is often weakly silk-lined and rarely more than 30 cm deep. The tunnel leads back into a short surface chamber from which the burrow descends. The silk entrance to the burrow of a Sydney Funnel-web Spider has a more or less well-defined funnel-like silk entrance 'vestibule' within which is a collapsed, tunnel-like structure with one or two slit-like openings. If a spider burrow has obvious silk trip-lines around its rim you can be fairly certain that it belongs to a funnel-web spider. Gardeners and people digging in soil may encounter Funnel-webs in burrows at any time of the year.įunnel-web burrows are distinguished from other holes in the ground by the presence of a series of irregular silk 'trip-lines' radiating out from the entrance. Funnel-webs are very vulnerable to drying out, so high humidity is more favourable to activity outside the burrow than dry conditions. Rain may flood burrows and the temporary retreats of male Funnel-webs, causing an increase in their activity. These trip-lines alert the spider to possible prey, mates or danger. The most characteristic sign of a Funnel-web's burrow is the irregular silk trip-lines that radiate out from the burrow entrance of most species. In gardens, they prefer rockeries and dense shrubberies, and are rarely found in more open situations like lawns.
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