By Chloe Raines

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. He also created spiders. Some people wonder why God created spiders and many people share the common opinion that spiders are creepy, crawly and hairy. However, if any one takes the time to closely observe them, they are wonderful examples of God’s design.
God created spiders with built in instincts from day one to be able to build webs and survive. NASA has even launched a spider into space to see how it could spin webs in a weightless environment. Within three days, the spider was spinning an almost perfect web. Not all spiders build webs, but many do some built intricate, beautiful, lacy webs, and some make confusing mazes. Some spider webs, if made into a single strand, would stretch for more then 300 miles!
All spiders manufacture silk, and most spiders manufactures many different kind. Some spiders have ultra violet silk to attract insects. Spined spiders will decorate their webs with bits of silk made to look like midge flies. Midge fly-eating insects, hoping to get a meal, but instead they become one!
There are an estimated 35,000 different kinds of spiders, and tarantulas are the largest. Some tarantulas are as large as a dinner plate and all are extremely hairy! In fact, some kind of tarantulas are large enough to eat small birds.
The water spider is especially amazing. They take air bubbles under water to a little platform of silk they have spun and release the bubble on the under side of the platform so it is trapped. They do this until they have enough air trapped so they can live under water for quite a long time, even months, without ever going above water.
The goldenrod spider can change colors. They live in flowers, waiting for pollinating insects as prey. The goldenrod spider is actually white, but they can change color to yellow so they can move to a yellow flower if need be, rather than a white one.

Jumping spiders are generally pretty cute, with their big eyes and bright colors, if you can get past the fact that it is a spider. Like their name they are excellent jumpers, leaping up to 10 inches in a single bound. That would be like an average sized human being jumping 60 feet!

Another kind of jumping spider will mimic an ant. It will hold its first pair of legs up like antennas and walks on its remaining six legs. It might do this to avoid predators who know that ants taste bad.

Only one known species of spider lives in families-all other spiders live solitary lives. A family of Australian huntsman spiders will include spiders of all ages.

Spiders with all their varied designs and capabilities provide a fascinating area of science to study. God created spiders for the job of keeping down our insect population. If there were no spiders, our world would literally be overrun by bugs. So, spiders do have a purpose and they were created for this purpose by the Creator of all things.