The garden spider only lives for one year. In winter, the spider is in a kind of egg, spider web. In spring, the tiny spiders hatch. In late summer, early autumn they are fully grown, which is also when we see the spiders the most. After a few days out of their eggs they already start making a web to catch prey animals.
On average, it takes 30 to 60 minutes for web building spiders to weave a web. Even though spider webs are extremely strong, they don’t always last for long.
Cross spiders are not dangerous, but they can bite if you grab them by hand. Often the bite is all it takes, but if a cross spider is really scared, it can also inject a poison. This venom is absolutely not lethal. However, you can feel the bite stinging and it can be very itchy for a few hours.
A spider’s legs can grow back after being lost; this happens in a number of molts. This phenomenon is called regeneration. Spiders are very vulnerable; most have no coagulants in their bodies; when a spider is damaged it can “bleed to death”, so to speak.
They’ve eight eyes, which all have a clear purpose. For instance, the two back eyes specialise in night vision. Two eyes on the side provide a blurred wide-angle view. These allow the spider to spot the first movements of prey in the distance.