Spiders Cloze Reading Task

Kia Ora Room 19,


Here is your cloze reading task for today. You have the whole day to complete it in your reading book and may work quietly with a partner. Check that your work makes sense and is factual! For information on spiders, click here.

Spiders

Spiders are small, eight-legged  that are best known for spinning silk webs. Spiders spin webs so they can catch  for their food and even larger and  insects cannot escape.

All spiders spin  but some don't spin webs.  spiders spin a single line with a  end. Any insect near, gets trapped when the spider swings the sticky line near them.

All spiders have fangs and most kinds have  glands. They use their fangs and poison glands to their food. A spider's bite can kill insects and other small animals. A few kinds of spiders are  to human beings. In North America, six kinds of spiders harm people, they are - the Brown Recluse, Sac, Black Widow, Brown Widow, Red-legged Widow and the Varied Widow. Four of the Widow  are known to bite humans. The bites of these six spiders often cause mild . Usually a person iritates a spider several times for it to bite you. In Australia, the most dangerous spider is the  with the , a type of Black Widow spider, also being .

Spiders are helpful to people because they eat  insects. They eat  and
locusts which destroy . Spiders also eat flies and  which carry diseases. Spiders feed mostly on insects but some capture and eat tadpoles, small frogs, small fish and mice. Most f are larger and stronger than the males and occasionally they eat males. Spiders can live anywhere they can find food like fields, woods, swamps, caves and deserts. One kind of spider spends most of its life . Another kind lives near the top of Mount , the world's highest . Some live in houses, barns, and other buildings. Others live on the outside of buildings, on walls, windscreens and corners of doors and windows. 

The life span of arachnids in temperate areas is a single season, therefore they rely on  to perpetuate the species from year to year. In warm regions, certain groups (some scorpions and tarantulas) appear to live more than a single year, in fact some tarantulas in captivity have survived for as long as  years.

There are more than  kinds of spiders. Scientists believe there may be up to 50,000 to 100,000 kinds. Some are smaller than than the head of a  but some are larger than a person's . One kind of spider, a South American tarantula is measured at 25 centimetres but that is with its legs extended.

Most people think spiders are insects but scientists classify spiders as s. Insects are different in a number of ways. Spiders have  legs but ants, bees, beetles and other insects have only  legs. Most insects have  or antennae which are feelers. Arachinids include daddy long legs, scorpions, mites and .

Scientists classify spiders as either  spiders or Tarantulas, according to certain differences in their bodies such as the way their  point and move. In addition, spiders can be grouped according to the way they . Web spinning spiders spin webs to catch s. Others lie and wait for insects to come.