Amorous arachnid invaders are seeking love on the web

Spiders making their way into homes across the country this autumn are out “looking for love”, museum experts in Leeds have revealed.

- by Charles Brown

With eight-legged visitors currently a more frequent sight around the UK, curators at the Leeds Discovery Centre have taken the opportunity to study their impressive collection of amazing arachnids while busting some myths and misconceptions about ‘spider season’.

In fact, rather than deliberately encroaching on our houses to give us a scare, the web-making wonders are simply on the hunt for a partner... while also providing one of the natural world’s most effective forms of pest control.

The Leeds Discovery Centre is home to a fascinating collection of spiders large and small originating from countries around the world, as well as many examples collected in Yorkshire.

Many of those specimens are preserved in specialised spirit jars filled with powerful ethanol, designed to keep the spiders from deteriorating over time.