Spiders eat and drink in ways that may surprise you. Their diet usually includes tiny prey they can catch, and they turn their meals into liquid before swallowing.
Spiders mostly eat insects and sip moisture from prey, dew, rain, or damp surfaces.
How spiders eat also depends on how often they find food, since many can go days or even weeks between meals.
Their food choices change with size, habitat, and hunting style. A web builder and a roaming hunter will not hunt the same menu.
What Spiders Usually Eat And Drink
Most spiders go after small, soft-bodied animals they can overpower. They often get moisture from prey and drink from droplets when they find them.
Common Prey In A Typical Spider Meal
Many spiders eat mosquitoes, moths, ants, beetles, and flies. Most spiders rely on insects as their main food source, especially when those insects are easy to catch.
How Spiders Liquefy Food Before Eating
Spiders do not chew their food. They inject digestive fluids into prey, break the tissue down outside the body, and then suck up the liquid meal.
That is why solid plant matter is usually off the menu for most species.
Where Spiders Get Water
Spiders drink small amounts of water from dew, raindrops, and thin films of water on leaves or other surfaces. They also take in moisture from the body fluids of prey, which helps meet most of their water needs.
How Hunting Style Shapes The Menu
Your spider’s hunting style changes what it eats. Web users tend to catch flying insects.
Active hunters chase, stalk, or ambush prey on the ground or in plants.
Web-Building Spiders And Flying Insects
Web-building spiders often trap mosquitoes, moths, and other flying insects that get caught in silk. Their webs work best for prey that moves through open air.
Hunting Spiders That Chase Or Ambush Prey
Hunting spiders do not wait in a web. They move through leaf litter, walls, or plants and grab prey like grasshoppers and crickets when they get close.
Wolf Spiders And Huntsman Spiders As Larger Predators
Wolf spiders hunt quickly on the ground, and huntsman spiders can take larger prey than many other spiders. Some huntsman spiders may even catch small lizards, showing how flexible their diet can be as they grow.
Unusual Foods And Rare Feeding Behaviors
Most spiders still prefer live animal prey, yet a few species show unusual feeding habits. Some eat other spiders, some target ants, and one rare species even feeds partly on plant material.
When Spiders Eat Other Spiders
Spiders can be cannibalistic, especially when food is scarce or another spider comes too close. Some species, such as white-tailed spiders, mainly eat other spiders and rarely switch to different prey.
The Plant-Feeding Exception Of Bagheera kiplingi
One rare exception is Bagheera kiplingi, a spider that feeds on plant material from ant-acacias. It eats protein-rich beltian bodies and sometimes nectar, which is highly unusual because most spiders cannot digest cellulose well.
Why Some Spiders Target Ants
Some spiders specialize in ants because ants are abundant and predictable.
Certain ant-mimicking spiders use disguise to move near ant trails.
They strike when the chance appears.
