Customer Reviews

The Private Life of Spiders

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm giving a brief 5-star review to this book to counteract the 2-star review from January. No book is perfect and one can quibble over assertions, but why object to the size and beautiful illustration of this book? I highly recommend this book to anyone with more than a passing interest in spiders who also appreciates fine photography.

This book has more detailed information on the amazing variety and complexity of form and behavior for this ancient (300 to 400 million years) family than most non-professionals can absorb and remember. It is replete with stunning, detailed photos of the most interesting and attractive species. It is written in an erudite but straight-forward style, which avoids jargon and academic comlexity.

The reviewer of Jan. 27, 2008, who gave the book 2 stars, posits a number of objections. If you are a professional, or if such academic quibbles seem valid to you, his advice is probably suited to your needs. If you are the typical layman, who would like to know more about these amazing creatures, I recommend this book highly.

I'm writing this review to provide some balance to the "rave" advance reviews for this book, attributed to respected Arachnologists. The book has some nice photographs, and a good deal of collected information, on the subject of spiders.

In my opinion, however, the large format (including large print or all-capitals print) of this book detracts from its impact. I just prefer neat, compact styles, and don't like to own books with these larger linear dimensions. Because of the large print and wide spacing of lines, there is less content here than the weight of the book would suggest. From a content perspective, there are several references in this book to what I would call "unidirectional evolution." For example, the jumping spiders (Salticidae) are referred to as the "most highly evolved family." In areas where I am most familiar with the subject matter, there are many statements in this book that I would question. For example, to the best of my knowledge it has not been demonstrated that the principal eyes of jumping spiders are used to determine distance. One page has several diagrams of spider anatomy, and both the trochanters and the apical pretarsi of the legs were omitted from these drawings. Many of the photographs are not not identified as to species, locality, or behavioral context. At one point, the author makes a major point in describing "fights to the death" by female "Phidippus rimator" (currently called Phidippus clarus). Since there are no bibliographic references in the text of this book, it is impossible to find where these observations came from.

Although I agree with some of the criticisms of the two-star reviewer, I don't think this book set out to be a reference (although the author certainly has the credentials) as much as a book to look at, to admire and to acknowledge that no animals are as stunning as spiders! And to think that I was once an arachnophobe and couldn't have touched a single page in this book!

This is a very accessible book for anyone interested in spiders but who is not up to speed on the formal technicalities. The author does a good job introducing many aspects of spider biology without recourse to unwieldy technical terminology. The language is straightforward but not patronizing. The photography ranges from good to spectacular. One that sticks out for me was of a tiny male black widow inseminating a much larger female with its cork-screw shaped duct, this is an absolutely breath taking photograph. Some of the figure legends were weak, often the spider was not well identified and in many cases it was unclear where the photo was taken. I think this is an important omission, since I would like to know what I could reasonably expect to see in my own location. Although I appreciated this book, like one of the other reviewers (DE Hill) I found the large page format print rather irritating. I commute to work and like to read on the bus, but a book of this size is totally impractical for that kind of reading. I also disliked the use of used bold type for emphasis, which is a bit unsubtle. The book shows that spiders are not the ugly monsters they are often made out to be, but instead extraordinary and beautiful creatures with fascinating and complex lives.

I loved reading this book such a great read and amazing read. I learned alot about these creatures that are just so misunderstood. These are amazing little guys and we should be protectiong them all of them. They are here for a reason aren't they. It was just amazing to read about all these sorts of spiders how they live, what they eat, who builds webs because not all of these guys build webs.

Arachnids have always been and will always be fascinating highly adaptable colony of species whos remarkble creative web spinning skills have outlived every other ancient creatures lives.And this book is no different it sheds new light on in explaining their parental care of their young when they cant look after themselves because their too small it also explains their complex skillfull hunting strategies which aid them in hunting down prey for food.All in all this a must have inside rich information reference for anyone devoted to find out more about these ancient creatures that have outlived everyother species for 400 million years.Finally they are the Oldest of old in living species.