Appreciating Amazing Araneae: Learning to Appreciate the Finer Details of a Misunderstood Animal

By Tai Linklater, WildRoots Summer Worker

Oct 1, 2026

The earth is full of critters both big and small. Some we find easier to admire than others. Some may even uproot feelings of fear. One such animal whose presence is often feared are spiders. However, these misunderstood critters are far less threatening and far more important than they are given credit for.

Now, I must confess that I am a spider-admirer convert. I did not always have an admiration for these long-leggedy beasties. My conversion came from a desire to stop being scared to go into my basement because of the spiders that lived there. Through a mix of patience, good science communication about spiders, and exposure, my angst towards spiders began to turn to appreciation, which slowly became admiration.

I began my journey to spider admiration by learning more about what spiders are and why they are important. For example, I didn’t know that less than 0.0001% of spider species worldwide were medically significant to humans. In other words, 99.9999% of all spider species globally (including all species of tarantulas) do not have strong enough venom to harm a human. Coming from the Canadian context, we really have nothing to worry about when it comes to spiders.

After learning more about how important and harmless spiders actually are, I was able to begin to appreciate them for the roles they fill in the ecosystem. Then, with time, I began to try and admire how they visually looked – which was admittedly a much harder task.

I began by looking at spiders up closely. So closely that I couldn’t even tell what part of the spider I was looking at. There are some really talented macrophotographers out there who make this pretty easy – like my good friend Thomas Hunt, who has incredible photos of all kinds on critters on his website. By zooming in, I could see that spiders come in all kinds of colours, shapes, and sizes. Some have rumps that look like a bright green tennis ball, and a face that looks like two orange jelly beans fused together. Others look like chandeliers with candles or glassy marbles. Some even look like wide-eyed clowns with colourful makeup. By zooming in and observing the spiders’ finer details, I could begin to see how spiders could be visually beautiful. If you zoom into enough parts of the spider, eventually when you put the whole image together the spider doesn’t seem so frightening anymore.

Image by Thomas Hunt

So next time you see a spider, I encourage you to let it be, or if you’re feeling brave, take a closer look and see what you can admire about these cool, important, and harmless critters!

Lastly, I want to share one of my favourite prayers that remind me of spiders, which I modified from the Quaint Old Litany:

From ghoulies and ghosties

And long-leggedy beasties

And things that go bump in the night,

Good Lord, deliver us [from our misconceptions of these good creatures].

Tai led a summer workshop on spiders this year, and we ended it by making collages with some of Thomas’s macrophotography. It was a really cool way to learn to appreciate the beauty of spiders!