Banana Spider

Nephila clavipes is a species of golden orb-web spider. This species lives in the warmer regions of the Americas. The large size and bright colours of the species make it distinctive. Many call them Banana Spiders because of their yellow bodies. The female is much larger than the male. She is about 3 inches long, and the male is about 1/2 inch long.

In the United States, N. clavipes ranges throughout the coastal southeast and inland, from North Carolina to Texas. Golden orb-weavers are especially numerous in the time after summer and before fall in the south-eastern and southern U.S. This species is widespread — and often common — in large parts of Central America and warmer regions of South America.

The web of a mature female can reach one meter in width, With a tensile strength of 4×109 N/m2, the silk of N. clavipes exceeds that of steel by a factor of six. The yellow threads appearing as a rich gold in sunlight. Males come into the female's web for copulating. If you look closely, you will see that there are two males that have made it to this web. After mating, the female spins an egg sac on a tree, laying hundreds of eggs in one sac. While it is venomous to humans, it will only bite if pinched, and if doing so, the bite is usually relatively harmless and only leads to slight redness and localized pain.

I wouldn't even dream of pinching this banana lady. No sir! But I'll take a look now and then to see if she got some golden eggs laying around here.