6th December: Did feeding of baby spiders first. Then caught flies. A female spider's eggs had just hatched so Selvan and I did the separation of the babies into individual containers. 7th December: Did writing of my report first today. Then I gave it to Madam to correct. After she finished with it, I started writing it in fair. I finished writing the report before evening and left it with Madam for final approval. 8th December: Went to CIKS late as I had a bad stomach. I was given my final report signed and Madam also gave me a certificate. I left slightly early in the evening as I was still feeling unwell and was scheduled to leave for the Croc Bank the next day. Field Work Notes: Spiders These days most of us use Baygon or some other synthetic poison to control cockroaches and other pests. But what does this do? It only makes cockroaches or pests immune or resistant to such poisons. Moreover, synthetic chemicals are very harmful and pollute the environment. How nice it would be if we had a biological method of controlling of pests. But that's just what spiders are! A spider is not an insect. Insects are made up of a head, thorax and an abdomen. They have compound eyes and are six-legged. They usually grow wings in certain stages of their life and possess feelers or antennae. Insects produce eggs which hatch into young that are completely different from their parents. The young ones usually grow through metamorphosis. A spider on the other hand is an arthropod, made up of a cepolothorax joined to an abdomen. It does not grow wings at any stage of its life. It is eight-legged, and in place of the normal insect antennae it has pedipalps. A spider generally has eight simple eyes or it could have six eyes e.g. a spitting spider. Depending on the species the eyesight may be well or poorly developed. Some species, such as the cave spiders, are totally blind. Depending on the species a spider's life span ranges from a couple of months to more than a decade (e.g. mygalomorphs). Almost all spiders have their first pair of appendages later modified into fangs with venom glands. But only a few have fangs that are large and strong enough to pierce human skin. Out of these, most cannot do any serious damage to human beings except for about four to five species which can be lethal. The Black Widow spider, for example, which is found in South America is the most poisonous of all spiders. The female of the species, whose poison is strong enough to kill a human being, often kills and eats the male after mating and is thus aptly named the Black Widow. This spider is shiny black in colour with a red hour glass mark on the ventricle side of the abdomen. Fortunately, there are no spiders in India which can seriously harm human beings. There are about 30,000 species of spiders in the world. They have been found upto a height of 23,000 feet up Mount Everest as well as underwater.