My name is William Bruce, and I’m a life-long spider enthusiast. Having grown up in Indiana, I started out in the typical way – catching Argiope spiders in my yard as a kid, and then using every family camping trip or school field trip to look for other arachnids.
After some small successes by the age of 12 (like finding a Hentz Striped Scorpion in Alabama), I finally managed to convince my parents to get me a Chilean Rose Tarantula.
Since then, I’ve kept tarantulas, scorpions, camel spiders (Soligugids) and harvestmen – learning a lot along the way. Really though, I don’t want to just enjoy these animals myself – I want to spread awareness of their importance and just how fascinating they are. That’s why I created The Spider Blog.
These creatures are particularly poorly understood. Often, people prefer to step on a spider, rather than stop to think “is this animal helpful?” or “what can this animal do for me?”. This isn’t exactly surprising, because to most people spiders and scorpions are scary. They even look scary – until you get to know them of course.
The truth is that these questions are exactly the ones people should be asking themselves. Spiders and other arachnids are of huge ecological importance. In every ecosystem on the planet, it’s arachnids that play one of the largest roles in pest control. They literally protect the food we eat, and the wild spaces we enjoy by controlling the numbers of other bugs through predation.
At the same time, a lot of people are now realising that arachnids make great pets. Having a long life and easy care requirements, they are perhaps some of the easiest animals to keep. They also happen to be mostly very docile, despite the fearsome reputation they are burdened with.
Add in the fact that many species of arachnid require no heating during the summer months and you get a pet with a dramatically lower carbon footprint than traditional choices like dogs, cats, and aquarium fish.
Hopefully, The Spider Blog can help more people than ever understand why you shouldn’t step on that spider. In fact, after reading some of our articles you might even want to consder inviting it inside!
If you want to contact Will, head over to the Contact us page, or check out The Spider Blog’s Pinterest profile. Will is also working on his Youtube Channel – but this is in development right now!
For professional information: follow Will Bruce on LinkedIn.
