Spiders
Scaring Miss Muffet and climbing down waterspouts, spiders have been busy interacting with humans, even in nursery rhymes. Representatives of the class Arachnida, spiders are found worldwide with about 35,000 known species (4,000 in North America), but less than one percent are dangerous to humans. Even with such impressive numbers, it is estimated that only 20 percent of the spiders of Australia are scientifically catalogued and some arachnologists estimate there may be as many as 170,000 undescribed species worldwide. As insectivores, spiders are valuable to farmers, feeding regularly on agricultural pests.
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