7 h 59 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 7 h 59 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What can a spider’s web, burrow, and silk-bound eggs reveal about the mystery of instinct?
In The Life of the Spider, Jean-Henri Fabre watches tiny animals at work in the south of France. A French teacher turned naturalist, he spends hours beside burrows and webs. His subjects dig, weave, hunt, and care for their young, while he follows each task with patient attention.
The Narbonne Lycosa builds a deep home rather than a web for catching food. Orb weavers stretch round webs through garden bushes, and young spiders travel through the air on silk. Behind these observations lies Fabre’s great question: how can instinct guide such precise work, yet fail when conditions change?
What you’ll discover
- A watcher’s wild ground Visit the Harmas, Fabre’s rough patch of Provence, where patient watching gives him questions to pursue.
- The wolf spider’s home Follow the Narbonne Lycosa into a study of digging, hunting, and life without a prey-catching web.
- A mother’s silk bag Watch a Lycosa mother spin her egg bag and carry her young for months.
- Threads that carry lives Explore how young spiders leave home on silk and how orb weavers build their round webs.
- The limits of instinct Consider Fabre’s puzzle of animals whose exact skills can falter when familiar conditions change.
Who will love it
Readers who love gardens, insects and close observation will enjoy these essays. They suit curious minds drawn to experimental naturalists and to detailed accounts of how spiders build, hunt and raise their young.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Small trials open hidden worlds
- The killing bite depends on place
- Silk offers another way to hunt
- Fine craftsmanship can follow blind routine
- Protection does not always mean recognition
- An unanswered question remains worth asking
- A passing instinct sends spiderlings aloft
- A precise web follows fixed rules
- Special skill is not general understanding
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The Life of the Spider
A Tarantula bites a bee on the neck and it dies at once, and Fabre watches to learn why.
Medium level2–5 hours to read2 languages
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In short
Why does a bumble-bee die in an instant when a spider bites it, while a rattlesnake needs hours to kill? Jean-Henri Fabre sets out to answer that kind of question with a straw, a glass bottle, a pair of scissors and endless patience.
The Life of the Spider at a glance
- Reading time
- About 4 h 35 min3 h 35 min fast, 5 h 25 min slow
- Length
- 65,100 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
The Tarantula bites the neck to kill fast
Most people want to crush a spider, and old stories say the Italian Tarantula makes her victims dance. Fabre turns instead to a spider he can study, the Black-bellied Tarantula, also called the Narbonne Lycosa.
His puzzle is simple. A big bumble-bee has a sting as good as the spider's fangs, yet it drops dead in a moment. The fight happens deep in the burrow, so he holds a carpenter-bee in a bottle over the burrow mouth. After hours in the heat, a few hungry spiders rush the bee. Each time the fangs sink into the nape of the neck, and the bee dies on the spot.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
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Details
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 5 h 10 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Fabre, Jean-Henri. The Life of the Spider. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-life-of-the-spider.
Fabre, J.-H. (2026). The life of the spider. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-life-of-the-spider
Fabre, Jean-Henri. The Life of the Spider. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-life-of-the-spider.
@book{fabre2026life,
author = {Fabre, Jean-Henri},
title = {The Life of the Spider},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-life-of-the-spider}
}
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What is The Life of the Spider about?
It records Jean-Henri Fabre's observations and experiments on spiders in southern France, covering the Tarantula's bite, burrows, webs, egg nests, mother care, flying spiderlings and the geometry of the Epeira's web.
What is a Black-bellied Tarantula or Narbonne Lycosa?
It is a large burrowing hunting spider of dry stony ground in southern France. It digs a deep pit, builds a turret and kills prey with a bite to the neck.
Does Fabre really use experiments in this book?
Yes, constantly. He cuts webs, swaps egg sacs for cork balls, snips signal threads and warms a room with a brazier, so each claim rests on something he watched.
The author
Jean-Henri Fabre
1823–1915 · French entomologist and author
Jean-Henri Fabre was a French naturalist and entomologist, often called the "Homer of the insects" for turning patient observation into literature. The Story Book of Science shows his rare gift for making the natural world thrilling to young readers.
More by Jean-Henri Fabre
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