Meanwhile, back in France..

My mom sent me a couple of pictures of a spider she found in our house, in Brittany, France. This spider, which belongs to the family Pholcidae (cellar spiders), genus Pholcus, brings back memories from home, as I remember seeing these when I was younger. I remember throwing small paper balls in their webs to see if the spider would mistaken them for prey items. Instead, the spider would shake and vibrate in its web. I later found out that this shaking is a defense mechanism which makes the spider look blurry and therefore more difficult to catch.

This spider was surrounded by her offspring, which first looked like small dots in her web:

The second picture shows the same spider and her young, now a little older:

Pholcids are long-legged spiders that hang upside down in tangle webs, which they typically build in dark areas (cellars, caves), but sometimes also in warm areas inside houses.