Do Spiders Poop?

Okay - I couldn't wait until tomorrow because this has been bugging me (no pun intend... well, okay maybe just a little) all day!! Anyone who knows me KNOWS my distinct phobia of spiders but for some unknown reason, the thought crossed my mind when I was brushing something off of an item of clothing... 'I wonder if that's spider poop?' Which naturally led me to "Do spiders poop?"

Of COURSE I had to look it up and apparently there's a controversy, but I'll get to that later.

Let me enlighten you about my thought pattern... after wiping this dust like substance off an item of clothing laying neatly over the washer, I suddenly had this picture of a spider hovering (much like birds over a clean car) from the ceiling and letting "loose" as it were. Then I contemplated whether spiders actually have an intestinal tract... granted, the ginormous spiders you could put a saddle on probably do, since they most definitely eat small, misbehaving children, disobedient pets, and vermin, but does the average household spider, that can send me into a paralytic panic... do they poop?

Then I thought, well, could the web be the byproduct of what they consume? Possibly, but then that just grossed me out. Anyway, as I was writing my blog intro and doing some random household chores, this question kept plaguing me, so I thought I'd share.

Now on to what Google reveals when you type in "do spiders poop"... granted, I'm not sure if these top searches are spidyologists (yes, I'm sticking with that word, mostly because it made me giggle to type it out), but Answers.Yahoo and Askville.Amazon say YES, while Wikipedia (such the surprise) says NO!! Then there are those links that kind of take a middle of the road and state that they do, but not in the same manner we think of when we think of pooping.

SO... I leave you with this... next time you think you're brushing dust-like particles off of something... is it REALLY dust??

Oh, and PS - my blog will attempt to avoid vulgarity and profanity as much as possible, but I can't always account for things (like below) that contain some expletives... just know, that I am convulsing and running for the beer after simply posting this video!!