Australian Huntsman spiders belong to the Family Sparassidae (formerly Heteropodidae) and are famed as being the hairy so-called 'tarantulas' on house walls that terrify people by scuttling out from behind curtains.

Huntsman spiders are large, long-legged spiders.. They are mostly grey to brown, sometimes with banded legs. Many huntsman spiders, especially Delena (the flattest), and including Isopeda, Isopedella and Holconia, have rather flattened bodies adapted for living in narrow spaces under loose bark or rock crevices. This is aided by their legs which, instead of bending vertically in relation to the body, have the joints twisted so that they spread out forwards and laterally in crab-like fashion ('giant crab spiders'). Both Brown (Heteropoda) and Badge (Neosparassus) Huntsman spiders have less flattened bodies.

Brown Huntsman (Heteropoda species) spiders are patterned in motley brown, white and black.

Peacock spider is one of the smallest spider species

Peacock spiders are a group of mostly small and compact Australasian salticid (genus Maratus) in which the adult males have a plate (the fan) of dense scales, often brilliantly colored and highly iridescent, on the dorsal abdomen (opisthosoma). Often contrasting figures or patterns comprised of pigmented scales are superimposed on a background of iridescent scales. These salticids also have a long and highly flexible pedicel, allowing males to elevate the opisthosoma and display its dorsal pattern to females as part of their courtship display, involving lateral stepping and side to side rotation of the opisthosoma.

Maratus robinsoni is endemic to Australia and was described in 2012 from Newcastle, New South Wales. The opisthosoma of this spider is only a little more than 1 mm in length. With about 2.5 mm in total, it is the smallest peacock spider discovered so far. This small but very colorful species has a nearly circular dorsal opisthosomal plate (fan) with fields of vividly iridescent scales that reflect light directionally at frequencies that span the visible spectrum on a dark background.

There are several different sorts of web - the sheet web, orb web, tangle web, funnel web, tubular web and dome or tent web. The most common type of web that is seen around the home is the orb web, so called because of its circular shape, resembling a giant wheel. It is an immensely strong web, I have seen a video of a bat being caught in an orb web and consumed by a common garden orb weaver. Click here for that video on National Geographic as well as some others on spiders. Several different types of silk may be used in web construction, including a "sticky" capture silk, or with "fluffy" capture silk, depending on the type of spider. Webs may be in a vertical plane (most orb webs), a horizontal plane (sheet webs), or at any angle in between. Most commonly found in the sheet-web spider families, some webs will have loose, irregular tangles of silk above them. These tangled obstacle courses serve to disorient and knock down flying insects, making them more vulnerable to being trapped on the web below. They may also help to protect the spider from predators such as birds and wasps.