Can someone identify this spider?

[TracyMac]

Hi everyone!
I'm writing because I have had this weird spider on my porch for about 2-3 weeks now. I have no idea if it would be easier to identify it if you knew the behavior or charateristics so I will list them:
It is a small light brown/tan spider. It made this silver octagon looking object, then ingested it, and then a couple of days later it the object came out, which is now the weird thing in the picture that you see. Now it has this dark brown thing (which is shown in the picture) and it just keeps spinning it in a circle.

Editted to add...It just ingested the brown thing.

I would very much appreciate it if someone could tell me what sort of spider this is. I live in North GA, if location might help.

Here are the pictures:

Thanks,
Tracy

 

[jsloan]

Your pictures don't show much, so this is purely a guess as to what this spider might be. This looks to me like a small orb weaver spider in the Uloboridae family. The brown thing is something it's eating (the spider was wrapping it with silk when you saw it spinning it in a circle). The wrinkly whitish thing above it looks like something it constructed as part of its web for camouflage. Uloborids do that sort of thing, so that predators have a harder time locating the spider when it is sitting in its web. Sometimes they eat all or part of their webs one day and then "recycle" it as fresh silk in a new web the next day. That may be why you saw the white thingy disappear and then reappear. The tufts of hair on the first pair of legs also make me thing this is a uloborid.

These spiders have no venom glands.

 

[TracyMac]

Thanks for the description! Sorry about the pictures, I got as close as I could without disturbing it.

Thanks again for the information. I've never actually "observed" a spider's behavior, it's been pretty interesting.