Spider biologist Simon Pollard thinks we should think of spiders as ambassadors like we do of tuatara and kiwi.
Pollard has a PhD in evolutionary biology which focused on spiders, and he's the co-author of a book targeting young readers, called Why is that Spider Dancing? The Amazing Arachnids of Aotearoa.
He tells Jesse Mulligan why spiders don't deserve their bad rep.
Instead of fearing spiders, we should celebrate the more than 2000 types we have here, he says.
"I know they're up against bad press, people fear spiders - they're the second most feared animals next to snakes but it's a largely unfounded fear.
"When I think of my own career working with spiders for over 40 years in places all around the world, I've been bitten probably three times and it was always my fault.
"I say this so often to people, spiders don't go around biting people, why would they? And yet we attribute almost ghostly powers to their ability to bite us without us knowing."
The book's title is a reference to the jumping spider, which - despite its name - actually stands out because of its incredible eyesight, he says.
"Their eyesight is about one sixth as good as ours, so they can see shape, colour ... if you get really close to look at one of them, they do tend to raise their head and look back.
"Because they're so visual, they communicate visually.
"And males often look like they're in a fancy dress party - not so much in New Zealand but in the tropics, they'll just be outrageous colours, bright greens, bright reds, bright yellows, they have moustaches, they have hair tufts, so the males dance to impress females."
They're ones that you're likely to see around your house, he says.
"Because they're so visual, being on the flat outside the houses is a good place to be because they can see what's going on around them."
An interesting fact about spiders is that their food has to be liquid before consuming it, he says. That leads to some interesting eating methods.
"Some of them just tear the prey apart and then bathe the prey's tissues in digestive fluids and then suck up the nutrients."
Meanwhile, crab spiders are more like a vampire in that they use their fangs to make holes in their prey to suck out the contents, he says.
"So, when it's finished eating, the prey looks like it did before, but all of its insides are gone."
Some also leave a line of silk behind them as a safety line while climbing, he says.
"If they fall, they'll be hanging by that and climb back up that silk.
"Sometimes you do see orb web spiders that if they're hanging outside of their orb web that may be that they're being threatened by ... a bird or a parasitoid wasp."
The web builders are active at night mostly, he says.
"It is fascinating to see them repairing webs and catching food."
Often you may find zig zag webs in the garden from a grey house spider, he says.
"It's not sticky like orb web spider's web which has glue droplets to trap prey. The grey house spider [web] is a bit like being tiny and trying to run up a wool jersey, so prey get tangled up in threads and the spider comes running out and grabs them."
It is hunted by the white-tailed spider, which will pretend to be struggling prey, he says.
"So you've really got a carnivore hunting another carnivore.
"But they also try to take on the cellar spider which is the long-legged one you tend to find in the corners of houses or garages.
"It's got a very good defence where it shakes the web, a bit like bouncing on a trampoline, to displace whatever is trying to get it, but it will catch the white-tailed spider and eat them.
"I think in the book we said something along [the lines of] it's a spider eats spider, eats spider world in that case."
