Interesting fact:

Did you know that Sam Raimi, director of ‘Spider-Man’, actually auditioned spiders for the role of the spider that bites Peter Parker? Seriously. The kind of spider he was looking for was basically a black widow, but having that run over Tobey Maguire’s hand wasn’t really an option. Therefore, etymologist Steven Kutcher brought in a selection of spiders to audition for Raimi. With CGI not really being up to scratch at the time, they picked a real spider and then painted it with blue and red accents to give it that extra edge.