Cave Spider

The Cave Spider is a hostile mob that is to be introduced in Minecraft Beta 1.8. It is a Spider with a blue re-textured skin and is more dangerous than the regular spider, but in turn they are much more rare than regular Spiders. The increased danger comes from the fact that Cave Spiders have a venomous bite, which is represented by your health bar turning yellow and gradually decreasing. Cave Spiders can only be found in Abandoned Mine Shafts, which will also be introduced in Beta 1.8. Cave Spiders are also smaller than regular spiders ; presumably so that they can fit through the mine shafts that they spawn in. They are 1x1x1, a quarter the size of their larger brown cousins.

Venom
The most notable feature of the cave spider is it's venomous bite, (as said before) when bitten by a cave spider, your health bar turns yellow and gradually decreases. The vemon inflicts half of a heart of damage about every second, and lasts for 15 seconds, regardless of the difficulty. There is currently no known cure for the venom, however, Jeb is considering using milk as the cure. It is also interesting to note that no matter what venom will not put you below .5 a heart on normal difficulty.

Trivia

 * It was originally going to be called a "tree spider" according to Jeb, but that wouldn't make any sense due to it spawning in mine shafts.
 * In the Beta 1.8 preview, Cave Spiders were called "Poison Spiders", but "venomous spider" would be a more scientifically correct name.