Almost all animals on materials components only say the animal's name, without stating if it must be alive or dead... with one exception. The **Infestation** spell requires a ``living flea``.

As per rules on Material Components:

>Casting some Spells requires particular Objects, specified in parentheses in the component entry.

You could interpret this in one of two ways:

**a)** Having _(living)_ in one animal means this is the only exception. The others are dead and treated as objects for this purpose.

**b)** Having _(living)_ in one animal means the others can be either alive or dead. This would mean the description of material components being objects is a just a overlook on the writer's part.

Personally I believe **a** is the right one.

#If the monster could be used as component

Having spider as a component doesn't mean anything that resembles a spider can be used. A **_Giant Spider Wizard**_ is not a **Spider**.

It's also important to remember that **materials without a specified cost are not consumed** unless the description says otherwise. So the spider wizard would not be consumed by the spell in the case of spider climb.