Simon Sansom
07-23-04, 02:52 PM
Hi Folks,
Here's a crappy pic of a fairly good-sized "Daring Jumping Spider", <html><i>Phidippus audax </i></html> to be precise, which I collected a week ago...
I assumed by the size of her massive abdomen that she was "gravid", so I've been keeping her in deli cup with a piece of paper towel, and feeding her house-flies etc.
The other day she built a weird web on the side of the container, and it LOOKS as though there's a cluster of golden eggs in there, but I'm not sure. I don't want to disturb her too much.
She still feeds, though. Here she has just taken a green-bottle fly...
http://image.inkfrog.com/pix/simonsansom/42379picture.jpg
These spiders are VERY different from "T's" - they are almost totally visual in the way they interact with their surroundings. For an arthropod, their eyesight is exceptional, having actual lenses like higher animals, instead of the compound eyes of insects. They also have binocular vision.
To watch this one stalk a fly is absolutely rivetting! Just like a jungle cat, she creeps up, belly low to the substate, taking advantage of any surface irregularites to conceal herself from her prey - then she leaps onto the prey, hard enough to be heard from several feet away!
It's really something to see.
Fascinating stuff.
Thanks for looking.
Simon R. Sansom
Here's a crappy pic of a fairly good-sized "Daring Jumping Spider", <html><i>Phidippus audax </i></html> to be precise, which I collected a week ago...
I assumed by the size of her massive abdomen that she was "gravid", so I've been keeping her in deli cup with a piece of paper towel, and feeding her house-flies etc.
The other day she built a weird web on the side of the container, and it LOOKS as though there's a cluster of golden eggs in there, but I'm not sure. I don't want to disturb her too much.
She still feeds, though. Here she has just taken a green-bottle fly...
http://image.inkfrog.com/pix/simonsansom/42379picture.jpg
These spiders are VERY different from "T's" - they are almost totally visual in the way they interact with their surroundings. For an arthropod, their eyesight is exceptional, having actual lenses like higher animals, instead of the compound eyes of insects. They also have binocular vision.
To watch this one stalk a fly is absolutely rivetting! Just like a jungle cat, she creeps up, belly low to the substate, taking advantage of any surface irregularites to conceal herself from her prey - then she leaps onto the prey, hard enough to be heard from several feet away!
It's really something to see.
Fascinating stuff.
Thanks for looking.
Simon R. Sansom