Arachnology

Since they are found in the same places as Scorpions, these always creep me out. Once I see what it is, I shoo it elsewhere. As long as they are handled gently they don't release that defensive stink. Scorpions here readily act defensive, these are much more relaxed. Their colouration is quite interesting.

Of particular interest is the extreme size discrepancy between male and female in this species. This was also one of the largest females I've ever seen!

Sometimes you can't decide between beauty and horror, so you just walk the line!

I recently came across this lovely(?) crab spider on a birding excursion. The bird-dropping spiders of Phrynarachne are apparently not only visual but also olfactory mimics, for all intents and purposes attempting to fool both predators and prey. Apologies for the slightly subpar image quality; I didn't have my macro lens and had to improvise.

Found it on my son's hair after a 10min visit to our veggies garden. My guess is that it might be a tick but we are not in an area of lime disease and although it's an open, rather unkept, field the only mammals I see around are 2-3 stray(?) cats.

The photo was done using a stereoscope+smartphone. The dark lines underneath are .4 to .5 mm.

Any pointers would be welcome.

!

!

Here's another old picture from my vault. This is one of our Greenbottle blue tarantulas (Chromatopelma cyaneopubescens). We spent the day watching this little guy molt from start to finish and took pictures of the whole process. You can see in this picture that he is laid out on his back on his molting malt. At this stage he has split from the carapace lengthwise down the sides and is currently pulling his legs out of the molt. We had two at the time and wanted to breed them but they both turned out to males.

Here's a pic of my favorite little guy and one the only good pictures I've ever taken. Unfortunately he turned out to be a male so I didn't have him too long but he was a great tarantula to keep.

This one I took about 12 years ago in Yucatan. I was inspired to post it because I saw other photos of arachnids showing off their babies ;)

More babies:

https://mander.xyz/post/1251694

https://mander.xyz/post/1194682

I have a large terrarium where I grow various types of moss. I keep springtails in there to handle any mold that pops up, but some creature (fungus gnat larvae?) was killing off the springtails. So I captured a jumping spider, thinking it would gobble up the fruit flies/larvae. The fungus gnats have disappeared, so it seems like the spider might have done the job, but now I'm worried about it getting hungry.

I gave it a mayfly a couple days ago, and that evening it was sitting in the corner of the terrarium like a toddler with a juice box, so it obviously likes those. Are there any specific things that are good to feed it, or can I give it anything that I catch that isn't predatory? For example, would a "regular" sized moth be dangerous? It'd be like 2-3x the size of the spider.

From: https://www.taylormaggiacomo.com/spider-webs

Around this time of the year in the northern hemisphere it is a very good time to find spider webs outside. You can use this guide to help you identify the kind of spiders you find.