Peacock Spider
Photo: Jurgen Otto
This is a kind of jumping spider, and it’s only about 5mm in size. The males have a colorful pattern on flaps that extend from their abdomen during breeding/mating. In addition to this, they raise their back pair of legs and dance from side to side to win over their plain brown females.
Only found in Australia, they were classified as species Maratus volans because people originally thought the flap was for gliding after jumping. Wiki
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World's Largest Web-spinning Spider
A new species of golden orb spider has been found in South Africa. It is the biggest spider ever found that spins a web -and what a web it is!
The female of the new species of golden orb weaver spider has a body one and a half inches long with a leg span of five inches and weaves a web more than three feet wide.
The tiny male, however, has a leg span of just one inch. The variation of the Nephila species, named as Nephila Komaci, was discovered by US and Slovenian researchers in Africa and Madagascar
Nephila Komaci has a limited range and is believed to be an endangered species. Link -via Unique Daily
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Discovery of a Vegetarian Spider
There are some 40,000 known species of spiders, but every single one of them is thought to be carnivorous … except this one. The Bagheera Kiplingi jumping spider of Central and South America is the first spider found to have an almost exclusively vegetarian diet. These spiders live and feast on the protein packed tips of the acacia tree leaves.
But to reach this leafy fare, the spider has to evade the attention of ants, which live in the hollow spines of the tree.
“But when they get hungry, the spiders head to the newer leaves, and get ready to run the ant gauntlet. And they wait for an opening – they watch the ants move around, and they watch to see that there are not any ants in the local area that they are going after.”
“And then they zip in and grab one of these Beltian bodies and then clip it off, hold it in their mouths and run away. “
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Fabric Made from Spider Silk
The largest piece of cloth ever made from spider silk measures four feet wide and eleven feet long. To make it, 70 people collected golden orb spiders over four years! The spiders were then hooked up to a machine that extracted the silk from the spiders without harming them, in a project headed by Nicholas Godley and textile expert Simon Peers.
To get as much silk as they needed, Godley and Peers began hiring dozens of spider handlers to collect wild arachnids and carefully harness them to the silk-extraction machine. “We had to find people who were willing to work with spiders,” Godley said, “because they bite.”
By the end of the project, Godley and Peers extracted silk from more than 1 million female golden orb spiders, which are abundant throughout Madagascar and known for the rich golden color of their silk. Because the spiders only produce silk during the rainy season, workers collected all the spiders between October and June.
Then an additional 12 people used hand-powered machines to extract the silk and weave it into 96-filament thread. Once the spiders had been milked, they were released into back into the wild, where Godley said it takes them about a week to regenerate their silk. “We can go back and re-silk the same spiders,” he said. “It’s like the gift that never stops giving.”
The resulting cloth is on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Link
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Spider Named for David Bowie
German arachnologist Peter Jaeger has discovered 200 species of spiders in the past decade. Now he has named one of his finds after singer David Bowie. The new species, a large yellow spider in Malaysia, is called Heteropoda davidbowie. Jaeger said he named the spider to draw attention to the discovery, and to the endangered status of many spiders.
“It is working against time,” he said. “We are also quickly losing genetic resources that have evolved over more than 300 million years.”
Bowie had a 1972 album entitled The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. His 1987 tour was named the Glass Spider Tour. Link -via Digg
(image credit: Senckenberg Forschungsinstitute/Naturmuseen)
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7 Giant Versions of Everyday Critters
Ever wish that itsy bitsy crab you had for dinner were bigger, so that you could eat more of one instead of ordering another dish? Why not order a coconut crab, a Tasmanian giant crab or a Japanese spider crab? Who knows, with 13 ft of crab to deal with, you might not even be able to finish it all!
(Also available: escargot So big, you can’t even wrap your hands around it.)
This article over at Cracked also features jellyfish, spiders, worms and other creepy crawlies you would love to see magnified.
Puppies, kittens, infants: All adorable. And do you know why? Because they’re tiny. If you start to magnify these things, then you wind up with the substantially less cute wolves, jaguars and teenagers.
Yes, if there’s one thing nature teaches us, it’s that what may start out as an adorable little animal friend can quickly turn into a Lovecraftian horror when its itty-bitty wittle mouth gets big enough to start eating your face. And when the little versions are already a little bit creepy, the big versions are the stuff nightmares are made of.
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The Spider with an Aqualung
The diving bell spider breathes air, but spends its life underwater! To achieve this feat, this spider spins a cocoon that works as an aqualung. The spider traps tiny bubbles of air in the hairs of her legs and brings them underwater to store in the cocoon. The air bubble is also a nest for its young. See more pictures at Environmental Graffiti. Link -via Unique Daily
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Homemade Spider Catcher
I don’t know how effective this homemade spider catcher is, but it should be easy to make from a cassette case, a pipe, a string, and some glue. Beats walking into a web, the way I’ve been doing lately! Link -via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
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Giant Spiders Attack Japan!
The city of Yokohama, Japan is welcoming two giant spiders to celebrate Expo Y150, the 150th anniversary of the port city. The spiders are the work of La Machine and Artichoke. They did The Sultan’s Elephant in 2006 and La Machine in Liverpool last year. See more pictures and a video at Pink Tentacle. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend
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Saharan Rolling Spider
[YouTube - Link]
When travelling down a sand dune, the Saharan rolling spider (Araneus rota) is capable of rolling on its outstretched legs, achieving speeds of over 4 mph. It looks "like a small, unusually fast tumbleweed."
– via spiegel
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Attack of the Steampunk Spider Princess
French Performance Art outfit La Machine unveiled this 3 million dollar steampunk spider, La Princesse, as part of the City of Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture.
Over a four day period, La Princesse – in search of a nest – climbed walls, stalked the streets and sprayed unwary citizens. This huge construction (here seen in some wonderful pictures) was deemed a huge success – but possibly not by any resident arachnaphobes.
This is in fact a massive thirty six tonne hydraulic spider scaling the side of a city block in Liverpool, England. The city is of course best known for The Beatles. However, during its time as the European City of Culture visitors to one of its main railway stations, Lime Street, could have been forgiven for thinking that the city had been invaded by a different type of insect altogether.
Link – via webphemera
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