Okay, so there are a lot of spiders doing cool stuff in and around my house, and it feels kinda dumb to be flooding the positivity thread with this, especially because a few people have mentioned their acute arachnophobia to me. The spoiler filter is quite blurry, but also I’d like to give people the change to just opt out entirely, instead of needing to scroll past a bunch of blurry photos.
So, I’ll be post all future spider stuff here!
A list of previous spider posts can be found at these links:
I will still be adding spoiler blurs around spider images in this thread, because there might be people trying to overcome their arachnophobia by reading my updates, so I would like to offer them an option to voluntarily expose themselves to spider content incrementally.
It’s a website/project where you can post wild flora and fauna for scientific tracking and observation of species across the world over time. People help you identify animals and sometimes make really cool discoveries of wildlife that hasn’t been seen for 100 years, things like that.
I have! I’ve been posting to SpiderSpotter, which is more of a specialist thing for spiders (since I tend to find those more), but I’ve also been considering posting to iNaturalist as well!
I wonder how much apps rely on location data to guesstimate a spider identification.
Many years ago I picked up a copy of Ubick’s Spiders of North America and the formal identification process often involves the structure of the tarsal claws or the tergites on a pair of legs and things like that. My spouse and I ended up having to do a catch-and-release program to get macro photos of many of the things necessary for a lot of identifications.
But I don’t know how much that’s an artifact of the text being an all-of-North-America thing, and if it was narrowed to a fifty mile radius (or something like that) you could get a positive ID with just number and distribution of eyes, orientation of the legs, and easier-to-spot things like that.
Unfortunately I didn’t have my phone with me when this happened, but I saw the cutest little jumping spider!!
I’ve wanted to try working towards letting a spider walk around on my hand. The issue is that I know I’m allergic to the hair of certain spiders, but it seems this can vary between species.
Good news: I am not allergic to jumping spiders!
I held my hand out, and it was really cool to see how jumpers have the eye lenses to perceive large mammals like me. It spent a few seconds hopping onto my hand, back to the ground, onto my hand, and back to the ground again. I think it was testing me to see if I was aggressive or not.
I know jumpers are able to associate certain people with kindness, but it takes a very long time to earn their trust. I had no assumptions that I would be making a quick friend, but I was surprised by how fast it was willing to test me.
It’s really funny because you can feel the spider landing more than you can feel it moving around your hand.
Which is also a good thing, because if I’m allergic to the spider, then their paw-steps cause a burning sensation.
Everyone’s favorite porchside orb weaver is back at it again! She was missing yesterday, probably because we were painting the deck. She’s set up closer to the gutter, now, which seems to be a safe zone for her.
Image description: Our esteemed orb weaver has gotten a bit larger, now. She also seems more comfortable, and possibly molted recently. Her legs are outstretched, whereas she kept them tucked in before. Each one is striped with brown-and-gold, which is much more visible now. Dark gray lines might be her book lungs, finally visible on camera. She has two prey captures nearby, each wrapped up in an oblong silk bag.
Speaking of orb weavers, a second one was discovered, and was busy with a very over-ambitious project. She was seen adding glue along a line that she had some connected between two trees!
I measured the distance, and her line was exceeding 25 meters!!
After getting some images of this madlass, she either panicked or realized the error of her hubris, because she severed the line and dropped to the ground, disappearing into the grass.
I’m gonna post a series of images, but the image description will be a composite of all observations, to not bog down screw readers.
Image description: A younger, desaturated member of the previous orb weaver species, with a body length of about 8 millimeters. Muted golds stripe her legs, and her body is mostly gray-tan, with dark-gray, rib-like patterns. These patterns halt where her heartmark would be, outlining it through an absence of detail. Her underside is a bit brighter, but doesn’t stray far from the palette. Her eyes are somewhat visible in one image, though pixelated, and she mostly keeps her side and back to the camera, as she sways on her long silk line. Throughout the images, she is industriously contorting, as she places glue drops during a difficult and windy situation. Her legs are often outstretched, or visibly curled, skillfully holding onto her line, but they’re never tucked in. The line behind her glistens in the sun, while the line ahead is much harder to see.
Image description: A cellar spider resides in a cobweb. She faces downward, and her long, spindly legs are arrayed around her like an umbrella. Her body is too small to resolve any other details.
There have been two cellar spiders in my bathroom. So far, they had been sharing the space peacefully. However, the one in the photo is about twice the size of the other spider, and also has been quite restless. Every couple of days, I find her set up somewhere else in the bathroom, while the smaller one has been in the same web for months.
I just entered the bathroom to find the larger spider living in the smaller spider’s web, while the smaller spider now sits on a distant, bare section of wall.
The larger spider literally kicked the smaller one out of the web! How rude!!
Image description: A small member of Salticidae, the true jumping spiders, looking at the camera while perched on the edge of the arm of a lawn chair. This image the result of stacking two short exposure cell phone photos taken in quick succession.
We get a lot of jumping spiders around here, mostly of one of two kinds: very small and with a nearly metallic, bronze-ish appearance; and larger with black and white bodies and emerald green chelicerae. This guy is clearly of the second variety, although he’s small (around a half an inch/1 cm) and they get substantially larger (around an inch to an inch and a half in the garden, slightly larger than that in the nearby green spaces).
I love jumping spiders; they’re so curious and outgoing, and you can watch them evaluating you. It’s amazing to be able to see that they know you’re a living entity, not just unpredictable topography. Some are shy, but most will hop onto a hand with a bit of coaxing.
There’s a spider on my ceiling. It’s been there for maybe two days now.
At first, I thought it was a cellar spider, but it’s uh… pretty large. The body length is at least a centimeter, and I’m not sure if cellar spider bodies get that large. I’m also not sure if there are wolf spiders with such spindly legs, though, so I really don’t know what this is. Any attempts to get a picture of this are too noisy.
Maybe it’s Ectocomp on the brain, but “A strange, unphotographable spider, unmoving, with unidentifiable physiology” sounds like the start of a horror story. (Obligatory disclaimer: I love spiders and have several tarantulas, this is not spider hate.)
I do actually love early autumn in the US northeast when you start seeing all sorts of spiders who are moving in as the weather gets colder. A lot of moving a plant and going, “Oh, hey, haven’t seen you around before!”
I lived in Texas, so yeah, I have some spider photos I can share. One time a spider laid eggs in the bath downstairs, so I decided to leave them and watch what happened…
Today I learned some spiders take care of their young… I was under the impression most spiders die shortly after laying their eggs.
Honestly, I’m not sure I could be this nonchalant about knowingly sharing a space with spiders. I know they’re mostly more afraid of humans than most humans are of them, and only a couple of species in my home state are remotely dangerous to humans(The Black Widow and Brown Recluse are the ones I know of, and even then, I understand Black Widow bites usually aren’t life threatening unless you have an allergy), but its hard to overcome decades of people exaggerating the dangers of spiders and other venomous animals and the result overcautioness around such creatures…
I’ve been posting to SpiderSpotter, which is more of a specialist thing for spiders (since I tend to find those more), but I’ve also been considering posting to iNaturalist as well!
