Well I’ll be dadgummed. They’re basically little arachnid versions of the ancient Roman retiarii or net-men gladiators:
(That’s from a “Critter Catalog” site for children, by the way. Kids these days with their humiliatingly sophisticated science…)
Isn’t there a spider (in Hawaii, I think) that actually tosses it’s web over it’s prey?
My name is mangeorge. I am a PBS addict. I love this stuff! :o
There is a whole family of them - net-casting spiders (Family Deinopidae) which live all over the world in tropical and sub-tropical regions. Genus Deinopis hangs upside down from twigs or some other support, and strecthes out a net (actually a segment of an orb web) between its front legs ready to drop on passing prey. They have huge eyes and reasonably good sight for spiders. They have the best faces, so are often called Ogre-faced spiders.
They are supposed to be here where I live in Australia, but despite hunting and hunting I have never seen one. It is one of my Big Goals in life.
(I am in the final stages of preparing a manuscript on spiders for my publisher and am sitting at a table surrounded by books on spiders, which also happen to be my passion. Your questions are doing a great job of prompting me to make sure I include the things which interest people. )
Looks like an Ewok!
(Don’t forget Trap-door spiders - one of my favorite!)
Don’t get me started on trapdoors or you’ll never shut me up. Ours don’t have doors on their burrows, just to be difficult. Our mouse spiders do. I have over 300 trapdoor burrows marked with white plastic knives so I can find them easily on my nightly rounds. That is just within 30 metres of the house - and we have 17 acres of bush!
What are your trapdoor burrows like? Do they have lids?
I wish I had tarantulas, but I don’t.
Foreign spiders are no stranger to Seattle. I give you the Hobo spider
Geez Hobo Spider, get a job, man. :mad:
More likely, the Australian crawl!
Great. Thanks to everbody writing about spiders in the nose and spiders running all over and pictures of spiders and pictures of spider bites, I’m sitting in my desk chair feeling imaginary spiders crawl all over me.
Awesome.
Not that I don’t like spiders. I do. They’re cool little guys. I just don’t want them around me if they’re not behind Plexiglass at the Bronx Zoo.