The Spider Thread

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cali_bear said:
Yeah, that's what our quick Google search turned up. It never jumped, though haha. It wasn't big, but it wasn't very small either. My coworker caught it in a kid's shoe box-sized Tupperware:
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It looks like it belongs to this group of jumping spiders.

http://bugguide.net/node/view/83482/bgimage?from=0
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Zensing, Im not going to lie, I was on the ground taking pictures of the spider with my phone because it was so pretty!

Thanks for the link, Jess Monster! How fascinating!

I love finding neat critters at work. I've found several large moths, a Dobson fly, a black widow, a cicada, and a very big cockroach that hid under one of our burners for a few days. Here are some pics for fun:
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cali_bear said:
I love finding neat critters at work. I've found several large moths, a Dobson fly, a black widow, a cicada, and a very big cockroach that hid under one of our burners for a few days. Here are some pics for fun: View attachment 215279
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What is this one? (The 4th picture)

If it is 6-7" long, we found one at our wedding in Maine and nobody there had ever seen one before.
 
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LadyOtheFarm said:
What is this one? (The 4th picture)

If it is 6-7" long, we found one at our wedding in Maine and nobody there had ever seen one before.
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Dobson fly. They are pretty crazy looking. First time I saw one I told my parents about it and they straight up asked what drugs I was on. A few months later they went with me to get a new car and there was one squashed in the trunk, now they believe me.
 
Jilary said:
Probably not a brown marmonated then. They are an invasive species from China that started in Allentown, PA, and I don't think they have made it to Texas yet. Lucky you!

How do you kill insects for collections?
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We used "kill jars", regular glass jars with a layer of plaster at the bottom--the plaster is loaded by soaking it with a chemical, you enclose insects in the jar and they should shortly die from the vapors. That way they are killed without damage. I don't remember what chemical we were provided with for ours (maybe acetone? I know we were told nail polish remover was an option 😛)
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bjeh said:
Hey guys, I'm not a big spider fan but I just learned how male jumping spiders create vibrations in the ground to attract females similar to how some species use sound for courtship. Thought it was pretty cool. (Although you spider nerds may know this already 😉) Seismic signals in a courting male jumping spider (Araneae: Salticidae) | Journal of Experimental Biology
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Yup we learned a lot about jumping spider courtship behaviors in my animal behavior and animal communications classes because the professor's research was on spider social structures. It's super cool!
 
This is why I don't like weeding. Found this little guy biting my arm.

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Thrip
 
Jess Monster said:
This is why I don't like weeding. Found this little guy biting my arm.

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Thrip
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They're fun to look at under the microscope though! I spent like 2 hours with a dichotomous key ID'ing the family and genus of a bunch of thrips that everyone caught on one of our ento field trips. I received the honorary title of Master Thysanopterist....so it was well worth it :3
 
There was a spider on one of the tool carts at work today. It was the kind that sort of looks like a crab (with two longer legs in the front), so not a terrifying ugly thing, but still a spider, so still scary. I built up my nerve and spritzed it with some water. It fell off the tool it was on and into a shallow pool of water in the bottom of the cart. It kept trying to climb up the wall but it kept falling back down again. I felt guilty so I tried to use a long pencil to scoop it up out of the water, but it kept falling off and I couldn't make myself get closer. So I left it. It's probably dead (and I originally wanted it dead) but now I am sad.

I felt like the spider thread should know this. I am a spider torturer. 🙁
 
PrincessButterCup said:
There was a spider on one of the tool carts at work today. It was the kind that sort of looks like a crab (with two longer legs in the front), so not a terrifying ugly thing, but still a spider, so still scary. I built up my nerve and spritzed it with some water. It fell off the tool it was on and into a shallow pool of water in the bottom of the cart. It kept trying to climb up the wall but it kept falling back down again. I felt guilty so I tried to use a long pencil to scoop it up out of the water, but it kept falling off and I couldn't make myself get closer. So I left it. It's probably dead (and I originally wanted it dead) but now I am sad.

I felt like the spider thread should know this. I am a spider torturer. 🙁
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Wow. You are the worst.
 
PrincessButterCup said:
There was a spider on one of the tool carts at work today. It was the kind that sort of looks like a crab (with two longer legs in the front), so not a terrifying ugly thing, but still a spider, so still scary. I built up my nerve and spritzed it with some water. It fell off the tool it was on and into a shallow pool of water in the bottom of the cart. It kept trying to climb up the wall but it kept falling back down again. I felt guilty so I tried to use a long pencil to scoop it up out of the water, but it kept falling off and I couldn't make myself get closer. So I left it. It's probably dead (and I originally wanted it dead) but now I am sad.

I felt like the spider thread should know this. I am a spider torturer. 🙁
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This is like the spider version of the Titanic. 😛
 
I found a little friend last week... in my hair.

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It wasn't attached so it could have been worse.
 
I’m resurrecting this thread because new pictures..... and arthropods are cool.

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This cute little jumping spider became a guest in mah house. And I feed my guests. Although it's a little weird to feed a spider to another spider, the gesture was still appreciated. I could tell it was starving (it texted me, obvs) so I got another spider on a fly swatter and offered it as a "gift" to the jumping spider, who immediately oriented its body towards the foodz (with those cute binocular eyes) and jumped from the kitchen window onto the foodz spider, attacking it. I set the fly swatter down on the window sill so it could hop off. Then it went into a corner and nom'ed.

Image is a little blurry... I used Macro mode but don't think I used manual focus on my Point & Shoot.

om nom nom

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Stroganoff said:
This cute little jumping spider became a guest in mah house. And I feed my guests. Although it's a little weird to feed a spider to another spider, but the gesture was still appreciated. I could tell it was starving (it texted me, obvs) so I got another spider on a fly swatter and offered it as a "gift" to the jumping spider, who immediately orientated its body towards the foodz (with those cute binocular eyes) and jumped from the kitchen window onto the foodz spider, attacking it. Then it went into a corner and nom'ed.

Image is a little blurry... I used Macro mode but don't think I used manual focus on my Point & Shoot.

om nom nom

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Image no show 🙁
 
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