These 4 New Spider Species Just Want to Be Your Friends
Arachnologists have found a whole new genus of spiders in the deserts of Namibia and South Africa, and a couple of the new species seem to have some peculiar habits.
Recently, Peter Jger and Henrik Krehenwinkel examined some spider specimens they had collected with their colleague Dirk Kunz back in 2004. They noticed that the spiders didnt seem to fit well in any known spider genus, so they concluded that the spiders must belong to a new genus, which they dubbed May in honor of Bruno May, a patron of biodiversity research in Africa. When they searched through South African museum collections, they found three more new species to add to the genus. Jger and Krehenwinkel published their findings in the journal African Invertebrates .
The new species May bruno , May ansie , May rudy , and May norm are huntsman spiders : large, long-legged spiders that hunt their insect prey instead of building webs. Most species like to hide in leaf litter, in crevices, or under loose tree bark, although the desert-dwelling spiders of genus May are more fond of burrowing in sand and skittering across gravel.
May bruno is the largest of the new spiders about half an inch long, with legs that span about three inches. It digs tunnel-like burrows a foot deep in the sand and covers them with lids, which might be familiar to fans of trapdoor spiders . Like nearly all other spiders, M. bruno has a pair of appendages near its mouth, called palps, which are important to the spiders senses of touch and taste. But M. bruno s palps have a row of elongated hairs, which the spider probably uses to dig its burrows, according to Jger and his colleagues.
Every female M. bruno specimen Jger and his colleagues found had paired scars on their backs, which looked like healed injuries. None of the males had these scars, but the distance between the marks matched the distance between the fangs of male spiders, which raised a creepy possibility. The scars could be part of a pre-copulatory courtship behavior, they wrote. Thats right: these spiders leave serious hickies on their mates. Females from another new May species, May norm , had similar scars.
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These 4 New Spider Species Just Want to Be Your Friends
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Their mating habits are a little bit unsettling...
''Their mating habits are a little bit unsettling...''. Only if your the victim.
The ladies tend to go after the males after sex in most spiders. I wonder if that is the case here. It seems that both manage to live another day, but a bit banged up.
And hey! They're cute!
Great discovery...I don't need any more friends, thank you
Fortunately, I really like spiders! They eat bugs, so I don't have to spray anything awful to get rid of them...
These are kind of cute! I like their eye arrangement-- I wonder how well they can see?
Just for you...
It'a darling! This one is my very favorite! I call it Happy Mother's Day!
Google "spider eyes"...
Wow!
Now - that "trapdoor" spider - HELLO
I've tried to study up on spider eyes-- while confusing, it is a fascinating subject. Not only do the little spider brains cope with eight legs, (and I assume 8 feet), they have up to 8 eyes, some of them, and they all see a different angle, and are paired to see different wavelengths of light. Some of them see infrared, some see black and white, some see color, some see ultra-violet light.
It's all I can do to walk with 2 legs, 2 feet, and 2 eyes-- and my brain is taxed. They are really smart little creatures!
That picture is a wolf spider with her spiderlings. Some spiders are very good mothers!
... and they're cute!
I think so, too!
I mean, I'm glad they are small, and not the size of a horse or something, but they really are cute little work horses that do a great job at keeping the bad bugs out of the house...
I marvel at them-- so complex, and yet, so simple! They've been around a whole lot longer than we have!
I agree... but my wife doesn't. Squish!
My husband has finally gotten used to it.
We had a cricket infestation in our basement several years ago, and I suggested we let the spiders take care of it. They were all gone in a little more than a week-- and then, we had a spider infestation... In another week, we were down to a manageable amount of spiders, and we have no bugs...
It's a bug eat bug world out there.
I'd like to convince my wife... but maybe a plague of crickets is a bit too Biblical...
Give me a nice pettable tarantula any day :
LOL, Bob!