Creatures.
May 11th, 2006 by Duncan
Found a couple of interesting creatures while I was working on a job today, the first was this tiny flat spider.
It was just a centimetre long, and had made its home in a housing joint, where the free space would only have been a milimetre or two deep. That means that the spider would have only been that thick too. Its very fine sheet web can be seen extending in front of the spiders head.
The second was this small cranefly, and what is interesting to me is the minute size of the joints in its thread-like legs.
Click for a larger version.
A big day of bird surveying coming up tomorrow, with another on Sunday, it’s a busy life.
Duncan, At frist glance I thought the spider closely resembles the species of Holoplatys we have over here in NZ: apparently an adventive from Australia. However, Holoplatys is a jumping spider, so it wouldn’t be spinning a web, at least not for prey capture. Also, the eyes don’t fit, as far as I can tell from the photo. Like other jumping spiders Holoplatys has the two big forward facing eyes that make it so easy to anthropomorphise; yours seems to have several, more evenly sized eyes? Interested to know what your little one turns out to be.
… and that should be “first”, not “frist”. It was early when Ralph stood on my pillow and purred in my face.
And that thing about the cranefly’s joints: yes, I’ve often been fascinated by that, and the extreme thinness. Your photo captures that apparent fragility so well. I think it’s the way you saw it contrasted against the “fatness” of the background irregularities.
Just wish I had a good reference book on spiders, Pete, will have to do some Googling methinks.
Duncan, that’s certainly a very odd spider! The shape and angle of the front pairs of legs make me think of a crab spider, but I’ve never seen one that looked quite like that!
Yes Bev, it’s a funny little fellow, don’t know that I’ve seen one like it before.