by Matthew Cobb
This fantastic picture popped into my Tw*tter feed. It was taken by Kurt, a nature/macro photographer based in Kuala Lumpur. It is reproduced with permission and can be found on the spider page of his great website – that page also includes ant-mimic spiders mating (a terrible tangle of legs)!
What exactly it’s mimicking isn’t clear —it looks like a bit of honeysuckle flower to me. I initially assumed this was an ambush predator, but other photos by Kurt show that it spins a web (you can see the web underneath it), although it’s not clear whether that’s part of the deception or is used directly to trap prey. Here’s another image:
[JAC: I suspect that its mimicry is that it looks like a bit of flower or vegetation caught in a web, and the mimicry could also act when it was “between webs.”]
Kurt says: “I still don’t know if it’s a Poltys or Arachnura or Cyphalonotus or something else.” Can any readers help?
You can find more images of this and related spiders on Kurt’s Flickr page.
h/t @ziyatong
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Remarkable.
Nature is cool
Amazing, huh? I’m not good at identifying spiders, and I hadn’t known about this spider before, but all three of the possible genera are orbweavers, so they most likely use webs to catch prey. With 40,000+ known spider species, and more new ones discovered most months, spiders always present surprises. Kurt’s website is a treat–especially for me his photo of the Liphistius.
There are pictures on Flickr that look just like it, and identify it as Cyphalonotus. spider .
My search led me to plenty of weird spiders, triggered by this one. This is my perfect morning.
The greatly attenuate abdomen is remarkable — are there other spiders that even approach that? And where are the spinnerets located? Out at the very tip?
That thing’s a spider?
Um…okay…if you say so.
Sure it’s not a mimic octopus midway in transition between a nightjar and Cthulhu?
b&
Great, even spiders are in disguise so they can scare me by stealth!
Thanks, Matthew. This has just been confirmed to be a Poltys sp. based on its eye arrangement.
Reblogged this on The Iron Vicar (formerly urban peregrines).
What an odd creature this is. It does look like some sort of honey suckle plant. Very interesting. Nonetheless, I thought I would leave a comment to inform you that I HATE spiders, and I’m extremely terrified of them.
In that case, I highly recommend Spiders: Learning to Love Them by Lynne Kelly (an ex-arachnophobe), followed by Spider Silk by Leslie Brunetta (who posted at #3 above) and Catherine L. Craig. Both books are non-threatening, and very, very interesting.
Thanks, Mark! They are much less frightening in print. And so much more fascinating than most of us know.