Mondays are usually awful, but now at least I have one thing to look forward to: it’s feeding day down on the spider ranch. The adults get a nice chewy cricket each, while I go through the spiderlings’ chambers and toss them a fruit fly each. Since Vera was so avidly hungry today, I recorded her trapping her prey and then picking at it for an extended period of time.
This one is only for spider obsessives who can enjoy staring at close-ups of arachnids doing strange things with their jaws for 15 minutes or more. Are you one? Let me know, and we can start a club.
looks like it might have been a bit large for full venom incapacitation?
I guess the crickets don’t look forward to Mondays…
So cool.
You can now see the aftermath of Vera’s dining. The cricket is gone–there are just a few scraps of cuticle in the vial. Vera is astonishingly bloated, since she drank the whole thing.
Hi, PZ
I’m one (spider obsessive)! I even tried to send you a video of a Theridion mother tending her spiderlings (in the wild) but somehow the video didn’t make it through.
If ever you’d like to see that tender scene, let me know how I can forward it…
Uh, I meant I can forward the Youtube link.