Not for me, of course — people don’t eat food in the lab — but for the adorable baby spiders, who got some delicious live flies and immediately wrapped them up and sucked their brains out. I’ve got two photos of two different spiders that adopted remarkably similar feeding behaviors, biting their prey in the head and slurping up their juices.
I also recorded a brief video. Most horribly, you can see the fly is still alive while being digested from the inside out.
No lunch in the lab? But TV and movies told me it was okay!
Those are pretty good pictures, PZ. Seeing the web in the photos, then keeping in mind the size of a fruit fly…it’s an interesting view.
Those photos are much better than some you have posted recently. Did cleaning the microscope work or are these taken with your macro lens.
Cheers
Andrew
I did a complete tear-down and cleaning of the scope. The upward-facing side of the internal mirror had accumulated a very, very thin layer of grime, which was sufficient to degrade the image.