Spiders blooming everywhere!


Mary spotted all these tiny yellow spiders all around the backyard. Apparently, a sac full of Araneinae hatched out in the last few days.

These are the equivalent of those kids’ show Minions. They’re all over, I can’t tell them apart, and they talk funny.

While I was out roaming in the yard, I spotted a few other familiar faces. This is Salticus scenicus, the zebra jumper. They were all over the walls.

Then there was this guy, Parasteatoda, who had caught a sowbug. It’s like having lobster for lunch.

Comments

  1. Hemidactylus says

    I’m guessing these aren’t cellphone shots. I like the spiders in the first two. Should be models.

  2. fergl says

    Your spider photos are excellent and look professional. There is no comparison to your earlier work. Love them.

  3. Walter Solomon says

    I just saw something that looks like that zebra jumper in my bath tub. It was all black and about centimeter long. It had prominent front legs that made it sorta look like a scorpion but without a stinger. I was thinking it may have been a pseudoscorpion.

  4. Hemidactylus says

    The zebra jumper has that super enticing come hither posture. If it were in my bathtub it would become like one of those arachnophilic Penthouse letters things. Grrrr!

    Of course spiders are the ultimate femme fatales! It would be so worth it. Hubba hubba!

  5. Scott Simmons says

    Keep in mind, fergl, that these aren’t ordinary everyday spiders. These are actually professional models that PZ hired to impress us. They normally rent out their services to high-end publications like Vogue and Nature, so it is a bit of a coup for a small university professor to land them. Also, that sowbug is made of wax.

  6. says

    That little “lobster” eating critter looks familiar. Monday I was getting some things out of one of my garden sheds and there was someone looking a lot like that running for the shadows. They had made a home for themselves in the hole where the door’s bolt goes – a real bolt hole! – and it was filled with “sowbug” remains. Around here they’re known as pillbugs. In Germany we called them Assel, pl. Asseln. If you find them in the basement they are Kellerasseln – I have no idea if that’s a different species from the kind that hang out in the crannies of sidewalks.

    We do get lots of pretty little yellow web spinners in this part of Oregon, though I haven’t noticed any so far.

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