And deciding to try starting at one end and eating the whole thing. This is the bold jumper, Phidippus audax, that I’m raising in the lab (I’ve got 6 different species of spider thriving there), and I gave her a large mealworm which did not intimidate her in the least — she’s bold, remember. This is a pattern with her. She starts eating a big mealworm, and gets full halfway through, and I’ll have to clean up half-eaten corpses in a couple of day.
(I know, not a great photo, but it was shot through some dirty plexiglas so that’s as clean as I could get it.)
I like the way you do not specify which or whose or how many “half-eaten corpses” in that penultimate sentence there PZ! ;-)
Aye, that’s ambitious!
No wonder she didn’t finish it. No mustard or cheese!
If a mealworm grows up, can it take on a spider?
@PZ
When I was doing gopher tortoise work we would have jumping spiders chill with us in the Gator. Very bold and inquisitive. I’ve seen some Youtube videos on them that are impressive. They seem good pets.
I’m stuck with these dull flatties that appear all of a sudden and move over several days between ceiling and wall. I appreciate the nonthreatening company but in about a week I find them curled up dead clinging to my ceiling. I’m not sure how to take that. Am I that boring or do they have that short a life span? Maybe they aren’t finding enough prey on my ceilings and walls. I try not to become attached now to these ephemeral companions.
I wouldn’t mind some jumping spiders watching TV with me on the arm of my couch.
If a mealworm grows up, it turns into a carpet beetle, and is fairly heavily armored so the spiders don’t care for them. Except for the tarantula, who can just crunch them up no problem.
@PZ
Are you trying to trigger me after my rantings about the carpet beetle wars? So maybe the flatties are keeping them at bay as infants? Weirdly it was throwing out an old oatmeal container that did the trick so maybe they weren’t carpet beetles? But those evil bastards I was at war with and did things…hung out on my ceiling as do the occasional flatties. Interesting observation I’m not sure you were directing me toward. The flatties wouldn’t eat one of those carpet beetles they encountered on a ceiling? Just the larva?
Or are you telling me to release tarantulas in my house to attack carpet beetles I rarely see anymore because maybe the flatties are effective in subtle hidden ways?
Or maybe the geckos…