Location: South Africa, in captivity
March 6, 2011
Attached are pictures of my Brazilian Red and White molting. I had a few good pictures but you can decide which ones to include. There is one of the shed skin that shows the size of the spider.
Tarantula Molting
This is my Brazilian Red and White Tarantula molting. The scientific name seems to be Nhandu chromatus, but as you have mentioned I also use the web to do research and this may be wrong.
It almost seems as if she’s dead and a lot of inexperienced tarantula keepers do not realize this and many tarantulas have been thrown in the trash. If someone would like to have a pet tarantula, please do your homework before getting one. They are fairly easy to look after but be prepared to have a pet “rock”. They will sit for hours and do nothing and some borrow underground and you might see them 5 times a year. They are however fascinating and I love these misunderstood creatures.
I hope you enjoy these pictures of my beauty molting.
Regards,
Henk Kramer
P.S. Daniel, please let me know if I should rather submit through your site. I just struggle with uploading the pictures.
Thank you again for an awesome site! And I hope I am not flooding your mailbox.
Tarantula Exuvia
Hi Henk,
We are sorry to hear you are having problems uploading images. Thanks for sending all these photos of your very pretty Brazilian Tarantula. We had a difficult time selecting three images that are representative of the molting process.
Freshly Molted Tarantula
Addendum: We decided to add one more image of your freshly molted Tarantula playing dead.
Molted Tarantula playing dead
Story of the fungi, grasshopper and spider?
Location: Pratts Falls in Onondaga County NY
March 4, 2011 2:55 pm
Hi there. I am a photographer in NY. While out to photograph waterfalls (Pratts Falls in NY to be exact) I cam upon this incredibly impressive Bearded Tooth mushroom (Hericium erinaceus). My mom is into mycology so I thought she would find this fascinating. I was not equipped with macro gear so the images are not the best quality but we thought you may enjoy them. On this fungi was what we think is a grasshopper or cricket. We are not sure exactly what it is. But he even had a hitchhiker. A little tiny spider. Again we are not sure what type of spider this is. Perhaps you will have a little info to share on the types of insects they are and might enjoy the uniqueness of this photo. Thank you for any info.
Signature: Tristi
Cricket eats Fungus and transports Spider
Hi Tristi,
Thanks so much for sending us your photo. The insect is a Cricket, and we do not recognize the hitchhiking Spider. The image is so small, it may not be possible to correctly identify the spider. Our research indicates that the Bearded Tooth Mushroom is edible.
Cricket eating Bearded Tooth Mushroom
Found him on my peach tree
Location: Houston, TX
March 3, 2011 2:43 pm
Hi Bugman,
Should I be worried about this guy hanging out on my Sam Houston peach tree? Also, do you know his name?
Thanks!
Signature: PK
Long-Jawed Orbweaver
Dear PK,
You have nothing to be worried about. This is a Long-Jawed Orbweaver in the genus Tetragnatha. You can compare your image to this image on BugGuide.
Thank you for the quick reply. I never would have guessed it was a spider.
Ecuadorian Spider
Location: Ecuador Rain Forest
March 3, 2011 3:43 pm
I spotted this spider during a night hike near the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve in Ecuador. The length of the body was about 1.5”, and fore leg tip to rear leg tip about 3”. The bright coloring certainly indicated ”stay away” to me. The legs appeared slightly blue under my flashlight. The body is a reddish orange.
Signature: John R. Anderson
Huntsman Spider
Dear John,
This is a beautiful Spider. We believe it is a Huntsman Spider in the family Sparassidae, also known as Giant Crab Spiders. Huntsman Spiders do not build webs and many are nocturnal hunters that wander about in search of prey. Most Huntsman Spiders are harmless, though their large size often induces fear when they are encountered. It is our understanding that there are some dangerous venomous South American Huntsman Spiders, and the aposematic warning colors on this specimen may indicate that it is a highly venomous species.
Karl provides some insight
Hi Daniel and John:
What a lovely spider! It’s too bad the eyes aren’t visible as they are often the best way to determine a spider’s family. It has been said often on this site that you can’t trust everything you find on the internet when it comes to bug identification, and here is a good example of why that is sage advice. I thought I was on the right track when I found this image of what was identified as a Wandering Spider (Ctenidae), but the trail soon grew cold and I got suspicious. I little more searching turned up this promising photo of a Huntsman Spider (Sparassidae), but again I could find nothing more to confirm that this was the right beast. Finally, I came across several photos suggesting it belonged to the family Platoridae. In this case, however, I couldn’t even confirm that this family still exists, with several sites suggesting that it had been dismantled and re-distributed among several other families (e.g., Trochanteriidae). If I had to choose I would probably favour a Wandering Spider, but this is going to require a lot more expertise than I have to offer (and I have to run and pack for Mexico, with bugs and spiders on my brain). Regards. Karl
African Huntsman
Location: South Africa
February 24, 2011 8:50 am
Hi there,
I love your site. I stumbled upon it while looking for sites about Tarantulas and have been hooked since.
I am icluding a few pictures of the African Huntsman(Sparassidae family) from South Africa. I just love spiders and have raised 6 Tarantulas since they were spiderlings. I also catch spiders in friends houses before they get killed and set them free. The pictures are of one of these spiders that I caught and released after feeding it. The Huntsman from South Africa.
Henk
Huntsman Spider
Dear Henk,
Thanks so much for taking the time to submit these awesome photos of your South African Huntsman Spider. We really enjoyed your email championing the rights of spiders to cohabitate with humans.
Huntsman Spider
Ed. Note: March 4, 2011
There was a delay in posting this submission due to corrupted photo files. Thankfully, Henk resent the images of this South African beauty.
Huntsman Spider
flower spider for wasp babies.
Location: North Burnett. Queensland
February 18, 2011 11:30 pm
Hi Guys,
Just spotted this little wasp, about 1cm, making a valiant effort to transport this flower spider to its burrow. It would do a series of three ’flying hops’ and then rest for a few moments. I guess to build up reserves for the next leap.
Hope you like it.
Signature: aussietrev
Spider Wasp with Crab Spider prey
Hi Trevor,
Thanks for your wonderful photo and your observational account of the incident. We generally refer to Flower Spiders from the family Tomisidae as Crab Spiders, but that may be a North American preference. The common name Crab Spider refers to the morphology of the leg structure, with the front legs being the longest, as well as the often sideways means of locomotion commonly used by members of the family. Flower Spider refers to the habit these spiders have of waiting on blossoms for pollinating insects. Spider Wasps in the family Pompilidae take nectar as adults, and the wasps are often found on blossoms. It seems more than a coincidence that this particular Spider Wasp has chosen a Flower Spider as its prey. It might be deduced that the adult Spider Wasp while feeding may also encounter food for its brood. We imagine that in some cases, it is the Spider Wasp that is the victim when it encounters a Flower Spider.
Spiders
Location: Kona coast Hawai’i
February 11, 2011 10:24 pm
I found this spider molt in Hawaii on the dry Kona side of the island. Very cool as the molt was anchored by webbing in a nook of lava rock. I’ll send the one picture but others I have show the ’hatch’ the spider must have backed out of as it shed this old skin.
Signature: Scott Hilsmann- Occidental, Ca
Exuvia of a Wolf Spider, we believe
Hi Scott,
We are sorry we did not get back to you immediately, but we have a very small staff and we are unable to respond to every request that we receive. We are very excited to post your image of the Exuvia of a Spider. Exuviae are the cast off exoskeletons of creatures like insects, arachnids and crustaceans. There is some controversy regarding the proper usage of the singular and plural forms of the term, and Doug Yanega of UC Riverside does a very nice job of tracing the roots to the term Exuvia on this Taxacom posting. Different families of spiders can be distinguished by the arrangement of the eyes, and we believe this is a Wolf Spider, though we would not rule out the possibility that it is the Exuvia of a Nursery Web Spider based on the diagrams of Spider Eye Arrangement on BugGuide. There are numerous nice close-ups of Wolf Spider faces on BugGuide including this example from Ohio.
Dangerous looking spider
Location: Melbourne CBD, Victoria, Australia
February 15, 2011 9:45 pm
When gardening in my inner suburbs Melbourne home, i found this spider. The purple and red colours screamed DANGER to me, and needless to say put me off my gardening endeavours. I was curious about what kind of spider this actually is and whether the DANGER instinct is correct. (Living in Australia means things that look dangerous usually are)
This spider was found in the middle of summer, amongst some very thick tree & vine growth. Had made itself quite a large web, and was about 8cm in length.
Sorry about the poor photo quality, it was as close as i was willing to get!
Signature: H.Spannah
Orbweaver
Dear H,
This is a harmless Orbweaver Spider. They can get quite large, and they might bite if provoked, but the bite is not considered to be significantly dangerous. Your spider might be in the genus Nephila, a group known as the Golden Silk Spiders. See the Brisbane Spiders Website.
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