From the comments in last night's Picnic Spider Café: "I didn't see any spiders, but I'm sure they're in there somewhere...."
(Not positive it's a spider. I count 4 legs on one side and 2 on the other. That adds up to 6 so...)
August 8, 2019
For those of you who couldn't see the spider in last night's café...
From the comments in last night's Picnic Spider Café: "I didn't see any spiders, but I'm sure they're in there somewhere...."
(Not positive it's a spider. I count 4 legs on one side and 2 on the other. That adds up to 6 so...)
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22 comments:
I couldn't see it on my iPhone screen, but if Phidippus, who studies spiders (hobby or professionally, I'm not certain) couldn't find one then I didn't feel bad.
Not a spider. That's a harvestman, a member of the order Opiliones.
I thought harvestman...
If so, at least my "arachnid" tag is right.
It looks like the word has been passed to publish that the recent shootings are all the result of Trump's "divisive rhetoric," and this is done even to the point of drowning out much mention of the shootings themselves.
It is puzzling to me since I have not heard or seen this "divisive rhetoric" coming from Trump now nor has anyone documented any such behavior by Trump in his past career(s); rather to the contrary.
Projection much? Or just desperation?
The MSM - to me at least - give a strong impression that this is all about electioneering and not about any genuine outrage or difference of opinion.
That's what Joe Biden's soul looks like.
Well, they do try to be unobtrusive. There are having a population explosion around here, this season. The plants on my deck are full of them.
Opiliones are distinct from spiders in that they have 2 eyes, not 8, munch on small insects and vegetable matter (spiders... well I'll leave out the details there, it's early), and they don't use silk.
I suspect the fact the Dayton shooter was a leftist and Antifa supporter has caused this pivot. The 'divisive rhetoric' is cited in the absence of evidence mode popular with Democrats these days (see: RACIST!!!).
I see this harvestman fella is related to the daddy longlegs, which we have in abundance here in MA. I've never seen a harvestman - their bodies are quite a bit larger than those of the local daddy longlegs. I am dismayed to learn they are, in fact, arachnids given that I have a bit of a phobia about such creatures.
It is like they are desperately working the bellows to get some dying embers to catch wet wood on fire.
The articles below just do not bear out the screaming headlines.
@Phidippus, you missed your chance to say that you missed seeing it because you were looking for a spider and not a harvestman. You need to hang around Democrats so you learn how to come up with lame excuses.
"Well, they do try to be unobtrusive. There are having a population explosion around here, this season."
Camping in a SW Wisconsin field last week, there were daddy longlegs everywhere. I lost track of how many I threw out of the tent.
Yeah, I think harvestman but can't really see, with that grass in the way of the segment points. The key is whether there is segmentation between head, thorax and abdomen. In harvestmen they're fused together, with no "waist" between them.
All arthropods have bilateral symmetry. So if there are 4 legs on one side and 2 on the other, it means 2 got pulled off.
That is definitely an arachnid of some sort, but probably not a spider- I don't see a web anywhere in that photo.
As the commenters above wrote- it could definitely be a species of Harvestman, though I don't recall ever seeing one that looks exactly like that. Would have to check photos and compare.
" and they don't use silk"
But there is silk there, so maybe spider was right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pholcidae#/media/File:Pholcus.phalangioides.6905.jpg
Sorry not to have a better angle. I didn't see the thing as I was photographing the flowers.
I was trying to get a picture of an insect I really liked but it just wouldn't land and I don't see it in the shots I took while it was flying. If I'd got the picture, we could have had the discussion, dragonfly or damselfly.
It was a metallic light blue. Very pretty!
But there is silk there, so maybe spider was right.
There are lots of sources for those filaments — true spiders, various insect larvae and pupae. Harvestmen prowl around looking for stuff to eat, they're scavengers basically, and the occasional random proximity of a harvestman to strands of silk is to be expected.
Regarding your damselfly, probably family Calopterygidae.
Jumping spiders leave a virtually continuous trail of silk as they roam about their territory. Very territorial little critters, they spend more time sending "get off my lawn!" semaphores to other spiders than actually hunting.
"There are lots of sources for those filaments — true spiders, various insect larvae and pupae."
This has turned out to be an unexpected problem for my telescope observing. Set up a telescope in a field, with its 15" diameter mirror 6" from the ground, leave it there for three or four days, and there's all manner of insect life that leaves little gifts on it. You're not supposed to clean your mirror more than once a year, because the cleaning process itself can be detrimental to the thin mirror coating, but I have found if you don't get that stuff off promptly you're never getting it off. I just cleaned my mirror for the second time in one week.
Missing legs are consistent with it being some species of harvestmen.
From Wikipedia: Autotomy is the voluntarily amputation of an appendage, and is employed to escape when restrained by a predator.[43][44][45][46] Eupnoi individuals, more specifically sclerosomatid harvestmen, commonly use this strategy in response to being captured.[41][47][48] This strategy can be costly because harvestmen do not regenerate their legs,[21] and leg loss reduces locomotion, speed, climbing ability, sensory perception, food detection, and territoriality.[41][48][47][49]
Autotomized legs provide a further defense from predators because they can twitch for 60 seconds to an hour after detachment.[45] This can also potentially serve as deflection from an attack and deceive a predator from attacking the animal. It has been shown to be successful against ants and spiders.[34]
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