You will never know what is inside...

Dark Raptor · Sep 20, 2007

Look what I found inside my Misumena vatia crab spider. 4 nematodes, all of them 8 - 13cm long (spider has only 2 cm). I think it was invaded by infective juveniles inside its preys (I've been giving it only insects captured in the field).

Before:

After:

You better be carefull what you are giving to your pets...

P. Novak · Sep 20, 2007

Wow, that's scary!

Gorgeous looking spider though, too bad it died. I'm sorry for your loss.

Dark Raptor · Sep 20, 2007

P. Novak said:
Wow, that's scary! Gorgeous looking spider though, too bad it died. I'm sorry for your loss.

Luckily it is very common specie here, in Poland. But I expected to get offspring from her. This time it was bad luck... but I was able to get some very rare pics It cuts both ways

P. Novak · Sep 20, 2007

Dark Raptor said:
Luckily it is very common specie here, in Poland. But I expected to get offspring from her. This time it was bad luck... but I was able to get some very rare pics It cuts both ways

Well then thats good!

Yes, very rare and very good pics. What did you end up doing with the nematodes?

Rain_Flower · Sep 20, 2007

That is one of my favorite spiders eeeveeer. I'm sorry for your loss

OTwolfe · Sep 20, 2007

Whoa! How did you know they were in the spider? Did you do an autopsy? How common are nematodes in wild spiders?

P. Novak · Sep 20, 2007

OTwolfe said:
Whoa! How did you know they were in the spider? Did you do an autopsy? How common are nematoes in wild spiders?

I was just thinking the same thing. Did you perform an autospy when it died or did they burst out, or..

Widowman10 · Sep 20, 2007

holy cow!!

never seen something like that before!!!

syndicate · Sep 20, 2007

thats quite out of control!ive never seen something like this.are u sure there nematodes?

beetleman · Sep 20, 2007

wow! that is amazing,and they were all inside of her,very interesting!

Widowman10 · Sep 20, 2007

beetleman said:
wow! that is amazing,and they were all inside of her,very interesting!

man if they were all in her, i bet she looked like she was gravid! huuuge!

Selenops · Sep 20, 2007

Ew! Invert horror story. To reiterate another posters question, How did you discover them?

Blahbar · Sep 20, 2007

Once when i was like 10, found a cricket in my room and disposed of it in the toliet. Dont know why but left it there and didnt flush it, when I came back a few hours later to use the toliet I found a huge worm crawing out of the cricket, swiming around in the water. Talk about trama...still have nightmares.

Selenops · Sep 21, 2007

Blahbar, you've just traumatized me, I don't think I can use the toilet ever again.

::shivers uncontrollably::

What the heck, Halloween is next month! :evil:

Dark Raptor · Sep 21, 2007

OTwolfe said:
Whoa! How did you know they were in the spider? Did you do an autopsy? How common are nematodes in wild spiders?

No, they just disembowel spider and moved outside. I can't tell you how common they are. I started studying literature about "arthropopatogenic" nematodes. I found almost nothing about spider parasites in this group. I think it is still "blank page" in science. I'll prepare short scientific article for one of the polish scientific magazines.

Taceas · Sep 21, 2007

I am sorry for your loss, it was a beautiful spider. =(

They look similar to roundworms to me. I see them every now and then in chicken droppings.

I too have a cricket story. A few years ago we had a very noisy black field cricket in the house. I managed to catch it and I forgot to take it outside, so it sat overnight in a delicup.

I woke up the next morning to the cricket walking around without 15 "ends" of worms sticking out of its cloaca, writhing around like a bowl of maggots. Truly disgusting!

mr.wilderness · Sep 21, 2007

Blahbar said:
Once when i was like 10, found a cricket in my room and disposed of it in the toliet. Dont know why but left it there and didnt flush it, when I came back a few hours later to use the toliet I found a huge worm crawing out of the cricket, swiming around in the water. Talk about trama...still have nightmares.

Sounds like a horsehair worm. The larva are parasites inside insects and when they're about to mature, they release some chemical that makes the insect go drown itself so the adult can emerge. I guess you did the drowning part for it, though

Martin H. · Sep 22, 2007

Hello "Dark Raptor",

you have specified that they do not wish to receive emails via the forum – any way to get in touch with you private?

all the best,
Martin

The_Thunderer · Sep 23, 2007

While completely disgusting, this does help me to never feed my pets W/C prey.

Stylopidae · Sep 23, 2007

Dark Raptor, I think your problem may be your search terms.

Have you tried entomopathogenic or araneopathogenic?

But, yeah...those are definitely nematodes. No mistaking them. The only other thing they could be are annelids and I don't know of any parasitic annelids off the top of my head (excluding leeches-ectoparasites...not endoparasites). Either way, they don't show any sort of segmentation.

Just goes to show...WC prey is a no-no.

You will never know what is inside...

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