I think I finally caught my baby wolf!!!

[RzezniksRunAway]

So, I was sitting on my porch watching the ants go about their day and I saw something RUN across the sidewalk. Like zombies-are-chasing-me run. I got down and investigated where it ended up on the other side of the sidewalk and saw this little dude. I'm fairly certain it's a baby wolf... and I might cry if it's another gnaphosidae. He/she only has 7 legs.

Is it a baby wolf? I tried to get as close to the eyes as possible, but the entire spider fits on a pencil eraser and my camera/skills aren't good enough for that. If it is a wolf, I plan on keeping it... would 1/8th inch crickets be too big for this little guy? Or should I do fruit flies?

 

[Smokehound714]

Hard to tell what species, due to the lighting, but it looks like Pardosa to me..


Crickets of that size are just fine. If it's hungry, it will capture prey larger than itself, like all wolves.

 

[Loptylop]

wow nice wolf, today was horrible, i found a healthy mature wolf spider but a classmate of mine stepped on it and squished it.

 

[Smokehound714]

That sucks.. It continues to depress me when people display such ignorance and a total lack of altruism..

 

[RzezniksRunAway]

Ahh! So excited! I figured I wouldn't be able to get down to genus ID at this point, but just the fact that it's a wolf is all I needed. Hopefully once it molts and gets a little bit more size to it, I can get better shots for an ID. I saw something on bugguide.net that said "narrowing of the cephalothorax near the chelicerae" would be an indentifying feature of Pardosa. It's just so tiny.

 

[pperrotta03]

Get some more light on that baby! Nice catch regardless

tappy tappa taparoo

 

[RzezniksRunAway]

Loptylop, that's horrible. A friend of mine killed a big female wolf at her house last week. Apparently it took her, her 2 sons, 3 neighborhood kids and an adult neighbor to get the thing into a container... they then proceeded to spray it with anything and everything they could find to try to kill it. I was horrified when she posted about it on FB. I told her next time just get it in the jar and call me, it can live at my house.

 

[pperrotta03]

Edit: and pretty much any size crickets will be fine. How big is it?

tappy tappa taparoo

 

[RzezniksRunAway]

I tried to get a few more shots, they might be slightly better.

Underside


Top


This one just looks cool, with the pattern lighting up


Attack of the giant thumb... that's how big it is. =)

 

[pperrotta03]

I believe it belongs to the Pardosa genus...I may be wrong

 

[Curious jay]

dreds of wolfies in my back yard currently, very he'd to resist capturing all the small juvies I see to make sure they live to adulthood.

 

[pperrotta03]

They are great spiders to have around! They eat all kinds of pests

tappy tappa taparoo

 

[RzezniksRunAway]

I believe it's Pardosa as well, but we'll find out for sure as it grows. =) I gave myself a headache looking at it through my gecko sexing loupes earlier, and it's pretty upset about everything that's going on, so I'm just going to let it chill. I put an 1/8th inch cricket in the jar with it, and it's stalking but it hasn't made an attempt yet.

 

[Curious jay]

Remember to keep water available to drink at all times as they utilise the water bowl often.

 

[The Snark]

A BTW. Experimenting, I put on a pair of 20x magnifying glasses then used a magnifying glass. WOW! Home made mobile microscope. Great for spider eyes.

 

[RzezniksRunAway]

SO due to a series of stupid, stupid, STUPID decisions I no longer have a baby wolf. I did however verify that it is a Pardosa. I was outside digging around in the flower bed (Ok...it's a weedy area that at one point had flowers a few years ago) and I found a few more of the same baby wolf. They were all running like they were on fire from where I was poking around. This is the area mine ran out of so I thought maybe Momma was still in there. I was right! So I ran in the house in a panic to find a jar, and the only thing my brain could think to grab was the jar the baby wolf was in. So I ran outside and for some reason decided to release the baby wolf FIRST instead of trying to get momma into the jar. Baby wouldn't have left the jar on his own, he was in the bottom. So I set him free and proceeded to try to coax mom into the jar, which didn't go according to plan. She took off and escaped under my porch into a crack. I've checked twice to see if she came out, but all I've found are baby assassins and a bunch of annoyed ants. There was one bright point, I went to check under the trashcans thinking maybe, just maybe there was one under there and there was a HUGE P. audax with visibly bright blue chelicerae hanging out on the edge. Now he's in the jar. It's not a wolf, but I won't turn down a jumper.

 

[Smokehound714]

It's likely all those "babies" were actually fully grown, or at the least, sub-adults. the majority of Pardosa wolves are tiny lil things, even when mature -With the exception of a few species.
Here's a little size-table..

Allocosa - 3 to 10 mm
Alopecosa - 7 to 16 mm
Arctosa - 5 to 16 mm
Geolycosa - 14 to 18 mm
Gladicosa - 8 to 19 mm
Hesperocosa - less than 6 mm
Hogna - 18 to 35 mm
Melocosa - 11 to 17 mm
Pardosa - 5 mm to 11 mm
Pirata - 4 to 8 mm
Rabidosa - 10 to 20 mm
Schizocosa - 5 to 28 mm
Trabeops - 3 to 4 mm
Trochosa - 9 to 14 mm
Varacosa - 8 to 11 mm

 

[Loptylop]

i once saw a small wolf spider, it was as small as a sling and it was carrying an egg sac i saw it by the field.

 

[RzezniksRunAway]

Hmm. I'd say her abdomen was around 3/4 of an inch long...so maybe not Pardosa. =( I need to catch her.