Some True Spider Pics

[pitbulllady]

Just thought I'd share a few recent pics of true spiders, wild and captive, that I took while messing around with my new Raynox Macro lens.

First up, a ltc female Kukulcania hibernalis I keep on my desk at school(we are not allowed to BRING animals to school, but they can't do anything about an animal in the building, in abundance), along with a couple of her SB offspring from a breeding earlier this summer. Babies are about two months old now.

Close-up of the first K. hibernalis 'sling and mom's leg.

Another one of my CB K. hibernalis 'slings

Wild black-phase female K. hibernalis-I love these big, velvety, docile G. pulchra wannabe's!

Cellar Spider, Pholcus phalangiodes 'sling, barely visable to the naked eye, on the back porch

Spitting Spider, Scytodes sp., on the side of the garage last night

pitbulllady

 

[diadematus]

Just thought I'd share a few recent pics of true spiders, wild and captive, that I took while messing around with my new Raynox Macro lens.

First up, a ltc female Kukulcania hibernalis I keep on my desk at school(we are not allowed to BRING animals to school, but they can't do anything about an animal in the building, in abundance), along with a couple of her SB offspring from a breeding earlier this summer. Babies are about two months old now.

Aren't they fun (the macro converters)? Nice spiders! Where are they from? Are you in the States? I especially liked the abdomen of the Kukulcania.

I guess your administrators forgot the word "keep" (in German "Tier halten", I think). Too bad for them. Well, children (or administrators) should be exposed to spiders -- a wonderful learning experience IMO.

-Kevin

 

[pitbulllady]

Aren't they fun (the macro converters)? Nice spiders! Where are they from? Are you in the States? I especially liked the abdomen of the Kukulcania.

I guess your administrators forgot the word "keep" (in German "Tier halten", I think). Too bad for them. Well, children (or administrators) should be exposed to spiders -- a wonderful learning experience IMO.

-Kevin

Yes, I live in the southeaster US, and K. hibernalis is one of our most common native spiders, often overlooked by spider keepers, and very underrated, I think. This is about as close to a tarantula as a "true" spider can get, I think, based on my experience with both. These are VERY common throughout our school building, which is an old facility, and the building custodian and I capture several of these from classrooms each month. This big female was found at the end of the previous school year inside a storage cabinet in another classroom, sending the terribly arachnophobic teacher screaming out into the hall! I captured a male from my home property and introduced them, and she produced an eggsac in early August. It took FOREVER to hatch, and I was certain that it was infertile and kept threatening to take it away and discard it, but my students and the old custodian would have none of THAT, lol! Their patience and insistence paid off, finally, proving me wrong. As I said, we are not allowed to bring animals from home, but there are no rules concerning those which are typically found inside the building already. My Principal is cool with the spider, as long as she is in her enclosure. She is very docile and will sit on my hand for hours, I think, if I let her, though it's much trickier getting her back into her enclosure afterwards.

My camera, a Fuji Finepix S9000, already had a really good built-in Macro feature, but of course, I wanted more, so I bought the conversion lens. I really love that thing, so now I have to save up money for the telephoto conversion lens to go with the camera's built-in 10.7x zoom.

pitbulllady