David Element

Wildlife Photography

and Digital Video Images

__________ Spiders 3 - Heather Crab-spiders

                             HEATHER CRAB-SPIDER Thomisus onustus (f)

                             HEATHER CRAB-SPIDER Thomisus onustus (f)

                             HEATHER CRAB-SPIDER Thomisus onustus (f)

• A Trap is sprung!  The lightning fast reflexes of a beautiful Heather Crab-spider are shown to good effect in this sequence.  The rate of reaction is so fast that the speed of capture was calculated to be approximately 0.1 seconds (by counting the frames of a video sequence of this episode). This spider is able to vary its colour, thus enabling it to remain well camouflaged against a range of different backgrounds and it may be assumed that this is the closest approximation to yellow that this species can manage. Insects perceive their surroundings in an entirely different way to humans (their eyes are sensitive to a colour spectrum shifted towards ultra violet) and apparently the spider would actually be more visible to them than it would to us. However, the subterfuge has clearly worked as the fly is dead and the spider fed!

-> Spiders 1

-> Spiders 2

-> Spiders 4

-> Index, Common Names

-> Index, Scientific Names

-> Site Index

-> Home

© David Element.