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.