A great number of people are scared of spiders. While there are a few, very few, dangerous species, most are completely harmless to humans! Indeed, without spiders we'd be overwhelmed by other insects in short order.
In order to remove some of the stigma and fear associated with these wonderful creatures, I like to use macrophotography and one of my favourite subjects are the jumping spiders!
These spiders do not build webs to capture prey, rather they stalk and then pounce on their meals. To do this they need very good eyes, of which they have 8! The first pair are the largest and the second pair are also rather big. The other two pairs are smaller but still very good at detecting the movements of potential predators and prey alike.
This is a female Carrhotus xanthogramma a member of the Salticidae jumping spiders.
The jumping spiders are typically rather small, the above spider is perched on the wire of a chainlink fence. Adult females of this species, bigger than the males will be about 10mm-12mm when full grown.
Slightly zoomed out to appreciate the scale:
I was fortunate to find a male Carrhotus xanthogramma close to where I found the female a few days later. He's much smaller somewhere between 8mm-10mm.
Most jumping spider males are a good deal flashier and more brightly coloured than the females. This species has white patches at the end of it's palps and they contrast with the black face and head of the spider. The patches are used to signal other spiders, either to males in a kind of competition or to advertise fitness to the female spider, who can and often do dine on males that don't make the grade!
It's been a while since I was active on Steem and now HIVE which was prior to the communities being implemented, so if you have any advice on how to best use this feature I would very much appreciate it!
I do like to interact with my readers as well, so please leave a comment!
Long time no see you.
Cool pictures.
Hey @noopu! It has been a long time, I hope you are well!
You want me to believe a creature with 8 eyes isn't harmless?
Yes, yes I do. :)
No way 😄
📷😁
after seeing this spiders only one word comes out from the mouth and it is "cute". This is the excellent example of macro photography.
Thank you for the kind words @luckyali!
I have arachnophobia, may because I was bitten and sick from a spider bite when I was a kid. Hearing that they pounce on their meals makes them more scary, the first one is cute though.
Oh, that's too bad, and legitimately scary. I had some similar experiences with bees as a kid: got stung on the ankle two summers in a row. I'm slowly getting better though the big wasps here (Japan) are very very scary.
I wish I could be less scared of them but it's very unlikely as run out of breath whenever I see one, I love bees but I never go close to them, I just enjoy watching them from afar.
They are so cute! I actually find most of the spiders scary (I know this is irrational, but most parts of me just want to run every time I see a spider), but I love the jumping spiders.
Last year, I had a black-and-white jumping spider on my balcony that had two black markings above the biggest two eyes that looked like eyebrows. These "eyebrows" were directed slightly upwards, so the spider looked surprised all the time 😂.
Sounds very cute indeed! I might have something similar to post later. :)
Cool, I'd love to see more pics of them. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get a picture of the spider on my balcony, I would've loved to have a memory of this face expression.
I've got lots in the archives, I'll be posting them semi-regularly, along with other interesting macro subjects. :)
Already followed you, I love macro photography and I look forward to seeing your pics.
They are cool!
Thank you! I'm glad you think so too!
Very amazing. Welcome to join my friend again.
Thanks @rizasukma it's good to see you here too!
You are welcome @mweich
These look adorable! I liked the first picture
Thank you @creativemary! I really do think they are the cutest of the spiders. Finding them can be a bit tricky though!
It is worth it for the lovely pictures
He sure is a cool mauve/purple colour!
Thanks, indeed they are very dark, it's difficult to get the focus right as is looks like a black smudge to the eye. Needed to boost "shadows" a bit to bring up the details.
Usually I just post in photography lovers community. But for you, OCD or photography lovers would be a good choice imo. I'm not sure if cross-posting is the way to go or not. I never do. Would be nice to see you posting more regularly if you can too!
Yeah, I don't want to spam it everywhere with people getting it in their feed multiple times, on the other hand I do want as many eyes on it as possible. So far I've tried photography groups with a high active member number. I'll check out the photography lovers community, I don't think I've subscribed to that one yet.