SEB wrote:This is amazing! I love orb weavers. Its amazing that they are all born with advanced geometry already encoded into their DNA. The ones from Madagascar are especially huge for some reason.
I have couple of specimens that also make huge webs but no where near as big as this.
Thanks for sharing!
Edit:
I don't have Caerostris darwini. I have a few female Araneus diadematus. They are in the family of spiders known as orb weavers (Araneidae). I am going to assume that this species will be put into this family considering its anatomy and behavior, but I may be wrong. Awesome spider regardless!
It's SO weird how that spider just started.. to build that, all on it's own.
According to google we have Araneus diadematus here in Washington. They look extremely similar to this spider I am constantly seeing around here, and they make huge webs! The biggest web I have ever seen in my life was here in WA made by one of these; the web went from the roof of our split level house all the way down to the grass below in the yard, and used our back deck and side of the house to connect the web.. kinda hard to explain so I whipped up a pic on MS Paint real quick.
It was amazing, but unfortunately didn't last long because we can get some pretty harsh winds and rain. Constantly seeing little spider-ling balls too.. those are so weird. Never seen one until I moved to Washington. I'm originally from California, so I'm use to only seeing common traveling spiders and daddy long legs.
There is this one spider that I saw on a show on Animal Planet once called Monster Bug Wars.. pretty cool show, just basically shows two bugs duking it out in the wild, with funny monster/godzilla sound effects. Anywho, the spider is a genus called Portia and their hunting behavior is what makes them insanely awesome.
Portias often hunt in ways that seem intelligent. Their favorite prey appears to be web-building spiders between 10% and 200% of the Portia’s size. Portias look rather like leaf detritus caught in a web, and this is often enough to fool web-building spiders, which have poor eyesight. When stalking web-building spiders, Portias try to make different patterns of vibrations in the web that aggressively mimic the struggle of a trapped insect or the courtship signals of a male spider, repeating any pattern that induces the intended prey to move towards the Portia. Portia fimbriata has been observed to perform vibratory behavior for three days until the victim decided to investigate. They time invasions of webs to coincide with light breezes that blur the vibrations their approach causes in the target's web; and they back off if the intended victim responds belligerently. Portias that retreat may approach along an overhanging twig or rock, descend down a silk thread and kill the prey. Other jumping spiders take detours, but Portia is unusual in its readiness to use long detours that break visual contact.
Laboratory studies show that Portia learns very quickly how to overcome web-building spiders that neither it nor its evolutionary ancestors would have met in the wild. Portia’s accurate visual recognition of potential prey is an important part of its hunting tactics. For example in one part of the Philippines local Portia spiders attack from the rear against the very dangerous spitting spiders, which themselves hunt jumping spiders. This appears to be an instinctive behavior, as laboratory-reared Portias of this species do this the first time they encounter a spitting spider. On the other hand they will use a head-on approach against spitting spiders that are carrying eggs. However, experiments that pitted Portias against "convincing" artificial spiders with arbitrary but consistent behavior patterns showed that Portia’s instinctive tactics are only starting points for a trial-and-error approach from which these spiders learn very quickly.
got all this from
wikipedia
It's hard for me to believe this is actually a spider, and not some alien in a spider suit.
Edit: I love orb weavers, they had quite a collection of them last time I was at the California Academy of Sciences in SF. They keep them in this 4 story indoor rain forest.. ugh it's so cool. There are just birds flying around and poison dart frogs out in the open.. I have to share some pictures
It was really busy last I was there so I only managed to get this one
Don't mind me in the picture.. lol it was the only good picture I could find of the 4 story indoor rain forest, I'm almost at the very top. The very top is actually right behind me in the upper left corner. Once you get to the top, they make you take an elevator all the way down to the bottom floor of the museum, which is the aquarium, and you go through the water and are basically in an underwater elevator for a few minutes.
Don't let the jacket fool you, it was extremely hot and humid lol.
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