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Home > TME Community > Share Your Work > Macro > Spider Lunch
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Spider Lunch
Started September 12, 2009 @ 12:04am by RickT
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RickT
Posts: 1,694 |
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| Spider Lunch | September 12, 2009 @ 12:04am | (After this I suspect no one will be avidly awaiting "Spider Dinner".) The echinacea flowers in my back yard are a very busy spot. Tiny (2 to 3mm, head to tail) crab spiders have been haunting the spiky flower centers, and a steady traffic of flies and bees have been visiting the flowers for the last couple of weeks. Based on the spider size, I figured they were making a living off the smaller flies and bugs that dropped in. I was wrong. When I checked today, there was an immobile bumblebee on one of the flowers. Bumblebees by nature are not immobile. I ran into the house and grabbed my camera, flash, and tripod. When I got back to the flower, the situation was unchanged. However, while I was setting up my gear, the bumblebee stirred and then raised all 3 left legs at once in a weird high kick. When it put the legs back down, it finally flew off. At that point I spotted one of the crab spiders and drew the (possibly wrong) hypothesis that it had tried to attack the bumblebee, but couldn't supply enough poison to completely immobilize it. Then I noticed a honeybee sprawled out on the petal of another flower. Honeybees don't sprawl. Looking closely, I saw what looked like a spider leg protruding from underneath, so I poked the bee. Sure enough, a little crab spider was underneath and apparently feeding. The size disparity between the two is very large, the bee being 13 or 14 mm in length, head to tail. Crab spiders don't lay webs, but instead hunt from ambush, grabbing and poisoning their prey. I watched and shot for some 15 minutes, as the spider shoved and dragged its victim off the flower petal and lowered it to a leaf below. A sequence of shots can be seen at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21714994@N00/sets/72157622218644897/
This shot is of the spider lowering the bee from a petal down to a leaf. The spider acts like a grappling claw wrapped around the bee, while it pays out silk behind to lower both.
Canon 40D, lens Canon 100mm macro, f/20, 1/250 w/flash, tripod
RickT
Boulder, Colorado
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwteichler/
PPY |
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Last Edit: September 12, 2009 @ 12:58pm by RickT | |
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Trish
Posts: 941 |
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| September 12, 2009 @ 4:12am | That is amazing. I would never have thought a tiny crab spider could capture as large an insect as a bee. Very well captured both shot and timeing.
 
Trish
PPY anytime and welcome
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Flo
Posts: 15,844 |
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| September 12, 2009 @ 10:53am | Rick, those images form an amazing sequence! Just think how thin one strand of spider silk is, yet how much tensile strength it has. Sheer genius on Mother Nature's part. I'll bet that tiny little spider doesn't stay so tiny much longer, if it catches and eats prey like that!
Flo - PPY
"May we live in peace without weeping. May our joy outline the lives we touch without ceasing. And may our love fill the world, angel wings beating." aziza
http://photos.tonebytone.com |
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RickT
Posts: 1,694 |
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| September 12, 2009 @ 12:58pm | Thanks, Trish and Flo. Obviously there were a lot of pictures left out even from the 9-shot Flickr set. I was really surprised that these little things were so ambitious. Even the apparent plan to move the bee from the petal to a lower leaf was stunning to me. I didn't think it was capable of seeing that far (about 5 inches).
Flo, I don't know what the growth limits are on this species, but I don't think they grow much larger. Certainly this one won't, since we usually get a freeze here in a couple of weeks. I don't know if it came back to the bee later for a snack. When I checked the bee at 10:30 p.m., it was much diminished and there was a Daddy Longlegs scavenging the remainder.
RickT
Boulder, Colorado
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwteichler/
PPY |
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Flo
Posts: 15,844 |
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| September 13, 2009 @ 8:14am | I always wondered what Daddy Longlegs actually eat, as I've never seen one eating anything. So they eat bugs, too - do you know if they catch their own, or are they scavengers?
Flo - PPY
"May we live in peace without weeping. May our joy outline the lives we touch without ceasing. And may our love fill the world, angel wings beating." aziza
http://photos.tonebytone.com |
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RickT
Posts: 1,694 |
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| September 13, 2009 @ 11:25am | Flo, according to my references the "daddy longlegs" I saw mostly hunt tiny insects, but will scavenge. I was only looking in the dark with a headlamp and didn't get real close. It's possible it may have been eating some small insect that had come to scavenge on the bee.
With our typically imprecise colloquialisms, "daddy longlegs" seems to apply to 2 different types of animals. One type is a true spider that builds cobwebs in our houses and basements (Pholcidae family). As spiders they have a distinct cephalothorax and abdomen, and of course very long legs. The other is what we usually see moving around outdoors in the grass--the harvestmen--who don't build webs. Their head, thorax, and abdomen are fused into a single unit and are not distinct. It was a harvestman that was sitting on the bee.
I think I need to include another favorite shot from this series, one that better shows the size discrepancy between predator and prey.
RickT
Boulder, Colorado
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwteichler/
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Last Edit: September 13, 2009 @ 11:36am by RickT | |
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Flo
Posts: 15,844 |
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| September 13, 2009 @ 11:51am | Rick, yes, it's the harvestmen I was referring to. And I think, as do you, that we should differentiate between the two types. But it's hard to change the habit - I've heard the harvestmen referred to all my life as Daddy Longlegs. I'm not sure whether I've even see the other one.
Edit: OK, I Googled Pholcidae and yes, I've seen these, but have never heard them called Daddy Longlegs, lol.
http://www.google.com/search?client...ls=en&q=Pholcidae&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Flo - PPY
"May we live in peace without weeping. May our joy outline the lives we touch without ceasing. And may our love fill the world, angel wings beating." aziza
http://photos.tonebytone.com |
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Last Edit: September 13, 2009 @ 11:53am by Flo | |
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RickT
Posts: 1,694 |
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| September 13, 2009 @ 12:21pm | Even as bad as my bachelor housekeeping is, in my house the Pholcidae are simply offerings to the vacuum cleaner god.
RickT
Boulder, Colorado
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwteichler/
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MCampbell
Posts: 1,760 |
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| September 13, 2009 @ 12:35pm | Great series of photos! I love the clarity and story as well.
www.Mikesjournal.com a new picture every day (more or less) |
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RickT
Posts: 1,694 |
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assignment
Community Assignment #53
Picture Window
Due Date: September 16, 2011 |
Have you heard about the Backyard Shots Photography Guide "Street Portraiture with CraigTanner"?
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