View allAll Photos Tagged huntsman
A rare sight I was lucky last night when this one appeared on my back door !! Huntsman's are usually on something like a wall so when this one appeared on glass I thought what an opportunity!! Please excuse the dusty appearance as this was on the glass a hard thing to shoot through!!
The face of a huntsman spider. This one appeared in the garden and stood still for long enough for me to get some good images of its face, including all 8 eyes.
Young brown huntsman with interesting dots and stripes as well as soft, dense fur on the body. Seems to prefer the garage over a garden, but for the portrait shot I insisted on a greenish background. The young guy also had a peculiar behaviour when approached: rolls on its back opens its jaws - was a bit confused whether this was the invitation to play, cuddle its belly, be eaten or a mixture of those.
[180mm, f18, 1/40s, ISO100, 2 flashes]
--- Taxonomoy ---
Kingdom: Animalia
Class: Arachnida
Order: Araneae
Family: Sparassidae
Specimen: Heteropoda venatoria
Common name: Brown Huntsman
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shes a good average specimen of the local gray one...3cms in body length and a measured 10 cms in the span of her legs.....you do notice it if one of these runs across you ;)
Spider, spider, burning bright…
I know, I know that William Blake made it about a Tyger; a top predator of the nocturnal forest. Right here, right now this little hunstman is my nocturnal top predator.
Without more information my suspicion is that this beauty is a badge spider of the Genus Neosparassus. What I'm not going to do is flip them over to inspect their underside. That isn't out of any fear for my welfare — huntsman spiders are mostly hamless. No, my respect for this spider is that I don't need to know, so why interrupt its dinner? If I can't be certain of the Genus then let's settle for a huntsman of Family Sparassidae.
I'm more confident about this spider's dinner. I think it was a black soldier fly, Hermetia illucens. That makes me a little sad except I know a spider has to eat too. My concern is because the larvae of these little black wasps are the absolute, uncontested best little helpers at breaking down compost. They hands down better all the fungi, bacteria and worms at the job; working faster and never complaining. Because they are common, sparing just one probably isn't so bad!
This spider is hiding in the grass tree, moved so quickly, i believe to be a huntsman spider, Huntsman are big spiders. Australia has a few relatively small species, such as the tiny (non-endemic) and amazingly camouflaged lichen spider, Pandercetes gracilis. But many of the endemics are sizeable animals, which can weigh 1-2 grams and may be as big as the palm of your hand.
AJ this is for you BUT I don't like being surprised by them either...
This is one of the surprises or is that 'prizes' we get when collecting wood. This one was easily as big as the palm of my hand. It and a mate (just as big) were rescued and placed in a safer place. They are a sluggish spider and are famed for turning up on the inner walls of our houses!
'Huntsman Spiders are found living under loose bark on trees, in crevices on rock walls and in logs, under rocks and slabs of bark on the ground, and on foliage. Dozens of the social huntsman species, Delena cancerides, can be seen sitting together under bark on dead trees and stumps but they can also be found on the ground under rocks and bark slabs.'
Extract from:
Huntsman Spider (Sparassidae), Silver Ridge Retreat, Tasmania, Australia
Sparassids are eight-eyed spiders. The eyes appear in two largely forward-facing rows of four on the anterior aspect of the prosoma. Many species grow very large – in Laos, Heteropoda maxima males attain a legspan of 250–300 mm (about 10–12 in).
Source: Wikipedia