Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Brand New World

Mary's Corner of the World: It has finally happened!

Welcome to the world little ones...
LynxSpider033s
Just so you know... these are Lynx Spiders and are quite beneficial to your garden. They are not poisonous and generally will not bite humans. If they do, it just hurts. Not that I want one crawling on me or anything. *shudders*

They pounce on their prey like a cat and eat flying insects. Sometimes that's bad, because I know this one ate a few bees, and I guess the bee population is struggling. What I'm hoping for is that a few of her babies will take up residence on the back patio and chow down on the fly population that is there. The flies are attracted to the dog's dung repository, which my dad keeps clean, but the flies still come.

LynxSpider026s
Here's "mama" with one of her larger babies and one of the first to emerge. They weren't all the same size surprisingly. The baby is about the size of a medium ball point pen tip. The egg sac was about 3/4" diameter. What is very interesting is that the babies seem to have dark spots where the eyes should be and mama has a white area enclosing the eyes. I can't seem to get close enough to figure that out.

LynxSpider028s
And finally... here is a whole mass of them. Amazing... I wonder how far they disperse themselves. Good luck kiddos!

Wait... one more...

Mama saying goodbye! (or guarding them ready to attack me for being too close)
LynxSpider030s

PS... I too had given up on them. They were in that egg sac MUCH longer than the info I got through entymology sites.

5 comments:

Carrot Jello said...

I'd like to say "Awww", but I just can't. Sorry.

Mary C said...

Thanks for posting the macros, Red.

Heidi said...

lol Carrot! Of all people I thought that maybe, just maybe you would say "Awww"! Afterall, you had a spider on your blog for like a month!

Sure mom, any time.

RuthieJ said...

Those are cool pictures, Red. I wonder how many of those baby spiders actually grow to adulthood?

Heidi said...

Thanks RuthieJ! I wondered the same thing. Hope a high percentage does :) It's much more interesting than those big black house spiders we get.

And I don't know what they eat at that size either, but I'm guessing aphids... anything that is as small or smaller than they are.

 

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