Sunday, July 19, 2020

Lucky

Cellar spiders, Phlocidae,  live in cellars. And attics. And corners of quiet rooms. Out in the "wild", they choose caves and abandoned burrows. In my house, I find them in the shadowy corners of the hallway, behind lamps in the bedroom/office. And just outside my door, in the three-walled entrance to the carport.

This one is a big male.

You can tell he's male by the big "boxing glove" pedipalps.

I don't see many males, and those I do see are usually quite small. They don't last long; the females eat them.

Pholcus phalangioides.

These are elegant spiders, and look fragile. They're not. Even though I know and like spiders, I jump back if another species gets too close. Not these; they can walk right over me without getting a reaction. I think it may be because in the other spiders, the fangs (which won't do me any harm, but still ...) are so close to the feet. With the Phlocidae, those fangs seem remote.

But these spiders are effective predators. I often see them lunching on much larger house spiders, or huge crane flies and moths. And, of course, the unlucky males.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Los fólcidos, arañas de patas larguísimas, viven en sitios encerrados, como casas, cuevas, talleres; sitios oscuros y tranquilos. En mi casa, hacen sus redes en las esquinas superiores del pasillo, y atrás de lámparas en la recámara/oficina. Y en la entrada de la cochera.

Este es un macho grande. No veo muchos de éstos, las hembras se los comen.

Son arañas muy elegantes. Parecen frágiles; no lo son. Aunque me gustan las arañas, y no les tengo miedo, cuando una de otra especie se me acerca demasiado, me echo para atrás sin pensarlo. Se me ocurre que es porque en otras arañas los colmillos están muy cerca de las patas. (No que creo que me puedan hacer daño; sé que mi piel es demadiado grueso para ellos, pero de todas maneras ...). Con los fólcido, esos colmillos están lejos.

Pero estas arañas son animales de presa muy buenos. Muchas veces las veo comiendo arañas de otras especies mucho más grandes que ellas, o moscas y mariposas nocturnas varias veces su tamaño. Y por cierto, esos machos desafortunados.

No comments:

Post a Comment

I'm having to moderate all comments because Blogger seems to have a problem notifying me. Sorry about that. I will review them several times daily, though, until this issue is fixed.

Also, I have word verification on, because I found out that not only do I get spam without it, but it gets passed on to anyone commenting in that thread. Not cool!

Powered By Blogger