Quote:
Originally Posted by telecasterguru
Mitchell,
What lens are you using?
These are great images but not sure about the jumping bit.
Frank
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Frank - Jumping Spiders *do* jump. It's how they catch their prey. Most spiders have very poor eyesight, despite most of them having 8 eyes (some species have 6, some 4, but they are in the extreme minority). Most spiders detect prey by the hairs on their body - they usually have millions of hairs, each hair is directly attached to a nerve cell. Think of sonar but very accurate sonar, probably surpassing that of bats to be honest. Anyways, Jumping Spiders, unlike others, have quite good eyesight. They hunt by spying their prey from a distance. They calculate the distance, and then they jump on their prey. They usually have a silken safety line in case they miss, but they rarely do. They are one of the most deadly spiders from a predator point of view (not venom).
They are very intelligent, and very curious. They are also generally friendly - you'll be hard pushed to find a less aggressive spider species as a rule. They're my favourite spider - in fact, most guys who shoot macro, love Jumpers. They really do have character with a capital C. Some Jumpers are 2mm or so in size, others can reach up to 20mm. None are deadly to humans, and only one Australian species (Mopsos Mormon) has a painful bite.
I've had the pure luck of seeing a pair of Jumping Spiders in a mating dance and it was just *magic*. Think of spider ballet. It's a rare site to see, and I was lucky to have witnessed such an event. Not to steal Mitchell's post, but you can see an image from the sequence here:
http://www.macro-images.com/images/M...77cropped.html
I was a newbie to macro back then, so the quality of the image is sadly, well...crap lol.
Dave
