Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Wildlife Wednesday

A Stick Spider. Or that's what's I've known them as since I was a kid. But knowing my great skill at invention, I better make sure that's what normal people call him!!

Oh wow, normal people call it that too - well, according to wikipedia. Here's what wiki says:

"The spider family Deinopidae consists of stick-like elongate spiders that build unusual webs that they suspend between the front legs. When prey approaches, the spider will stretch the net to two or three times its relaxed size and propel itself onto the prey, entangling it in the web. Because of this, they are also called net-casting spiders. Their excellent night-vision adapted posterior median eyes allow them to cast this net over potential prey items. These eyes are so large in comparison to the other six eyes that the spider seems to have only two eyes.
The genus Deinopis is the best known in this family. Spiders in this genus are also called ogre-faced spiders, due to the imagined similarity between their appearance and that of the mythological creature, the ogre. It is distributed nearly worldwide in the tropics, from Australia to Africa and the Americas."

You know what, I've never gone ogling them to see the ogre face :) Know what I'm doing next time?

Have you ever ogled?

2 comments:

  1. Okay. So this guy's not as cute as the previous specimen I just looked at, :) but he has a certain leggy appeal!

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    Replies
    1. Yeah, lots of glorious legs... but I do want to check that "face" out. Need to find one and they seem to have vanished for now.

      Cate xox

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