Photo Adventures with Curiosity and Learning


April 26, 2008: Miagrammopes reeling in slack silk

Flickr and youtube provide html to embed video into a web page - as does Google. So here is my first experiment with embedding video links into a web page

From Flickr

Here she pulls in slack silk above her and to her right. Her movements are very fast. Just makes one wonder about the intelligence / synapse of this spider compared with us.

From Flickr

Watch the white puff of silk to the right of her 1st leg. She will ratchet in slack silk, pulling the white puff toward her. Watch as she pulls in silk with her 1st legs, hands it off to her 2nd legs for rolling up into a ball.

Compare Flickr (above) with Youtube (below)

From Youtube

Here is an active Google Map of our area in Singapore - home, church and my spider observatory. You can drag the map with your mouse, zoom in and out - and generally just have fun navigating around Singapore

    Legend
  • Red Bus 195 from Queenstown MRT to Queenstown Lutheran Church
  • Blue Walking to lunch at Commonwealth Food Court
  • Green Walking from Commonwealth MRT to my spider observatory, along Margaret Drive to the yummy food court then beside Fair Price to Commonwealth and then home

Today made all the waiting worth it. I returned to my spider place looking for the Miagrammopes I found last Sunday. At first, I found little evidence she was still there. While looking though, I noticed a curled leaf, a usual sign that a spider lives inside the leaf. Opening it revealed a small jumping spider (Phintella vittata) who quickly raced for the back door and hid under the leaf. I had my camera and tripod set up, and managed to catch a few shots of her hiding

apr 26 9454 phintella vittata front

From the side

apr 26 9455 phintella vittata side

Her eyes

apr 26 9457 phintella vittata front

Another view from the side

apr 26 9459 phintella vittata side

and her face

apr 26 9462 phintella vittata

Then I saw a bit of action from the corner of my eye. It was another Miagrammopes working on her single strand

apr 26 9468 miagrammopes

She had caught a small fly or something - to the right

apr 26 9479 miagrammopes fly

I set up my video camera, watched and nothing for the next 20 min - so I wandered off and found my favorite flower

apr 26 9484 forgotten flower

Then a small caterpiller hanging by a thread

apr 26 9485 caterpiller

Another view

apr 26 9492 caterpiller

Then back to Miogrammopes

apr 26 9503 miagrammopes fly

From above

apr 26 9504 miagrammopes top

Here is the tangle ball of silk

apr 26 9513 fly tangle ball

Here is a frame from the video above - as she was removing slack from her strands

apr 26 00223 vid frame tensioning crop

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

C. Frank Starmer

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