Mama Wolf Spider and Babies
Happy Mother’s Day![1] And as an appropriate topic for the day, here’s a shining example of arthropod motherhood, that we found on June 19, 2012 – a mother wolf spider carrying her newly-hatched babies on her back!
We can see she’s a wolf spider from her eyes, as she spins around to stare down the camera and defend her children, if necessary.
Her many, many children. It’s a little hard to sort out individuals from the confusion of legs, but I think I count at least 15 of them.
This wasn’t all of them by any means. Children being children, some of them dashed off to run around on their own.
What can you do? Kids.
Carrying their babies like that is pretty much universal among wolf spiders, at least for the ones that are active roving hunters (I don’t know about the ones that hunt from burrows). But, as far as I know, there are no other spider families that do it. Although at least some scorpions carry their babies on their backs.
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[1] Yes, I know Mother’s Day is tomorrow. I like to do things a bit early.
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Whoa! That is really cool. I love wolf spiders.
Great post and so appropriate. I saw a dune wolf spider this week, which was white to match the sand.
Thank you- love these pix!!