Male Running Crab Spider

2021 May 9
tags:

We are on something of a run of male spiders, I guess. This one was on our windowsill near the potted plants on October 19, 2020.

Philodromus_dorsal

Like so many other spiders we find, he’s missing a leg. I guess if anyone wants to know why spiders have eight legs, it looks like the answer is “so that they can lose a bunch of them and still get around.”

Philodromus_dorsal_full

The carapace shape and the eye arrangement looks like one of the Running Crab Spiders in the genus Philodromus. There are several species in that genus who also have a similar pattern of black-and-white on the legs and body, but I’m not quite sure which one this one is.

Philodromus_fullface

Philodromus_partial_face

His coloration looks like pretty good camouflage. Even on the wood windowsill, it breaks up his outline pretty thoroughly. And if he were on the ground, he probably would be barely visible at all.

One Response
  1. May 10, 2021

    It looks like a tarantula, but you’ve got to go all the way up to the order, Araneae, to find a common node between the two. Hmm.

    https://bugguide.net/node/view/1961

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