Another addition

Well, it has been a bit since my last post, but you might know that a few days ago, I lost one of my jumping spiders due to an accident while I was chasing it around the counter when the stapler managed to kill it. Funny thing is the next day as I am at my locker, my friend that was in the science lab walks up to me and says he caught a jumping spider. (His locker is next to mine.) I thought that was pretty cool and I thought that he was going to keep it for himself. Instead, the he hands me a plastic sandwich bag and says,"Here's the replacement for the other one," with a smile. I was a bit shocked and at first didn't really see the spider in the bag and thought he was joking. As I looked at it, I realized that there was indeed another spider in the bag. It is a male Phidippus Audax spider that isn't too large, but has fairly long legs. He is a pretty neat little guy. I was also happy that that day was my school's step up day and was a junior for the day, but, I was already a little late and my school does not have anything past sophomore. So I didn't have to worry about him in my locker as I wouldn't be doing anything with my books, so I didn't have to worry about squashing him. Overall, it was a pretty good day and after the day was over, I went into our science lab and added him to a baby food jar which is still in need of replacement with a jar I have at home. So now he is sitting in the lab with the others and I'm sure he will appreciate the upgrade soon.
Sorry about not updating this any sooner. I have been very busy again and life is pretty chaotic. The last thing I need to worry about is a blog and I am trying, but please bare with me until school is out. This year, I have also developed a bit of a hay fever for pretty much the first time in my life, so that is sadly making me more tired and less energetic and productive. But I am trying and will try to get some pictures of the spiders again and load them up here.

Please comment, like, and share this post. It means a lot to me and I want to share my passions with you. So please tell others about this blog. I know spiders aren't supper popular with people, but they really aren't that bad. You just have to start by getting to know a little about them and get used to them. They are pretty awesome creatures. You won't regret it!

Well, long time no see! Three new finds and a couple losses.

Wow! It has been over a month since my last post! Life got pretty hectic as the quarter was coming to an end and I was trying to keep my grades up the best I could. I am also involved in some other activities after school these days and so more of my time is being taken up. I would have loved to blog on some pretty cool moments, but time just ran away and I never really could catch up. And I just came back from spring break and even though I could have caught up on my blogs, I forgot about it all and just laid low the whole break to rest. It was nice to get extra sleep.

So now on to the spiders. A lot and I'm not kidding when I say A Lot, has happened to the spiders. As you might recall, the new addition a couple months ago killed Waffles. That was a sad day and eventually, Marbles was killed as well. This new spider (which I still never got around to naming) has died today in a rather tragic accident. A friend of mine came to the lab this afternoon after school to see the spiders. And I was showing them to him when I decided to open the lid on the big enclosure so we could get a better look at the spider. It ran around the cage for a couple minutes until it darted up and over the side and ran under the counter edge. I got a pencil and coaxed it out and it ran back onto the counter and made its way to the other side of the counter and onto the wall. I stopped it with a catch cup and then got a piece of paper to help keep the spider inside the cup. Of course, it got out and ran towards the stapler on the counter on the other side of a few rolls of paper towel. Then it went to the side that I could not see and when I picked up the stapler to figure out where the spider went, it ran under the stapler to where I could not see and I set the stapler on top of it. And squashed it. The poor thing started to run away as fast as it could, but with it's entrails hanging out of it's rear end, it stopped just after a few seconds and started to curl up into a ball. It was a pretty sad moment as I put it on a piece of paper and carried it to the other end of the counter. (Sigh).

But there is some happy news as well. This morning, just as class was finishing up and our teacher had finished,we were free to have the last couple minutes to do what ever we wanted. So I walked into the lab and as I came up to the counter, a little fuzzy ball scurried across the window sill and under the ledge. I got my teacher's attention and he came to help me get the little guy. And now he has taken the space of the other spider which is now dead. Just a couple minutes ago, I witnessed him sneak up on and take out a dead cricket. (Yeah, I need to clean their containers out). It was pretty comical to see a live one hanging on one of the Styrofoam cup rings. A minute later, he grabbed the live one. 

And I must say that I feel pretty foolish for thinking that all these spiders were females when in reality, they were all juvenile males, although if Marbles and Waffles really were juveniles males, I am not completely sure, but it is very likely. Each one has molted except for the newest catch today which does have his manly palps. And the other two have gotten to be little monsters. They are all about 7 cm in leg span. They look awesome. I think I will be naming them soon, so stay tuned as I now have some more free time for blogging and hope to get around to posting some pictures and names of the new guys. ( I did manage to get some pictures of the one who was killed today, so those and the others will be posted hopefully this weekend.)

Thanks for checking out this blog and sorry it has been so long. I will try to do better next time and if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post them below and I will do my best to get back to you as soon as I possibly can. 

^oOO^{o   ~JUMPING SPiDER~}

WOW! This is an interesting week.

Well, I have some very interesting news to share with you all. First off, the Platycryptus Undatus has passed away. I'm sorry that I didn't get the pictures of it up like I said I would, but I have been pretty busy and just never was able to get around to it. So for those of you who wanted to see it, you will have to go Google a picture of the Platycryptus Undatus to see what they look like. Mine looked like the ones you will find, so now you know what they look like. Pretty simple in designes and the spider itself isn't really pleasing to look at. But they are very difficult to find so long as they aren't on a red brick wall, which is pretty much how I caught mine. But now she is dead. It was short lived, but fun to have. Yeah, this doesn't look like a memorial that I created a couple days ago about Waffles, but this spider wasn't very close to me as I never did anything to it except feed it.

Now for the good news. Or shall I say awesome news! Two more Phiddipus Audax spiders have been added to the club. And both were caught this afternoon. One in the library during a class and the other in the lab while looking at the previous new find. And they are both big. Both in body size and leg span, not to mention the size of their legs. Much stockier and heavier in build. And they are females. Haven't found any males yet and I suppose they won't be showing up yet for a couple more months. This week and last week where I live has been really warm, very unusual for this time of year. So it is no surprise to find two spiders on a nice, sunny, cloudless, warm day. However, they were both found indoors. But that doesn't make much of a difference. The big connection though is that they were found by windows; the first one was on the window when I went to adjust the blinds, which was in direct sunlight, and then the other was found hidding on the edge of a sink plug next to the sink in the science lab, also pretty close to the window. Yup. Warmth plus lots of objects to hide near equals spiders--preferably jumping spiders. And somehow they have all managed to survive on the random flies that are randomly flying around the school. It is pretty funny to walk into the lab and find a dead, half-shriveled-up fly. Haha! There is a jumping spider nearby! :)

Thanks for checking out this post. Please hit the follow button and if you have any questions or comments, please leave them below and I will get back to you as soon as possible. Pictures of these guys will be posted soon. And a video featuring Marbles and the other new spider from a couple days ago. (Yes, I need to name them. Just kinda lost tract when Waffles died.)

R.I.P Waffles-- You will be missed. And hello to the newest addition... (again)

Well, the title kinda says it all. It is a sad day in the epic world of Epic Spiders. The awesome Waffles was killed on February 14, 2014. Time is unknown. I walked in on the scene this morning to find that a new P. Audax spider was discovered this morning running around on the counter and my teacher managed to catch it and put it in the cage with the other two. It turns out that it was hungry. Very hungry. And so it grabbed Waffles. My class that I have is just before noon, which is just before lunch. It was a bit of a startling discovery to see that, after I picked the cage up to see where everybody was, a spider had another one in it's jaws. At the moment, I don't really know who I thought it was as I am writing this at 9:30 in the evening and don't really remember it all that well. But I remember running out out of the lab into the classroom and told my teacher that there was another spider in the cage and either it was eating somebody or somebody got it. He followed me back to the enclosure and was also surprised to see the dead spider. Then after some more careful investigating, (like almost turning the whole thing over and looking underneath to get a better look at the spiders. Everything is "glued" down by the silk that they leave everywhere, so their stuff almost literally stays in place) ,to my dismay, I made the awful discovery that it was Waffles who was being eaten. And I noticed that it was indeed the new spider.
This new spider is pretty much like Marbles. Very similar in size and pretty much the only way to tell who is who is that the new one has slightly faded orange markings on it's abdomen whereas Marbles' markings are much sharper and brighter. The new spider I think is already going to be a problem and I will be curious to see who will be left on Tuesday when I return to school. I already caught them in threat postures towards each other a couple times on video and will be posting them soon. I also have a couple shots of the body of Waffles. Sadly, they aren't of very good quality as I shot everything with my iPod Touch 5 gen. But they are interesting and after school, my teacher and I were messing around with a couple microscopes so we could get some good up close looks at Waffle's hair, eyes, and fangs. It was very interesting.
So this has been a very interesting day. I am sad and yet happy that there is a new addition to the group. Who knows. One of them could be dead by Tuesday and we will be back to square one. (Almost. I forgot about my Platycryptus Undatus. It is doing well. More on it later. It helps that it is living in its own separate container.) This is spiders we are working with, so it is really amazing that Marbles and Waffles actually lasted as long as they did. I did not expect this to happen this way, but I knew it was a possibility from the beginning. It just took forever to happen and so it is a greater shock to me. But its life and this happens all the time, everywhere in the world where there are spiders. Yep, sad fact.

Thanks for checking this post out. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them in the comments section below and I will get back to you as soon as I can. And please don't forget to click on the "follow" button. Thank you.

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----------------------------------------------RIP Waffles---------------------------------------------
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Pictures of Waffles

~JUMPING SPiDER

Another Addition to the Group

Today, I caught another jumping spider. And it is not an other Phiddipus Audax, but a Platycryptus Undatus. It is about the size of Waffles, and is similar in color, but lighter. I found her today when I was helping prepare my school's gym for a festival this weekend. She was at the back doors of the gym, clinging to the wall between the two double doors. She was pretty much frozen, and could hardly move. I brought her back to the lab and put her on the counter, and blew some warm air over her. Then I found a beaker and set it over the top of her to keep her from escaping. She stayed there until after school was out, about a half hour later, and was then put into a pickle jar that my teacher had in the lab. I went outside and got some rocks and small peices of bark and then put her in it. She climbed under a rock. I went and got a cricket and put in there with her and then we watched her watch it and then she just stayed away from it. About ten minutes before I started this blog, I went in to check on her and so far, the cricket is still alive. I think the new spider has some thawing out to do still, but she can run backwards pretty quickly, something I have yet to see Marbles or Waffles do.

Something else of interest is that I found a body of a Phiddipus Audax a couple feet away at the edge of a sink. Yes, it is a whole body, not a molt. :( My teacher was wondering if it is Marbles 1.0. He still thinks that it is possible that Marbles (the current one) is Marbles 2.0 and that I just found the first one, the one that got away from me just right before Thanksgiving break. It is amazing that if it is the first one and that there were more than one (and probably still are more somewhere), that it survived that long. I know I didn't see that body the other day, and for the last couple weeks, I have been in and out of that lab about as much as my teacher has been. (He is probably in there a bit more than me, but it is close.) (We don't have classes that require us to use it all the time, so it would seem that nobody else goes in there much. And we have spider haters, so they avoid it now that they know that the spiders are there.) So it is a very interesting find. I'm sad about it, but it is life and I can't save every single one that I find. And I'm fine with that. Infact, I don't want to save every single spider I find. It's just a hobby to me and having a few around is fun, but filling the whole room would drive my teacher mad and it would be just too much to handle. Plus, he would run out of crickets really, really fast. He has been kind enough to let me take a couple baby crickets from his cricket stash (for the rest of his own critters) and feed my spiders once a week. I don't think I will have any more spiders. Maybe one if I can find one, but that is pretty rare right now, although odd things happen, like the one today. 

I enjoy this hobby and would encourage you to go out and find a spider and learn about it. And if you find a jumping spider, that is great, but try to find something else. There are thousands of them out there, and you will mostly find the biggest, most common ones near you. But try to look for the spiders that nobody else has found. New spiders are being found constantly and who knows, you could become one of them. That would be pretty awesome. 

This has been Jumping SPiDER and I would like thank you for checking out this blog. I hope you enjoyed it and if you have any questions, comments, or almost anything that has to do with this blog, please leave it in the comment area below and I will do my best to get back to you. :) 

^oOO^o

Awesome pictures of Marbles and Waffles.

Here are some pretty cool pictures of Marbles and her new cage mate, Waffles. Yeah, I know you're probably going "Waffles?? WTH man?!" Haha. Marbles is bad enough, but I decided to name them something random. It could be worse.

The smaller, brown jumping spider is Waffles and she is a Phiddipus Audax like Marbles. I haven't seen a brown Phiddipus Audax before, so it had me thrown for a minute. She has the same markings too, although the orange on her back is a bit faded. I think she could be a bit younger than Marbles, but I don't really know for sure. 

Sorry if any of these photos are really fuzzy, especially the ones at the end of Waffles. She is fuzzy, but my iPod Touch camera is obviously no high end camera, so please bare with me!

The jumping spider on the top is Waffles while the other one barely hiding under the cup bottom is Marbles.

The smaller spider facing the camera is Waffles. The big black one is Marbles.

Uh oh! Marbles is sizing up her dinner...

"NO!! I'm telling you! Go away or I will be forced to use these!" Marbles isn't happy at the sight of Waffles.

"Ok, I will go now."

Or not. Look at Marbles fangs spreading apart!

Marbles: "Fine, if you're not going, then I will!" And she really did try to get away. But I stopped her from climbing over the side of the cage and she abruptly made a dive for the bottom of the enclosure.

Now it looks like Waffles is going to fight back. Luckily, they never did.

"...Yeah! That's it! Run!!"

Here is Waffles. I left the lid open on the enclosure and she climbed to the top of the styrofoam-cup-ring-jungle-gym and just sat there. I was really happy to get the pictures and she was more than willing to cooperate. Something Marbles rarely does when she gets to the top of the cup rings.

I moved my finger around just a few inches in front of her and she followed my every move. And then she turned toward the iPod just like I was hoping she would do! I love that face! Hahaha! :)

"...Wow! That human's finger is huge! Should I run??" Thankfully, she decided I wasn't doing anything to her and she just stayed there.

Watching my teacher clean out his turtle's "play bin". (He uses it to feed his turtle so that it helps keep his aquarium cleaner.)

That is one cute spider and she was really enjoying the view of my school's science lab. I think that she is a quite a bit more docile than Marbles and even though she can really move like other jumping spiders, she tends to be a bit slower and not so quick to just take off. I was also handling her before I took these pictures and she was happy to come out and climb all over my hands and arms. So far, she and Marbles are getting along in there enclosure and I will be keeping them until they die or summer break arrives--hopefully the latter. I will try to get some pictures of the back of her abdomen so you can see that she is a Phiddipus Audax, or something very similar. Like I said above, I have never seen a brown one before, as all I have seen are black ones. But either way, she is an awesome spider and I will be posting more blogs of her and Marbles in the future, so please look forward to them! 

If you think that you would like to have a jumping spider as a pet, you can't easily go wrong with them. They are really easy to take care of and so much fun to play with so long as they aren't too defensive. If you want, I can make a care sheet in the future if anybody would like one. I really didn't know a whole lot about how to care for them even after I caught Marbles. It has taken some research, and experience to figure out what they like to do and what they eat. I won't go into this any further as it looks like I will do a care sheet anyway. There is also a blog I posted a while ago about someone who pretty much made one from their experiences. 

Hope you enjoyed the blog and if you have any questions, please leave them below and I will do my best to get back to you as soon as I can.

The Bagheera Kiplingi

My second blog a while back was on some pretty crazy spiders and one of them was the Bagheera kiplingi. This is a pretty cool spider because one, it is a jumping spider and two, it is a vegetarian! Well, for the most part. 90% of it's diet is just plant matter, but I will get to that in a minute. They get their names from the characters in the book, Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book.The Bagheera kiplingi is named after Bagheera, the black panther, while the species is in honor of Kipling himself. Other salticid genera with names of Kipling's characters are Akela, Messua and Nagaina. All four were named by George and Elizabeth Peckham in 1896.

They are found in the Central Americas and Mexico. They mostly inhabit Mimosaceae trees, primarily the Vachellia, where they consume specialized protein- and fat-rich nubs called beltian bodies, which make up about 90% of the spider's diet. The spiders actively avoid the ants guarding the beltian bodies which also use the bodies for food. The spiders also eat nectare and will ocassionally steal larvae from the worker ants. The spiders will also cannibolize other B. kiplingi, especially during the dry seasons. Despite the occasional consumption of meat, the spiders' tissues have been found to exhibit isotopic signatures typical of herbivorous animals, implying that most of their food comes from plants. The mechanism by which they process and ingest the beltian bodies, is still unresearched. The vast majority of spiders liquify their prey using digestive enzymes before sucking it in.

While they are pretty much antisocials like other spiders, hundreds of them can be found in a single tree, usually twice as many females to males. They are found to be somewhat quasisocial as adult females have been found to guard clutches or hatchlings. 

These are pretty awesome spiders and I really think that it is odd that a spider consumes mostly plant matter for its diet. While it does consume the occasional spider, they aren't like any other spider that eats only meat. They are probably one of my favorite jumping spiders that you can find and I really think that they eat plant matter is pretty cool. I have read that other jumping spiders have been found to enjoy nectar while sitting in a flower waiting for a bee or other flower wandering insect to pass by. So finding a spider that is almost totally vegetarian is a little surprising, to me it isn't really as I have already known that other species enjoy similar things. They must have a sweet tooth.



Thanks for checking this blog out! If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below and I will do my best to get back to you as soon as possible.