Marbles is gone!

Well, I was hoping against hope that this wouldn't happen, but it did. Marbles, my female Phiddipus Audax jumping spider, is gone. I was going to do this on the previous post, but I decided against it. Luckily, this doesn't mean dead, but she is no longer in her little critter keeper. My teacher found her lid slightly ajar the other morning with her obviously not there. She seemed pretty happy in there. Now being a spider, should would have reasons to leave that I, a human, wouldn't understand, but she did have it pretty good in there. She had a pretty nice cricket once a week, some water, and a few places to hide and be a jumping spider. I don't really get why she would want to leave. I don't really know what to do at the moment as she could pretty much be anywhere in the science lab or for that matter, my school. She does have more than plenty of spaces to hide out, but there are only other spiders for food and I know that most jumping spiders can get other spiders if they are desperate enough. I just hope she is okay and will turn up in a few months so I can put her back. But if I never see her again, that is that. Farewell Marbles! You will be missed! (You can find pictures of her on my previous post.)

Pictures of my female Phiddipus Audax, Marbles.

She is doing pretty well so far. These aren't the best, as they were shot with my iPod Touch, but that is what has been available to me. She is pretty awesome.

You will see that the white thing that Marbles is sitting on is a cut up Styrofoam cup that has been put together with some pieces of wood. Sorry these weren't up sooner.

Thanks for checking this blog out. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them in the comment section below and I will try my best to answer them. 

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The Peacock Spider

The Peacock Spider is a jumping spider. Of course, it is probably the most awesome jumping spider in the world. (And it is found only in Australia). Now, you must be wondering what a peacock spider is, right? If you think about it, it's name suggests what it is. And it is obviously a jumping spider, but what it can do is not done by any other spider or any other creature but the peacock itself. Peacock spiders obviously need to find a mate and the only way jumping spiders get mates is to try to attract their attention. The way male jumping spiders get a females attention is by taking their front legs and waving them around. They also vibrate their bodies which the females pick up on. When a male runs into another male, they will pretty much do what rams or sheep do; butt their faces into each other with their legs raised to see who is bigger. They do this a few times, and then they kind of fight a little until the smaller spider leaves. The bigger one keeps on going about life, as usual. And the peacock spiders do the same thing. But they also do what peacocks do; they raise their feathers and spread them out (or abdomens in this case and hair) and they dance around a bit to get the attention of the female. They do this dance until the female decides that the male can mate with her. This will usually last just a moment before the male must jump away as fast as he can, or the female will eat him, like all other spiders.

It is very entertaining to watch them dance around like they do. Here is a video that shows them doing the courtship dance by Jurgen Otto (I highly recommend watching all of the other videos too). He is the only photographer in the world to have photographed and taken video of them. And this is his Flikr page to see all of his pictures! If you have seen them before, you will know how small they are. They are not your average sized jumping spider which is about 5 cm, but they are about 4 to 5 mm in size! Yes! Very small! How he does the amazing videos while keeping track of them when they jump away is beyond me. Most jumping spiders don't like to be played with or have humans around too much as I learned this recently while my teacher and I took pictures of my pet. It wouldn't sit still for anything. So I can imagine that it takes him several weeks before he can get enough for a six minute video.

Thanks for checking out this blog. Sorry it has been a few days since the last post, but I am really busy and I hope to have a bit more time in the future to keep up with the blogs. These are really awesome spiders and if you have any questions or just want to share what you think of these epic spiders, please feel free to put a comment below this blog.

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Update on my pet Phiddipus Audax

Within the last few days, I have kept the little female Phiddipus Audax in a small critter keeper cage with a small styrofoam cup cut into a few pieces for something to climb on with some small pieces of wood to hold it together. My teacher was a bit concerned that it could climb out of the top holes in the stock cage cover, so we are using a semi-clear piece of plastic over the top of it for the cage and so far it is working out really well. There are plans to make it a little more permanent, but for the time being, the spider seems to be really happy in it and it is constantly making little nests around the corners. I wish she would make her nesting sites at the bottom or under the over-turned bottom piece of cup. Every time I go to remove the cover, I am pulling her nest apart. It is an irritating problem for me as I don't want to upset her and I know that it doesn't really help her out any. Luckly, she is still calm and pleasant to handle and let jump around on the table and back and forth from her cage. I feed her a small cricket that is usually a little bit bigger than her or about the same size every few days. So far I haven't been able to witness her eat the cricket, but when I get to school the next day, I will go in and check on her and the cricket's remains are laying in the bottom of the cage and her abdomen is fuller than it was the previous day. So I am glad that she is eating just fine and hopefully, she will live for a while. She still has her orange markings on her back, so I am pretty sure that she is pretty young still. Overall, she is fun to watch climb around in her cage and so far seems to enjoy it. I know I am!

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I will try to post some pictures that my teacher took with a macro lense soon! They took a while to get as the jumping spider wouldn't sit still for more than a few seconds at a time.

I also don't have a name for her yet either. If anybody has any suggestions, tell me what you think. I was personally thinking Marbles, but that could change if anything else comes along that I like better.

Video Games with Spiders are Freaky- For the Most Part

In my tech class, we have been learning about video games. We have to write about video games that have something to do with our blog topic. Of course, spiders have been made out by movies and many video games to be scary. This hasn't helped spiders as animals at all. It makes people see the horrific "spider" in the game or movie and makes them think that they are just as bad or worse in real life. Yep, they really are freaky in games, and here is one person's top 10 list of them. I have never played any of the games he mentions, but after reading his description of them, I am glad that I am not writing this at night. It is more like noon, but that is beside the point. Many of the spiders aren't really spiders, but weird, creepy, things that are supposed to look like spiders and they aren't even close to spiders. Some games do have actual spiders in them, but the others are just freak creatures that to me are scary, but pointless. And they aren't helping people out with their opinions on the real creatures.

Another game with spiders that hurt you is Minecraft. This is one of my personal favorite games to play and I really enjoy many of it's variants, like Feed the Beast and Tekkit. As many people know, the game is very fun to play and the world is made up of blocks, which are made of blocks. Nothing is round. Everything, including the spiders, are square-ish. Everything that is supposed to look like what it is, does look pretty good. But they use little tiny squares to make up the different parts. But they are scary and they have red eyes and make noises. They are fast and when they bite you, you die pretty quickly. Unless you have an armor suit on, you should stay away from the spiders as much as possible. And the other mobs too, but the spiders are pretty bad. There is also the spider jockey, which is a skeleton with the usual bow and arrow ridding a spider. They are very deadly, as the skeleton can hit you from a ways a way and it has the speed and agility of the spider.

Other games like to make the spiders the good guys, like this one and I like these games. In this game, a scientist has developed this gear that lets him control a spider. Of course, there are bad guys who don't like this and they kill the scientist and take his mind control equipment. Even though he is dead, his conscience is still in the little spider and the little spider goes after the bad guys to get the equipment and his life back. You are taken throughout the game in 32 different dangerous levels. There are falling beakers, cybornetic hornets to mechanical arms and bomb-dropping bats, and when you are only an inch tall, you could die from just about anything.

I like spiders and think in real life, they are really cool. However, the movie and video game makers rely on people's reactions to spiders to make them scary and this is how they sell their games. I don't like them and most of them are too violent for me to begin with. That and my parents don't like violent games either. It is interesting to see what these people come up with for "spiders", but I think they are a waste of time, except Minecraft. That is a game that I will play whether it has spiders in it or not.

Thanks for checking this blog out. Please feel free to comment and follow. Until next time, this is Jumping SPiDER.

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The awesome background is a Peacock Spider by Jurgen Otto.

Jumping spiders as pets

Well, I don't really have a pet at home, but at school, I have found a few jumping spiders hanging out on the walls and indoors, like in our science lab. They are everywhere, and even though almost all of my classmates don't like them and freak out when they see them, I enjoy them and end up handling them and putting them in temporary containers for a while. Currently, I have a suspected female Phiddipus Audax who is still fairly young as she still has her orange markings. I have her inside an upside down cup in our science lab on the counter. It isn't very big, so I shouldn't keep her for much longer as there isn't a whole lot of room in there for her to move about. I feed her crickets every couple days (my teacher has lots of other critters that eat crickets too) and she is housed near a sink, so I put my finger under the water and then drip a little water in the cup for her. So far, she has been eating and drinking just fine and sadly, I haven't been able to witness her catch her prey. I have seen jumping spiders pounce on their food on Youtube videos, but to see it in real life is much more exciting.

My teacher also has a couple black widows in a flask with a piece of tape over it and a few days ago, we tested to see if a jumping spider would kill a black widow. I have heard that it is possible, but didn't know before. I also know that they do kill wolf spiders and brown recluse spiders, and I have seen it happen. So we put the jumper in with the widows and waited for a long time for something to happen. Both the widows were in the bottom of the flask and the jumper stayed at the top and every once in a while, she would crawl down to the bottom and watch the widows. After a while, the smaller widow of the two managed to create a web ladder to the top where the jumper was. And of course, the jumper got caught in the webbing and was starting to get rapped up. I was a bit upset and felt that I had to do something about it. I found a piece of steel wire that was just small enough to fit through the air holes in the tape and I managed to get the widow to go to the bottom and I pulled the tape up and put the wire in front of the jumper. It grabbed the wire with its legs and fangs. I was amazed at how much gripping power it had with it's fangs. Unfortunately, the wire kept slipping out of its mouth and I kept trying again and again. I finally got the jumping spider out and covered the top up again just as the smaller widow came back to the top again. I left the jumping spider alone in it's over turned cup for the rest of the day. I happen to be a teacher's kid, so I stay after school for a few hours everyday and I was able to see the jumping spider then. It had unrapped its self and was sitting in the bottom of the cup. And it was fine. Amazingly, the black widow hadn't bitten the jumper. It is now a week later and that jumper is still sitting in its over turned cup chasing crickets and just hanging out. Now what we did here is not really recommended to do to your pet jumping spider. I think that they are really neat spiders and they shouldn't be just thrown into a death trap.

I really like them and even though I'm not allowed to keep them at home, my teacher so far has allowed me to keep one in the science lab next to his class room and I hope that it will get to stay a while. I also hope to find it a bigger home, as the cup it is in is too small for it. My teacher hopes that the black widows that he is keeping will die sooner or later and hopefully we can use that flask for the jumping spider and it can sit on the counter with all of his other cool creatures so long as he doesn't need it for any science experiments. This page shows you how to take care of jumping spiders. The person writting about them really seems to know what they are doing and I think that they have nailed the "how tos", like how to handle them, their habits and their temperaments. If you have the intentions in capturing one and need some good ideas of what to do, this is the page to go looking for ideas. I have read it a few times and I like it.


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Spiders indoors. Yay!

When you see a spider in your house, especially during this time of year, it is most likely that it is not inside because it is cold out and it wants to be warm. That spider has been in your house for about a year, from the time it hatched out of it's egg to it's full grown one inch leg span now. And it is also most likely that it is a male spider looking for a female. Most female spiders will lay an egg sac in the fall months and die. Almost all spiders you find outside, stay outside. Very few of them will come indoors where it is warm because they die before it gets too cold. Very few of the spiders you find inside have been outdoors, residing in your walls or under the funiture that hasn't been moved for the last six years in your living room. And if you are the person to have the nerves to get near them to move them outside, you really aren't doing them any favors. You may think so based on your own ideas that it will be happier outside because there are more things that spiders like to do outside and you will be happier because it isn't near you anymore. They are inside because their parents were inside and when they hatched, they were inside from the beginning and don't know anything else. And many spiders are designed for dark, quiet places where there is little food and water. When they are in the crawl space under your house, they are catching all of the bugs and other spiders under there. So they are perfectly happy there and they are set up for it. So you may ask: Why did it come out if it was so happy down there? Well, if it is fall time when you are reading this, it is pretty much the time where males spiders go looking for females and they most likely haven't found a suitable female in the boards in the walls where they are, so they go roaming until they find a female. In some other occasions, they will come out when they haven't found any bugs or water where they were, and so they came out to find it. You found it by accident and the reason it ran fast was because it saw you and wanted to get away from you as fast as you were trying to get away from it or kill it. They don't mean any harm and are just living their lives like any other creature is. They should be left alone if they are near a place that they can get away from you and hide. They don't like you anymore than you do, so leave them be.

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Background to this blog is by Jurgen Otto