Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
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Category: Organisms
Posted on: August 26, 2007 1:54 PM, by PZ Myers
I heard a rumor that yesterday was Mrs Tilton's birthday, so here's a belated gift: a pretty picture of an exotic Brazilian salticid batting its eyelashes at the viewer.
(Take that, Cute Overload!)
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Comments
I guess if a cuttlefish can have eyelids than the spider can have eyelashes ((sigh))
Hold on a minute while I add all this information to Wikipedia...
Posted by: dorid | August 26, 2007 2:03 PM
How does spider vision work anyway?
Posted by: Steve_C | August 26, 2007 2:18 PM
My gracious! Those little hair-like spines on the top of her head are gorgeous, is she wearing mascara?
Posted by: ssjessiechan | August 26, 2007 2:20 PM
Salticids are the coolest spiders by far.
Posted by: LKL | August 26, 2007 2:23 PM
It (He?) (she?) looks like something out of Sesame Street.
Posted by: Spanish Inquisitor | August 26, 2007 3:07 PM
Ain't them brown eyes purty?
Posted by: 6EQUJ5 | August 26, 2007 3:21 PM
Awesome!!!
Posted by: wildlifer | August 26, 2007 4:20 PM
Wait a minute! How many eyes does that little guy have?
Posted by: Sam Nesvoy | August 26, 2007 4:41 PM
I see at least four but spiders can have up to 8 eyes and some are rather small so she (he) may have more we can not see.
Posted by: KevinC | August 26, 2007 5:55 PM
Posted by: MarkR | August 26, 2007 5:56 PM
Spider eyes have lenses and retinas like human eyes (as opposed to the compound eyes that insects have). Their lenses typically have very low F numbers (good for night vision), but their retinas have a low density of light sensitive cells, so the resolution is very poor.
Posted by: Eric Haas | August 26, 2007 6:55 PM
What a beautiful adaptation! I have always thought that we should be very grateful that these fearless predators are not as large as a tomcat.
Posted by: Gray Lensman | August 26, 2007 8:19 PM
Are you sure he isn't a character from Sesame Street that got lost in Brazil? I swear he looks like the Cookie Monster's first cousin.
Posted by: Keanus | August 26, 2007 8:57 PM
Aw! Cute! Send it to Cute Overload. No? *builds "unconventional cute" website*
Posted by: Maronan | August 27, 2007 1:26 AM
this is one of those mixed-reaction stimuli. you know, "JESUS FUCK oh actually it is kind of cute sort of isn't it..."
i love biology.
Lepht
Posted by: Lepht | August 27, 2007 5:16 AM
Ooh, thanks, PZ! She's a knockout!
Spanish Inquistor @5: probably a she, to judge by the pedipalps. The "furriness" makes it hard to see, though, and it's possible the characteristic "boxing glove" palps of the male are concealed beneath the "fur".
Sam, Kevin, Mark /& Eric @8-11,
she has eight eyes, and I'm pretty sure you can see all of them in this photo. That is, you can see the anterior lateral and median eyes (the AMEs are the huge ones that characterise salticids and make them seem so "human"); and you can sort see where the posterior eyes are. (The PMEs are at the corners of the top of her "head". The PLEs of salticids are vestigial, mere pindots; I'm guessing they are among the small black dots between PME and ALE.)
Most spiders have eight eyes though there are some groups with six eyes. (In almost all cases, six-eyed spiders are missing the AMEs, which are structured differently to the other six.) There are much rarer examples of spiders with further reductions: four eyes, two or (in some cave spiders) none. I've never heard of any with more than eight, or with an odd number of eyes.
Eric is generally right that spiders' eyes aren't very good. The salticids are one of the few exceptions, though; those AMEs produce an image much sharper than what most other spiders see.
Posted by: Mrs Tilton | August 27, 2007 5:34 AM
Ah, just noticed that "click for larger image" thing... Yes, with the larger image you can definitely see all eight eyes. The tiny PLEs are at 11:00 and 1:00, respectively, to the right and left ALEs, and about 4-5 mm away from them, assuming we have the same screen resolution.
Posted by: Mrs Tilton | August 27, 2007 5:39 AM
For #5 and #9.
I don't know the species offhand, but based on the pedipalps that's a female.
Posted by: D Cates | August 27, 2007 6:45 AM
Here is another cutie from National Geographic. It has lots of great pictures.
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/photogallery/explorer_spidersex/photo5.html
Posted by: bernarda | August 27, 2007 7:25 AM
Is it anthropomorphic to love salticids but find practically all other spiders creepily untrustworthy, or just the fruits of experience?
The only time I ever felt aversion on meeting a salticid was when I was pruning a colony of Green Tree Ants (those ones that weave together leaves into football-sized nests using their larvae as glue guns) that was invading the house, in Townsville (Qld, Australia). The ants have got a bit of a nip but not much sting, though you have to be careful not to be overwhelmed by numbers (in Townsville you do not lean against a tree trunk to relax), but the upside is they make a tasty appetiser or ingredient for curries, tasting of lemon grass and vinegar...
Anyway, while cutting some infested branches away from the eaves I nearly put my hand on what seemed to be a gargantuan ant - over an inch long. (There are plenty of ants that size where I grew up in Sydney - various species of Myrmecia - with which one learns to avoid intimate contact; though none of those are green AFAIK) I flinched so badly I lost sight of it and nearly fell off the roof, but later discovered (somewhere... which I leave as an exercise for the reader) that there are indeed large salticid mimics of tree ants. Wish I'd got a closer look.
I used to enjoy watching a different (smaller) species jumping around my desk at work, until a couple of years ago when a new co-worker went and surface-sprayed the room without thinking to ask first. Still none around. Humans are toxic, even if some of them do have nice eyes.
Posted by: John Scanlon, FCD | August 27, 2007 9:56 AM
For those that like this kind of thing, you may wish to go over to Ugly Overload.
Posted by: DouglasG | August 27, 2007 10:04 AM
John @20:
Is it anthropomorphic to love salticids but find practically all other spiders creepily untrustworthy
Not at all, I've long noticed than even many inveterate spider-haters like salticids. Wrote about it once, in fact. The core of my theory (which is mine) is that we perceive salticid features the same way we perceive the neotenous features of a child.
Posted by: Mrs Tilton | August 27, 2007 10:38 AM
Ooooh. The jumping kinds are always so much cuter than most.
Posted by: Warren | August 27, 2007 1:08 PM
Eyes? I thought they just had spidey-sense, which tingles when bad guys are around.
Posted by: AaronInSanDiego | August 27, 2007 1:31 PM
No, just a little bigoted. A salticid stole my girlfriend once. A week later my car broke down outside of a theridiid's home. She invited me to dinner with her family while I waited for the tow-truck.
It just goes to show you: you can't judge a book lung by its cover.
Happy (belated) B-day, Mrs. Tilton!
Posted by: Brownian | August 27, 2007 3:02 PM
Ok, she is pretty!
So... is she doing anything later?
Posted by: Melissa G | August 27, 2007 3:18 PM
I like salticids because of the way that they interact. They clearly look at you, and adjust their behavior to your presence. I like the way the gnash their little pedipalps together, and how they pause to measure up a jump, and the dramatic way they finally zing across the gap.
I had a salticid 'stalk' my hand as I sat on a bench once; I have no idea what its true motive was, but it continued to move towards my hand even when I moved it several times, and it always stayed just 'out of sight'around the corner of a board.
Posted by: LKL | August 27, 2007 4:50 PM
LKL: Where was this?
Posted by: Rey Fox | August 27, 2007 5:00 PM