Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Does whatever a spider can

Even though it's an Australian website, I've been finding the Find-A-Spider Guide pretty useful lately as I catch and identify the spiders running around my room. So far I've found a common house spider in the windowsill, some kind of orb spider under the shelf (but that one's got an impressive body count of ants underneath it, so it can just stay where it is for now), plenty of daddy-long-legs, and one I haven't been able to identify -- it looks something like one of these guys. I haven't been able to look at it closely enough to see the arrangement of its eyes or spinnerets (and then, of course, google it until I'm confident I've got an answer -- it's not like I know these things off the top of my head, of course) but from what I've seen of it in the wild (i.e., my bedroom) it doesn't strike me as an ambush predator: it was out in the open with the lights on, it's got big legs for running and climbing, and I've never seen this type of spider sitting in a web.

I'll hang onto these little critters until tomorrow, when I have a better idea what they are, and then release them into the backyard. If they don't escape first, that is -- a plastic cup with a piece of wood on probably isn't the arachnid Alcatraz.

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