Along came a spider…..

Looks like hubby didn’t make it….. shame……

Also looks like I need to do some dusting.  I just can’t bring myself to break her web.

Soft, hairy and gentle.

Yup, it’s a tarantula.

And those are my hands 🙂

Detective Slowvelder gets assistance.

With the assistance of my dedicated team of blog readers and fellow bloggers, the mystery of the murdered spider is progressing.  Heather from 2Summers bringing up the lead with the statement ” I didn’t know spiders have blood” .  Darn good question to investigate I thought.  I brought in my favorite investigator and personal guru, Mr Google to give us more information and it turns out that spiders have  blue/transparent blood.  Time for a specialist to look at this I decided, and emailed the Spider Club of South Africa.

Within a few hours I got the following response: (with my comments in red)
Hello Jackie,
I LOVE the Slowvelder!! In fact I think I will subscribe ….  ( Yay! another groupie – I love my subscribers 🙂 )

Just for the record and before I try guessing what happened to the spider it is a MRS not a MISTER!  Something to love about spiders is that they are the ultimate female chauvinists, particularly the big orb weavers.  It is the ladies that are bigger, better, brighter, more beautiful, smarter and more potent than the males. (aren’t we always?)

Here are photos of a near relative to your murdered spider showing the relative size of females (big and beautiful) to males, (insignificant and dull)! (<—– I like )

       

Nephila senegalensis, the Banded-legged Nephila or Banded-legged Golden Orbweb Spider.

Spider “blood”, actually haemolymph because it does not have red oxygen-carrying corpuscles IS blue or transparent.   The orange-red gunk is probably not her “blood”, although I am not sure what it is. Perhaps she was full of eggs.  Nephila  eggs are pink or orange when they are first laid, turning paler after a few hours. The ovaries in these spiders are huge because they lay hundreds of eggs at a time. So it could be that and all the other internal organs kind of squished.  I wonder why she was dropped though, all very mysterious.  Maybe a bird tried to grab her, got a fright and deposited its own droppings before it dropped the spider.

Sorry to tell you the spider’s motive of cutting the mantid from her web was not in the least altruistic, Mantids are well armed and can easily puncture a spider’s soft abdomen with those spiny front legs, so she probably thought it safer to remove such a potent little predator from her web to avoid injury.

All the best

Astri Leroy.

Thank you so much Astri for your quick and informative response.  I think we have all learned a lot from your email.  Welcome to the Slowvelder 🙂

So to summarise, I’m going to say that the red is probably “guts ‘n gore ‘n eggs” from our unlucky lady – it really did not look like bird droppings – so unless it was bodily fluid from a predator, I’m guessing it must have come out of the spider. Well it’s either that or an intruder with arachnophobia and a bottle of cheap ketchup as suggested by my worthy Dr Watson, Eremophila from Eremophila’s Musings.

Thank you all for your wise and witty comments, and thanks again to Astri from the Spider Club of South Africa. Take some time and visit their website – it’s very informative.

“Murder!” …. she wrote… (not for sensitive viewers)

When people first experience the bush here in Africa, the focus on all the big wild animals around especially the ‘Big 5’ but as you settle in and get accustomed to your surroundings you start to notice the little things and how the ecosystems work.  I love finding puzzles in the wild to ponder on and come up with possible solutions.

A few weeks ago when my family came to visit, we spent many hours watching a spider who was clever enough to build his huge web over one of my outside lights.  This was a really bright move because the light attracted insects at night so he caught loads and loads of food.  It was wonderful watching him repair his web every morning after a night of carnage.

Here is a photo I took when a large praying mantis got caught up in the web.

Spidey was a little startled by this mantis because it was wriggling frantically and causing a large amount of damage to the web.  He went and checked on it a few times and then backed off when it struggled to free itself.  After about 30 minutes of this, the spider made up his mind and set about cutting the mantis free of the web and releasing it.  How kind is that?  It kept us enthralled for hours and so Mr Spider became a permanent resident at our little hide-away in the bush with his huge web obvious to all who visited. I suspect many thought I was just a really bad housekeeper who didn’t dust away spider webs.

Now the really sad puzzle I need an answer to is this.  Mr Spider was murdered. Yes – murdered.  I suspect that we will need to call in Dexter to help (as I don’t watch television I THINK he is the dude who reads blood splatters?)

We found his body one morning, about 3 meters from his web.  I could not believe a spider had so much blood, and it looked like he had hit the ground with quite an impact.

What puzzles me is that murder in the bush is normally followed by a feast and the remains we usually find are skeletons.  Mr Spider’s murderer left him intact for us to find.   So……   who dunnit?

RIP Mr Spider.

Invasion of the Romans

Yes, that’s right – we have been invaded.  By the meanest Romans ever.  They are big, they are red, they are fast, they are aggressive and they have a mean bite.

Arno and Louise Wildlife via Flikr

Arachnid Solifugae (Red Roman Spider)

This group of arachnids has various common names most of which suggest that they are spiders, which they are not. The only similarity they share with spiders is the fact that they have eight legs. Solifugids have no venom glands and are not a threat to man although they are very aggressive and fast-moving and can inflict a painful bite.
The name of the solifugids originates from the Latin for ‘fleeing from the sun’. The term ‘sun spider’ applies to those species active during the day that tend to avoid the heat and dash from shadow to shadow – often of a person – giving the alarming impression that they are giving chase. The term ‘red roman’ probably originates form the Afrikaans term ‘rooiman’ (red man) due to the red-brown colour of some species. The popular terms ‘haarskeerders’ and ‘baardskeerders’ (Afrikaans words for hair and beard cutters) originate from the strange behaviour of some of these animals where they cut hair from sleeping people or animals (dogs) at night. It appears that female solifugids find hair to be an ideal nest liner.

Solifugids appear to have 10 legs but in fact, the first pair of appendages are the pedipalps that are very strong and are used for various functions such as drinking, fighting, feeding and mating. The first pair of legs are thin and short and used as tactile organs. The fourth pair of legs are the longest and strongest and carry white structures called racket organs – the purpose of which is not known.

They vary in size and can reach 70 mm and with legs included, can measure 160 mm. The head is large, supporting large strong chelicerae (jaws). The 11 segmented abdomen is soft and expandable that enables the animal to each large amounts of food.

These arachnids are found mostly in the hot arid regions and have a resistance to high temperatures and low humidity.

Solifugids prey on various insects, spiders, scorpions, small reptiles, dead birds and even each other.  They run their prey down and once they catch it they eat while the prey is still alive with vigorous ripping and cutting actions of the powerful jaws.

They are solitary animals living in scraped out sand retreats under rocks and logs  (and my kitchen).

Once they get deported from the kitchen they have a tendency to commit suicide in my swimming pool and I then have to fish their corpses out of the filter. Argh – even when they are dead the still give me the creeps.

Arno and Louise Wildlife via Flikr

Info from www.spiderzrule.com