oooh, i’m
so excited about this one i could hardly wait for webnesday this week. i’m fond of all spiders and try not to give
preferential treatment, although i particularly like jumpers. but this week, i’ve got a real spider… a big, solid, grunty, hairy
beast, right out of an arachnophobe’s nightmares. ready?
behold, Porrhothele antipodiana, the black
tunnelweb spider. isn’t it
gorgeous. if i ever found one of these
in/around the house, i might have to consider long-term, more official
spider-keeping as a hobby. sadly, these
photos aren’t mine, but rather those of a very obliging friend in dunedin, whom we visited
recently. i spied a dried-out Porrhothele husk set aside in his
basement and asked about it; apparently they turn up in the house every once in
a while and he had some good photos of a few recent individuals. which i, of course, now bring to you.
Porrhothele is a genus endemic to new zealand,
with five described species. it belongs
to the family Hexathelidae, which also includes the sydney funnel-web spider, Atrax robustus. but the black tunnelweb, our lovely fuzzy P. antipodiana, is not venomous,
although it can deliver a painful bite due to the very large chelicerae
(jaws). and i’m sure its sudden
appearance can be extremely startling.
it can be dangerous to mice, as it happens (although the reverse is also
true), but it’s not particularly aggressive or interested in people. it usually lives in underground burrows with
silken triplines radiating from the burrow mouth, but may also build a
sheet/tunnel-web above ground (so not just a clever name). hence the incredible spinnerets.
there’s a
bit of relevant folklore this week too — P.
antipodiana was also supposedly peter jackson’s
inspiration for shelob in the lord of the
rings films. shelob’s anatomical
inaccuracies (stinger, gaping mouth) are true to tolkien’s original
description, so while mr. jackson may disagree with my praise of the fat, sassy
tunnelweb, at least i shouldn’t reproach him with inventing imaginary stingers
on a spider.
autumn has fallen in new zealand. we passed the equinox in good company, with delicious food and entertaining games. the difference in light is no more pronounced between the days now than at any other time, but the seasons have definitely turned again. we've had the first cold nights; a few non-native trees are changing color or just dropping green leaves. the neighbor's glorious horse-chestnut is dropping beautiful russet buckeyes into our secret patio - welcome at most times, ominous when bathing im freien under leaden skies or the full moon. comfort foods start to appear on the menu. the cat becomes snugglier. mornings are dark, and getting up, arduous. it feels like hallowe'en should be coming, but instead it's easter around the corner. we become philosophical and introspective.
or else we flee to the greenhouse and soak up the vernal color we still associate with april from our childhoods.
this is Nephila clavata, a large, striking orb-weaver common throughout most of japan. i encountered many of them in the imperial gardens and kitanomaru-koen park in tokyo, while visiting in october 2007. (these photos have, i confess, appeared here once before.) at the time, i asked ika-san what kind of spiders they were, having been amazed by their size and vivid yellow and pink stripes. a quick trawl back through my notes on the japanese squid collections revealed 'jorō-gumo' noted in one of the margins, and bless google, i found not only the species name but also a page about jorō-gumo folklore. apparently this spider fits into the siren or hulder-maiden category in local mythology, and even appeared in one of the animated hellboy films. i have to say, i stood entranced in front of the large, head-height webs sparkling in the morning dew, so perhaps there's some truth in the stories after all.
last week, i talked a little about the (perhaps not-so-) nefarious white-tail, and mentioned that those i had found in my house hadn't lasted long. although most of their frozen, curled little corpses went out to the garden, two were preserved for posterity, and i'd like to show them to you today. these two each turned up (separately) at times when i was preparing squid specimens for SEM at work, so it probably won't surprise anyone much that i decided to have a closer look at them — a much closer look. see?
white-tails are incredibly bristly, all over, which i expected. but what astonished me was the variety and the intricate structure of some of the setae, whose specific names i haven't been able to track down yet.
i love science.
we just got back from a stunning weekend in dunedin, but before i launch into those pics, i should probably finish up with the poor knights. our little camera obviously isn't going to be used in any high-tech underwater filming any time soon, but it does convey some of the marine magic a little better than the still shots do.
which makes me feel both good and bad. having come across perhaps a dozen white-tails in my flats over the past few years (they've appeared on this site before), it's good to know that they aren't as bitey and nasty as they're made out to be (although good old wikipedia mentions that they 'may be responsible for a disproportionately high number of spider bites because of their habits'). on the other hand, i now get something of a guilt trip, because they're the only spiders i usually dispatch when i find them in the house - i have a bug-eating cat (who recently discovered cicadas, but that's a different story) and however less-toxic white-tails now appear, i still don't want to find out what would happen to him if he ate one. although i suppose cats must have some kind of built-in don't-eat-that-one instinct.
anyway, they have another habit that i'm not that fond of - they prey on one of my favorite other spiders, the black/grey house spider, Badumna sp. but apparently white-tails, being non-web-builders, can get caught in other spiders' webs (such as last week's daddy longlegs)... so i guess it all balances out.
