Saturday, December 8, 2012
Ubelievably amazing: The Peacock Spider Maratus volans
Someone posted some pictures of these a while back, context-free, and of course I had to track them down!
These little guys--and they are tiny--have brightly colored flaps that they raise in courtship display, just like peacocks (hence the name).
Peacock Spider is a page devoted to them, whit lots of links going off for more information and videos and images. Better still, it's part of a truly well-organized site devoted to Australian spiders.
Here's a lovely video: Catalyst: Peacock Spider - ABC TV Science, taken by
Dr Jurgen Otto.
And here is Dr. Otto's Flickr stream. I haven't finished looking through all the pictures yet myself. They truly are stunning.
I love it when I learn about unxpected wonders.
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I love, love, love jumping spiders. They are so very, very cool. And this! A peacock spider! I love that they're so tiny, yet so showy! Thanks so much for bringing them to my attention.
ReplyDeleteI've got some pictures of jumping spiders, and it's really amazing: These guys are *tiny,* and then a lens magnifies them and there's all this hair and these adorable big eyes!
ReplyDeleteI don't think I've posted any of the pics b/c the spiders are also *fast,* so I've no gorgeous pictures like Dr. Otto's, but it's worth taking them myself just to really see the difference.
And, yeah, peacocks! Totally awesome!