A refresher image after many weeks...now for an up-date:
I am amazed how the tiny spiders the size of a dot of a pencil have actually grown! I think that there is some exchange of fluids or more likely that mom is able to catch and partially digest insects that the young may consume. There are obviously less young than first appeared days ago. The young remaining are several sizes larger and obviously quite healthy...maybe there is cannibalism as with many other predatory creatures so that the strongest survive?!
Mom seems to be in much better health since the young have hatched. She is obviously now feeding herself and most likely her young as well!
The evidence is all too obvious! Here she is secreting her enzymes into a bee, absorbing nutrients for herself and either making the bee carcass available to the young or more likely sharing her predigested fluids to the young as they could not possible penetrate the epidermis of such a large insect!
Sorry that the image is so blurry...if I were using my old Canon F-1 manual camera everything would be in great detail...so I have succumbed to the digital camera. I know that once I have really learned how to use it there are also manual and settings that let ME be in control! Patience with me folks, or at least more patience than I have with myself!
I know that many of you out there will have a difficult time accepting some of my anthropomorphising a female Green Lynx spider rearing her young! Most of us just HATE spiders in general. Yet I appeal to all of you committed garderners out there and other nature lovers that this is truly a miraculous event! Although there are many levels of creatures including ourselves who procreate and take procreation very seriously noone can deny that if we carry even a portion of what this lowly spider carries inherent in her genes to care for HER young then the young that we create stand a good chance for survival in a world that might just be a bit harsher than the world that those tiny baby spiders have to face!!!!
Michael/natureguy
Michael, thanks for sharing your pets with us! :-)
ReplyDeleteI just can't stop getting the creeps when I see these lil' spiders. I know that they have purpose and are good for us. It still freaks me out.
ReplyDeleteThanks for putting them into a different perspective.
Buffy,
ReplyDeleteImagine how freaked out momma Green Lynx spider was every time I took a picture of her and her young!!! If she had a mind to...I am sure she would appreciate that I did not consume her or destroy her nest with poisons as we are so apt to do...however it is up to us to appreciate the survival of this and the millions of other species of life upon this planet! No other species of animal holds the power of life and death as we do! It is a great responsibility that we can never take lightly...whether it concerns fellow humans or other species of creatures that live on this planet with us!!!
Love,
Michael/natureguy
Joan,
ReplyDeleteI would ask you to define "pets"! I...or We have a pet dog who we have named Sofie. She is wonderful and anthropomophically quite loving! She can also be like a totally out of contol child at times. She has special requirements that sometimes put us at our wits end!...this is our pet!
Now if you refer to anything that is living in my garden; whether plant or animal, is under very limited control and I would hardly include insect, snake, frog, spider or even most of the plants out there as PETS! They have come to live their by their own choice...(of course after I introduced some of them). When you see frogs or spiders you are seeing the established nature of my garden not something being kept in a greenhouse or a terrarium. I have many times in my life tried to capture something living in the natural world and attempt (and mostly fail) to keep artificially as a "pet". Now I find the magnificence of having a natural garden!!! Nature lives at my doorstep and there is no need to cling to parts of it in fear I shall never encounter it again!!!
wow Michael this is neato!!!!
ReplyDeleteThanks Michael, Beautiful pics...Good job.
ReplyDeleteI've got bsf grub too yea! Steve H.