You might have a cute little spider like Lucas at home!

Solemn Declaration

There are a lot of photos of spiders in this article. Although they are not all high-definition, they are not mosaiced at all.

If you have arachnophobia, or cannot accept pictures of spiders, please do not continue reading this article! Or just close your eyes and swipe away when you see the pictures!

But... they are really cute .

More than a decade ago, I walked into a museum that was exhibiting poisonous plants and animals. I saw a huge poster of a peacock jumping spider two or three meters high. I was struck by this big-eyed creature on the spot - what? Such a cute thing turned out to be a spider?

After so many years, I can't find the pictures from that time. This is a low-quality hand-painted peacock spider that I drew later to relieve my longing.

At that time, I knew nothing about biological classification, and I thought jumping spiders were " precious and wonderful creatures that can only be seen in museums or remote jungles " just like sea hares or chameleons. A few years later, I moved to a house on the ground floor, and one day I suddenly saw a spider on a flower pot.

I suddenly remembered the jumping spider's big eyes, and looked at it carefully.

It looked at me too.

…

Is this an illusion? Why is the spider looking at me?

The spider ran away. I quickly took out my phone, took two photos, and stared at the photos in a daze.

Striped flycatcher, photographed in Shanghai

Having a creature you thought was only found in Madagascar or Australia show up on your balcony is like pulling a SSR out of your sock drawer.

Whether it is European or not is secondary. I began to doubt that there is something wrong with my understanding of the world.

Curious little thing

It turns out that it was indeed my problem, not the world's.

Later I learned that the Salticidae is the largest family in the spider world, distributed on all continents around the world, and many of its species have adapted to the human environment . The one that appeared on the flowerpot is the most common species in Shanghai, called the striped flycatcher. The male has a very bright red forehead during the breeding season. The body length is about 5 to 8 mm. It often appears on home balconies, kitchens, or in the corners of rooms connected to the outside world. If you also plan to join the observation of jumping spiders at home, it will be an excellent research object.

Female striped flycatchers are more plain

As for why I felt like I was being stared at by a spider, it wasn't an illusion. Jumping spiders are very curious , and when disturbed they will often run a few steps and look up at you, or at the camera! So the jumping spiders I photographed often hold up their hairy hands (chelicerae) and look like they're "let me see you."

A jumping spider that I couldn't identify. This photo was taken in Macau. I found it on the wall of the ramen shop where I ate.

Jumping spiders may behave like this because of their excellent vision . Although most spiders have 6 to 8 eyes, their vision is generally not very good. It is said that most of them can only sense light. However, the large pair of eyes in front of jumping spiders can form images, and the two pairs of eyes on the top and sides are sensitive to light, so they can usually see what is happening behind them . With good vision, decisions must be made based on rich visual information, so jumping spiders also have good brains.

Although I still haven’t figured out what counts as a jumping spider’s brain…

It feels like my brain has grown into my feet | findaspider.org.au

Once their existence is known, jumping spiders become impossible to ignore. Their movement is very distinctive, jumping forward at such a high speed that it looks like moving the mouse when a computer is stuck, with the arrow flashing on the screen intermittently, and there is no way to know where it will appear next.

They can appear anywhere - in Shanghai, black and white striped jumping spiders are often seen on the smooth bark of crape myrtles; there are furry jumping spiders and hunting spiders on tree trunks and stones; and striped flycatchers may appear on any tree bark, on steps, and even on purchased fruits and vegetables - I went to the flower market with a friend a few weeks ago, and when I went home, there was one squatting on her canvas bag!

Canvas Bag Spider (Striped Flycatcher)

Lucas isn't the only jumping spider

A few years ago, "Lucas the Little Spider" attracted countless people. My friends often sent me videos and asked me, "Is your favorite jumping spider Lucas?"

Lucas is a jumping spider, but a jumping spider is not Lucas . The Lucas in the animation is more like the Florida jumping spider, which is larger than most jumping spiders I have seen. It is said that it can grow up to 3-4 cm (the jumping spiders mentioned in this article are generally no longer than 1 cm). Lucas can also make friends with small flies, which is not something you can dwell on, after all, most of the photos of jumping spiders I have seen eating are of them catching flies and sucking them .

This is what a Florida jumping spider might look like - its large size makes its eyes look small | spidereyes2020 / wiki commons

Although there are no Lucas jumping spiders in Shanghai, there are still many species of jumping spiders. There are about 20 species recorded on iNaturalist. Here are a few common and cute ones in East China:

Carrhotus

This genus has a pair of huge fangs, which are a bit cool when exposed. But usually they hold their fangs with their hands and look innocent, just like an eight-legged kid. They often appear in bushes and grass, as well as low branches.

Striped Flycatcher (Plexippus setipes)

The males often have distinct red, white and black stripes in the fall and are often seen in green belts and home environments.

Menemerus

This genus is listed because it is very easy to find - there is only one place, wooden railings. In Shanghai from April to October, when you walk across a wooden bridge or wooden railings with vegetation casting a cool shadow, you can stick your head out and look at the back of the railings - there is a high probability that you will see two big eyes secretly looking at you.

Rhene

The broad-breasted flycatcher has a silly temperament. My friend said, "It looks like a guy who only works out his upper body at the gym." Although it is not very common in Shanghai, it is so cute! The way it peeks out makes us laugh when taking pictures.

The slackers who sneaked into the working class

Myrmarachne is also very interesting. As the name suggests, this is a type of spider that looks very much like ants - if you just glance at it, you can hardly tell the difference.

They can do anything to imitate ants. For example, spiders have eight legs, while ants only have six, so ant spiders use their front two legs to pretend to be ants using their antennae to explore the way , tapping the ground constantly; ants have three sections, head, thorax and abdomen, while spiders only have two sections, head, thorax and abdomen, so many ant spiders solve this problem by forcing their abdomens into an hourglass shape, as if they were sucking in a new waist...

Ant spider, photographed in Shanghai, the junction of red and orange is a false waist...

There are many ways to identify ant spiders. Friends who observe insects together look at the number of legs, and they will be exposed. But I mainly identify ant spiders by temperament . Ants are usually very hardworking and busy, always rushing to a distant destination; while jumping spiders are like fishing brothers mixed in with a group of 996 office workers, and each leg exudes a leisurely (fishing) temperament.

If temperament is hard to identify, ant spiders have a problem that all jumping spiders have - if you shake your finger over its head, the ant will completely ignore you, but the ant spider will immediately look up at you!

"What, what, let me see!" Antlers, filmed in Shanghai

Where is the peacock?

Uh… you may have noticed that there are not many brightly colored jumping spiders in Shanghai. They are indeed a bit lacking in the SSR feeling of peacock jumping spiders, but you can see a lot of them in the south. I nominate the local "peacock" jumping spiders as Siler. In the fallen leaves, you can never get enough of seeing these jeweled little bodies . Friends in southern China can keep an eye out for them in the fallen leaves.

Can this little thing be kept?

This question is a matter of personal opinion. As a hobbyist, I don't really agree with buying jumping spiders as pets .

First of all, they are venomous. Although jumping spiders cannot bite through human skin under normal circumstances, what if they do?

Native to North America, Phidippus audax is also a popular pet jumping spider. | Tibor Nagy / flickr.com

From a spider perspective, I personally have a lot of concerns about the pet trade. A recent study (Marshall et al., 2022) showed that the pet trade of arthropods (which mentions jumping spiders) is less regulated. There are some problems with this, such as the spiders you buy are likely to be wild-caught , and their living conditions in their habitats are often poorly investigated , which means we have no idea how they are doing and whether their populations are threatened. A large-scale pet trade could exacerbate their already fragile poor living conditions .

On the other hand, "good-looking" spiders are more common in the south. If they are transported to other places , they may not be able to adapt to the temperature and humidity , or even die on the road. Moreover, if they can no longer be kept, there is nowhere to release them.

Another concern of mine is that the pet trade may have contributed to the spread of the ( lethal to frogs) chytrid fungus among frogs around the world, and whether less-studied arthropods might face the same risk.

A striped flycatcher with a red forehead, photographed in Shanghai

However, jumping spiders are quite common in human living environments. In fact, many people probably have a few of them at home . I sometimes catch a jumping spider at home and keep it for a few days, then put it back in the flowerpot after observing it. During this process, the biggest challenge I faced was the jumping spider's food .

Jumping spiders only eat live food , so I also need to raise fruit flies or super small mealworms at the same time as jumping spiders. Whether it is fruit flies or mealworms that escape, it will cause some trouble to the hygiene of the house. Not to mention that mealworms grow too fast, fruit flies will reproduce in situ, so there are dense maggots wriggling in the fruit fly bottle from time to time. This scene is really, well, exciting... As for the story of having to cut bananas for the maggots, I won’t tell you...

Don't put the picture up anymore.

The biggest gain I got from observing jumping spiders over the years is that beneath the surface of urban life full of man-made objects, I discovered a wild, diverse, busy and intense world of invertebrates - just in a few pots of plants on the balcony, I recorded 9 species of jumping spiders in a year.

There really is an SSR in the sock drawer.

So I wrote the story of jumping spiders - if you also want to see that world, start by looking back at those big eyes that are secretly looking at you.

Note: The pictures without source are all taken by the author (I kid you not, these cute little spiders are really around us!)

Author: darla Dai

Editor: Old Cat

This article comes from the Species Calendar, welcome to forward

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