UK Nature Blog

Zebra spiders: the ultimate pet

What could be more fun than playing chase the cursor with a zebra spider on your monitor? You've really got to love those characterful little beasts. This picture courtesy of my own dear father.

Ant farmer

Some ants farm aphids, tending them and stroking them with their antenna for the sweet honeydew produced from the rear end. I rather wish they wouldn't when it's my plants that are the farm!

Black on orange, or orange on black?

Is this an orange ladybird with so many black spots that they've joined together, or a black ladybird with just a couple of strangely shaped orange spots? I suspect it's a Harlequin, and hence arguably the former, but I'm not really sure about the identification.

Yellow slug

This is a Yellow slug crawling through a wormery that I saw at the London Green Fair recently. I mistakenly called it a Leopard slug at the time, not being particularly familiar with slug species and assuming that this spotted thing must be one. But now I know better having looked it up.

However if you've never seen a video of Leopard slugs mating, I suggest you do so right now - but not if you're eating or otherwise easily repulsed. It's truly bizarre.

100 spiders on my butt

It's baby Garden spider time! I found a few hundred of them on the water butt. I love the way they all scatter when disturbed, as if a bomb's gone off, then they slowly clump back together.

Big eyes of a Zebra spider

My father sent a great picture of a Zebra spider, showing the two particularly large forward facing eyes. These give it excellent binocular vision in order to pounce accurately on prey.

These little black and white spiders are very characterful and great fun to play with as they walk sideways, backwards and pounce on your finger. They always leave a silk line behind when they jump so they can bungee back if necessary. Very clever. I've touched on them before, with a picture from a different angle that shows the body.