Diving Bell Spider

The diving bell spider is the only predominantly aquatic spider species, spending its entire life underwater. It needs to breathe air like any other spider, so it uses special hairs on its legs and abdomen to trap a bubble around itself.

A. aquatica out and about – you can see the air bubble trapped around its abdomen.

Peacock Jumping Spider

Welcome to the first installment of the Friday Spider!

For our first ever post, I wanted to showcase the creature that has changed so many of my acquaintances’ opinions of our eight-legged friends already, the Peacock Jumping Spider.

M. volans – ‘volans’ means ‘flying’, as it was once believed that the spider could use its feathered abdominal flaps for limited flight. This has since been disproved.