Friday, September 3, 2010

Can you see me now?

Tom cut some sunflowers this afternoon for us to sell at the farmers market tomorrow.  While I was trimming them up and putting them in water, a small beautiful little yellow spider fell off one of them onto the kitchen counter.  Here's a picture of it.


It is exactly the same color at the sunflower petals.  Can you see it in the picture below?

It is in about the 4:00 position on the sunflower.  I've been trying to figure out what kind of spider it is and have determined it is some sort of crab spider.

They are called crab spiders because they look a lot like crabs, having two powerful front pairs of legs angled outward and bodies that are flattened and often angular. Also, like crabs, they can move either sideways or backwards with ease

Crab spiders do not build webs to catch prey, but are hunters and ambushers and use camouflage-hunting techniques to trap their prey.  Obviously, this little guy is making good use of the camouflage technique.

Individuals of some species of crab spider can change color to match the flower on which they are sitting. It is, however, a very slow process that can take days.   I assume this spider may be one of these since his color matches the sunflower so closely.

There are over 3000 species of crab spiders! 

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