Acting Crabby - NH 020

NH 020

Crab Spider

Category: Arachnids

Family: Thomisidae

I apologize for not posting anything in awhile, I've been a little busy lately. But it doesn't matter because it's Spider Saturday! Now, since I've been busy I don't have too much information on this guy, only his family which is Thomisiade. What I like about these spiders is that they differ from the usual color scheme and they have the distinctive angled front legs which look look oddly enough like their namesake: crab spiders.

The unfortunate thing about this particular guy is that I don't have complete labeling data for him. I know that he was captured in early September, but locality wise I think it may have been at Baker Tower, Cornell, Ithaca; but I'm not positive about that. It is kind of odd though that I found him indoors because crab spiders like to live on flowers (hence the yellowish coloring) and ambush their prey rather than building a web and waiting. Also another interesting fact about them is that they continue to resemble crabs in that they are able to walk sideways. Now running through the pages associated with the crab spider Wikipedia page, I think that this guy (or girl for that matter) is in the genus Misumena though I am entirely unsure about that - those in this genus are the flower crab spiders. And for those who have always wanted pictures with some sort of scale, here's one finally.