I didn't attempt to pick up said spider in order to determine how its eyes were arranged, nor did I shine a light on its eyes to see if it had the typical wolf spider emerald eyeshine. I'm pretty much going by size and cursorial habit.
As is typical of October weekends, I tend to post Halloween-appropriate material, and this beauty certainly qualifies as such, wolf spider or not.
3 comments:
I don't have a problem with spiders, though I was taken aback at age 12 or so when quite a big one made an appearance in the hallway of our family's then house, a little 50s-development bungalow that backed on a stretch of old hedgerow-type woods. I think my memory exaggerates its size (my dad scooped it up and took it outside), but I bet it too was a wolf spider. Just the way it sat there on the floor with an authoritative air. They're ground-level critters rather than tree or web dwellers, make dens, and hunt actively. The one in our house was, IIRC across the decades, brown, not like your black beauty. Wikipedia says that one of the largest is the Carolina wolf spider, which is brown... so maybe their range extends up into te hills of northern NJ.
We also had a big cecropia moth show up in that little house one day, truly spectacular. It was the old woodland that surrounded us that made it so wildlife rich.
I’m fortunate in working sites with considerable green space. Love my critters!
I dunno if you keep up with his blogging habits, but PZ Myers has shifted from zebrafish to a newfound fascination with spiders, starting collection around his town, creating breeding colonies, even getting his wife into the act. He even went to a conference of arachnologists.....
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