Huntsman spiders (Family Sparassidae)

It is apparently an eight-eyed spider of which I did not get the opportunity to confirm, I meant the how many eyes.

Quite big in size compared to most of the spiders we commonly see, this specimen measures about 30 mm across. It has been reported that many of this species can grow much larger than this.
As usual such encounters are always by chance, while I was on one of my week end sojourn of jungle hiking, it was dashing across the road when I notice it, surprisingly it stop half way across and took refuge maybe forgetting it is out of its element, it was on wide open tar road, wrong camouflage background, so much for being eight eyed.
After a couple of shots from my camera it took off and made it all the way to the other side of the road. Now, the million dollar question, why would a spider cross the road?

Spiny Spider - Gasteracantha Fornicata

An unusual looking spider with a hard outer shell that is colourful with yellow horizontal stripes on a deep brown almost black background. I believe most people are not aware that a spider can look like that.

It was a challenged to photograph it as it has a tendency to turn the underside up.

Fighting Spiders - Thiania bhamoensis

I chance upon a spider last week that reminds me of an activity I so fondly remembered during my childhood. Not just any spider, only a certain species is caught and the thrill of pitching them against each other in a fight certainly rekindles happy childhood memories and because the males readily fight each other if put together, they are known as fighting spiders from the Salticidae Family. Catching the spider was half the fun, your priced specimen winning in a fight against your

friend’s is an extra bonus.

To look for them, you have to search them out in hedges with long leaves preferably in a cool quiet location with minimal intrusions like human activities or traffic. The Crinum asiaticum or commonly called spider lily is their favourite plant to nest hence the name. They build nest by binding two leaves together with strands of silk, once a nest is located, slowly and carefully open the two leaves to confirm that it is the correct spider species you are looking for. The next step is to confirm that it is a male, females are no good for fighting, the males are instinctively much more territorial and aggressive, scientifically termed as agonistic behavior. In comparison, females have larger abdomens (or is it their butts?), shorter claws and display a duller appearance with more green and less blue iridescent markings.

You catch them with your bare hands as they don’t bite and are not known to be toxic. In my days, they are always kept in match boxes and the only acceptable accommodation for champions will no doubt be matchboxes of the “King Kong” brand, some of you older guys might remember this (girls don’t play with spiders in my days and as far as I know still don’t). Then some leaves are put in to provide moisture and a “homely” environment for them to hide and to feed them, any small insect will do but first they are to be incapacitated by squishing them half dead. To train champion fighters, the practice was to feed them smaller specimens of the same species, in an attempt to ignite their cannibalistic behavior thus making them more aggressive, or so we think, it all sounds so “inhumane” now but that was how it was done.

To make them fight, all that is needed is to bring two males together and while facing each other, a sort of ritualistic dance occurs with opponents circling each other with the front legs/arms open up as if they are sizing each other up before taking any physical actions. After a brief moment, the fight begins with their front legs or arms (we thought it was their claws at the time) locking up against each other in a push and pull motion. The loser is the one that gives up and runs away. I have not come across fatalities during this fighting matches but I do see injuries being sustained when an arm seem to have gone missing after a while. Properly fed and kept, I had one champion that I manage to keep for more than a month, before it escape because I did not close the matchbox lid properly and I never had one that died on me due to old age most probably because they always managed to escape before that happen

The Two-striped telamonia (Telamonia dimidiata),

One of the many jumping spiders found in the Malaysian tropical rain forest, jumping spiders forms the largest family of spiders from the family Salticidae.

Jumping spiders get their names from its ability to jump from place to place spunning silk if need be while jumping, the silk is used as anchorage just in case it falls, it can climb back up the spunned silk.

The two striped telamonia, made famous by an e-mail hoax circulated widely around the globe around 2002 and till now occasionally still being circulated in many edited form still referencing to the two striped Telamonia spider. The hoax claims its bite is fatal and they are usually found lurking under toilet seats waiting to bite on any unsuspecting victim’s butt. Some e-mail hoax actually titled the e-mail “Butt Spider”.

Further information on the hoax can be found in this site: http://www.snopes.com/horrors/insects/telamonia.asp

Spider of Malaysia - 1

St. Andrew’s Cross Spider (Agiope Versicolor)

A colorful spider with a reputation of building an attractive web with an extra structure called stabilimentum. This structure helps to attract more prey and perhaps also explains the hypothesis of it being bigger than a normal spider due to its ability of catching more food.

The extra web structure also resembles a cross which explains the common name, unfortunately the photo I have taken do not show the web in great detail.

Wide-Jawed Viciria (Viciria praemandibularis)

I am not too sure if I had identified this spider correctly but comparison of photos available of this species of spider with the specimen I took pictures of seem to suggest it at least comes from the genus Viciria.

According to Wikipedia, Viciria is a spider genus of the Salticidae jumping spider family