Orb Weaving SPider in Hawaii
Looking at an Orb-weaving spider in Hawaii - and finding that she had a companion!
The big female spider is just lower-left of center. The smaller, suspicious-looking spider is just upper-right of center.
So this was kind of a cool thing. In August of 2001, I was visiting the Hawaii’s Big Island. There were big black-and-yellow orb-weaving spiders in the tree and bushes. I think they were a species of Garden Spiders - Argiope.
In one of the webs, there was also a smaller, gray spider. It looked a bit like the larval face-hugger form of the monster in the ‘Alien’ movie.
What on earth was this? I thought perhaps it was a kleptoparasite - a spider that makes a living by stealing the prey caught by another spider.
Close-up of the funny-looking spider in the Orb Weaver’s web.
To make a long story short, I’m now pretty sure that the smaller spider was actually a male spider of the same species, living in the female’s web.
I did not know that males and females looked this different from each other. Very neat.