Spider Saturday: Wolf Spider
This week’s spider is a wolf spider, from the Lycosidae family. There are over 200 species of this spider in North America and many more found around the world. I took this female in the Los Angeles County Arboretum in mid March of this year amongst dead leaves. Notice the egg sac hanging from below. The female attaches the egg sac to her spinneret and carryies it around until it hatches. Once it hatches, the young crawl onto momma’s back and spider back piggy back until they are old enough to defend themselves.
Wolf spiders are quite common around here in the spring, but I don’t usually attempt to photograph them since they are amazingly fast. I found a bed of dead leaves that was crawling with Lycosidae. I noticed that with every step I took, 3-4 Lycosidae would dart over and under dead leaves away from me, many of them females and carrying egg sacs. They have fairly good eye sight, which was a bit frustrating for me. By the time I laid down on the ground, they would be long gone. I slowly crawled on the ground hoping to have one scurry onto a leaf in front of me long enough to get a shot or two off, but not only did that not work, I ended up crawling right over an ant colony and found myself covered in ants… twice. I also had to consider that I was laying on top of some wolf spiders. Their first reaction would be to try to get away, but they are known to bite and inject venom.
My final approach was to wait for them to come to me. I picked a good spot to lay in the brush and waited. Anyone passing by might think I was taking a nap or something. After ten minutes, a female made an appearance. I carefully pointed my camera and got off three shots. I used my 100mm lens to capture this shot from a distance of about 2 feet away. I tried to get a bit closer for a fourth shot, but the spider bolted. I’m pretty happy with the photo. Hopefully one day I’ll get some good shots with my 65mm lens.
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