Topped Off With a Tarantula

The morning was shaping up to be rather anticlimactic this past Saturday as I was searching for critters in the desert about forty minutes from my home. A few scorpions, a couple of species of lizards, some desert birds, and a handful of rabbits, including one that was being hauled off as prey by a great horned owl, were fun to see, but none of those were on my target list for the morning.

My top two targets were desert horned lizard and tarantula. I was hoping to find one or both so I could make them the subject for my practice with macro photography. I spent my initial time at dawn cruising the rough roads that meander through the sagebrush and juniper habitat with hopes of spotting a wandering male tarantula. They aren't often seen, but dusk and dawn are good times to look for them, especially during breeding season when the males are driven by their genetic programming to wander around looking for love near a female burrow. After an unsuccessful attempt at cruising for the big spiders I went on foot and decided to methodically course ideal habitat for desert horned lizards, gravelly, east-facing hillsides warmed by the morning sun. I came up empty again despite my strategic and persistent approach to locating my target species.

Listening for and locating some desert birds provided a break from the fruitless efforts to find the horned lizard and tarantula, but I eventually decided to try one more time to locate a horned lizard when I spotted some ideal habitat rising up from a small wash that was just down hill from me. I weaved my way through a maze of sagebrush as I headed down the hill and was just about to cross the wash and push up the next hillside when the prize of the day came into view--a male tarantula was basking in the sun at the base of a bush just to my left. I went from a desert wanderer on autopilot to the excitement level of a kid in a candy store when I realized my morning was being topped off with a tarantula. I was sliding around on my belly on the desert floor just like my grandkids slide around on our luxury vinyl tile in order to capture most of the images I'm sharing in this post.

Male Tarantula Utah County, Utah

The image below was an attempt to get a tight focus on the tiny eyes at the top of the spiders head. They aren't easily discerned unless one knows what to look for, but they form a small dark bump at the front of the tan-colored head.

Macro Focus on the Tiny Eyes of a Male Tarantula Utah County, Utah

Here is a heavily cropped image to show more detail of the tarantula's eyes and head. There are some fangs that can deliver venom behind what looks like long whiskers.

Macro Focus on the Tiny Eyes of a Male Tarantula Utah County, Utah

I captured a few more images as the spider was attempting to put an end to our private little photo shoot.

Male Tarantula Utah County, Utah

Male Tarantula Utah County, Utah

Miss Carolina, Queen of North American Wolf Spiders

A few years ago I was enjoying a night ride on my mountain bike in our local foothills. I was wearing a headlamp that night because I was using eye shine to locate nocturnal creatures as they were looking in my direction from their dark hiding places along the hillside.  Eye shine occurs when light reflects from tapetum lucidum, a layer of special tissue in the eyes of many vertebrates. I needed to have the light source near my own eyes so I could see when the light reflected back from the eye shine displaying critters. I located jackrabbits, cotton-tailed rabbits, raccoons, foxes, deer, and common poorwills (nocturnal bird species) during that particular ride. Somewhere along my ride that night the eye shine from smaller creatures caught my attention. I stopped to investigate the owner of one of those smaller eye shines. I approached it, put a spot light on it, and discovered a very large spider. I almost did a happy dance as I thought that I might have found my very first tarantula. It was a large, hairy spider--larger than any spider I'd seen before. The face of the giant spider was quite hairy. I took a few photos of that spider and shared them with some spider experts only to discover that it was actually a Carolina Wolf Spider. Until that night I was unaware of the fact that many spiders have tapetum lucidum. I also discovered that the female Carolina wolf spiders are North America's largest wolf spiders, the queens of wolf spiders.

I found a few large females recently and played around with capturing some macro images of one this morning while hiking with my son, Jason. If you are not a spider expert (which I am not) you'd probably think this is a tarantula, wouldn't you?

I asked my son, Jason, to put his finger in the frame for the next image to a relative size comparison.

Unfortunately I got the spider a little dusty while trying to get it to cooperate with me. The dust particles make it difficult to see that the spider actually has eight eyes. The image above sort of shows the four larger eyes at the top of the head, but they don't show the four smaller eyes that, to me, resemble a frowny face.

Below is another image that shows some of the eyes a little better. You can see two larger eyes on the visible side of the spider's head. There is a matching set on the opposite side of the head. You can also see two of the four smaller eyes that are tiny purplish nubs right next to and below the larger eye in the front.

This is a heavily cropped image to show the four smaller, purplish eyes. Six of the eight eyes are present in this image. The other two are obstructed by hair and the angle of the head. The color and size variation resemble small jewels.

This final image provides a decent view of the pedipalps, or feelers, the two shortened legs used to sense and guide prey into the mouth.

A few other interesting things I've learned about these wolf spiders is that they are found throughout most of the US and parts of Canada, typically in arid deserts, prairies, fields, and pastures. Males typically die in the fall after their first breeding season while females may live several years. Unlike others, female wolf spiders carry an egg sack that may produce over 100 young spiders. Those young ones tag along on mom's back for a short period after they hatch and then they head out on their own.