Think its time to move lol nah just kidding

Yesterday I found a scorpion and now today I caught this little guy just over a cm long.

Im in Balfour Mpumalanga

Never seen that before, maybe you found a new species ! :woohoo:

Friedrich Rabie wrote: Think its time to move lol nah just kidding

Yesterday I found a scorpion and now today I caught this little guy just over a cm long.

Im in Balfour Mpumalanga ...

I'm not a very good taxonomist with non-tarantula spiders (or even with the tarantulas, it seems :blush: ), especially from Africa, and most especially with somewhat blurry photos, but it's general body shape strongly suggests one of the jumping spiders , family Salticidae . I'd guess it belongs in the genus Marpissa .

If you want to chase down the species you might start by looking for all species of the genus found in South Africa by looking in Platnick's World Spider Catalog , then chasing down each species on the 'Net to try to find photos. Maybe this would be a nice job for a rainy, weekend afternoon!

:laugh:


Hope this helps. Best of luck.


I know I'll never understand women.

I'll never understand how they can take boiling hot wax,
pour it onto their upper thigh,
rip the hair out by the roots,
and still be afraid of a spider!


EDIT:
I just did some checking and it appears that Marpissa is not found in Africa. So, either you really did find a new species; or it's a different, allied genus; or it's an invasive species that hasn't been caught with yet.

There is a fellow Dr. G. B. Edwards , at the Florida State Collection of Arthropods who is an expert in Salticids and may be able to help you. If you contact him, give him my regards.

Thank you so much, will have a look in the catalog. Trying to get better pictures, but I dont want to risk hurting or killing it. It can run quite fast :blink:

I've seen those before if I recall correctly. If you can get better pics I might be able to help

I'm not a very good taxonomist with non-tarantula spiders (or even with the tarantulas, it seems :blush: ), especially from Africa, and most especially with somewhat blurry photos, but it's general body shape strongly suggests one of the jumping spiders, family Salticidae. I'd guess it belongs in the genus Marpissa.

I know a lot of jumping spiders mimic other insects and to me it looks like this one is doing so with the odd body shape.

Might narrow down the search if you look for those that mimic others?