Zebras

Common Zebra Spider (Salticus scenicus)

Heading out to the recycling bucket yesterday, I spotted this little hitchhiker catching a ride as I swung the door open. It's a jumping spider called Salticus scenicus, or Common Zebra Spider, and it's found across the whole of the Northern Hemisphere. This one is a female; she has paler legs than a male would have (yellow-brown with darker rings at the joints rather than all dark) and smaller chelicerae (the jaws and fangs just visible in between her front legs). Though she may look rather large and scary in the picture, in real life she's pretty tiny, measuring a mere quarter-inch long.

These spiders tend to hunt from vertical surfaces (like doors). Rather than spinning a web, they leap on their prey, sometimes from a fair distance away. While they generally hunt spiders and insects even smaller than themselves, they have reportedly been recorded taking prey up to three times their own body length!