Webnesday (56): Crabby Calisthenics

I came across a new spider this past week. We were cleaning weeds out of the garden and tossing the plucked ones into a wheelbarrow. After I’d emptied them into the green bin, I noticed a small, tan spider among the sow bugs (wood lice), earwigs, and other arthropods left behind, and managed to move it to a new hunting ground by way of a shamrock flower. It was of a species that I haven’t noticed before; its common name is square-ended crab spider, and its taxonomic name Sidymella angularis. Squiddy, my daughter and fellow arachnophile, tells me that they are particularly gymnastic in that, when one finds itself turned onto its back, it is easily (and famously) able to execute a forward somersault, using its extra-long front legs as the force and its posterior abdominal points as the fulcrum. While I was transporting it to its new frontier, I was able to see this remarkable behavior a couple of times. (As usual, please click on a photo for a more detailed image.)