6 legged spider???

[Venger]

Then you're going to have to get us a photo.
Nothing is born with 5 legs!
Again - how many sections does it have?

Oh and welcome to WAB

[No.9 Spider]

Originally Posted by 6LeggedSpider

My son has found a spider with 6 legs, is this a spider?? It is about 5cms in length including his legs and body etc and has brown and yellowy speckley legs and body!! I thought that all spiders have 8 legs...global warming maybe????

Sounds like a crippled House (Tegeneria sp.) spider to me so long as the 5cms isn't the body length!



No.9 Spider

[Acutipuerilis]

Melanie, try googling for Pisaura mirabilis. It sounds like your colouring (it's very variable, though), and has a habit of losing legs all over the place. Clumsy thing.

[Geoff F]

Pisaura mirabilis often sit with their front legs linked together. Here is one that I took earlier. This is a dark coloured specimen, but they can be a pale brown.

[Melanie xx]

well i was going to take a photo but my nan decided she felt guilty for leaving it in there so she let the thing out!!! it had 2 sections to it, it was a sort of medium brown it wasn't to dark nor to light. it had 3 legs on one side and two on the other. looked stupid enough. so now its gone! i can remember what it looks like because even though it was a small thing my mum screamed when she found it in the bathroom. any ideas?

thank you for your welcome

mel xx

[Melanie xx]

oh i forgot to say i loked up that Pisaura mirabilis spider. it is definatly not that. this one had a round body and big angs for the size of the thing it was really small possibly a little bit bigger than a money spider but it wasn't a normal spider so im still stumped.

mel xx

[thes3raph1m]

get me a spider and a pair of tweezers and ill make a "dramatic recreation"


btw im only joking... would never hurt a spider...

[lithdoc]

How interesting that I came across this.

I've been trying to research into this for a while. Several years ago I lived in Florida and it is notorious for spiders, especially in the rainy season. The two types of spiders that were abundant by my house were the smaller black ones with massive spines on their abdomen and silver looking spiders (some people said these are garden spiders, but their look is indeed interesting, their entire body and parts of legs are covered in what looks really like silver).

I've been monitoring two of these larger silver ones for a few months, since they lived right by the entrance to my house. They are pretty big, the diameter considering the legs is some 2.5 inches, i think. They hold their legs in pars of two. I've been watching them enlarge during rain and shrink during drought, patiently waiting day after day.

However, one day I noticed that it had lost one pair of legs and it was now holding the remaining three pairs at almost perfect 120 degree angle. I could see the short stubs of the lost legs (some 1 mm in diameter). What is more interesting, is the fact that another spider that was some couple meters away had the same thing happen to him a day later. I monitored the spiders for another month until massive rains came and both of them disappeared.

This is really interesting phenomena, yet no one has been able to explain it to me. Has anyone seen or heard of anything like this? Your responses are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[No.9 Spider]

Spiders have the 'ability' to 'lose' legs voluntarily when they are in compromising situations such as having been caught by a prey species. This is called autotomy. Spiders are able to regenerate legs during moults up to maturity and in the case of mygalomorphs during subsequent moults when adult. The leg is separated between the coxa and trochanter and a membrane seals the break to stop the spider losing hemolymph (blood).
Probably the spiders you've seen may have suffered some trauma.



No.9 Spider

[Meta menardi]

I have read an account of spiders being fed while on a bed of cotton wool after having all their legs removed, I think it was Bristowe, apparently they were fine as long as fed!

Bristowe was a bit funny about having a punt at something, he describes eating spiders one afternoon whilst conversing with a young lady, he decided that the best ones tasted rather like hazel nuts. Got his book (in the New Naturalists series) upstairs some where, I must go and check it.

Originally Posted by lithdoc

How interesting that I came across this.

I've been trying to research into this for a while. Several years ago I lived in Florida and it is notorious for spiders, especially in the rainy season. The two types of spiders that were abundant by my house were the smaller black ones with massive spines on their abdomen and silver looking spiders (some people said these are garden spiders, but their look is indeed interesting, their entire body and parts of legs are covered in what looks really like silver).

I've been monitoring two of these larger silver ones for a few months, since they lived right by the entrance to my house. They are pretty big, the diameter considering the legs is some 2.5 inches, i think. They hold their legs in pars of two. I've been watching them enlarge during rain and shrink during drought, patiently waiting day after day.

However, one day I noticed that it had lost one pair of legs and it was now holding the remaining three pairs at almost perfect 120 degree angle. I could see the short stubs of the lost legs (some 1 mm in diameter). What is more interesting, is the fact that another spider that was some couple meters away had the same thing happen to him a day later. I monitored the spiders for another month until massive rains came and both of them disappeared.

This is really interesting phenomena, yet no one has been able to explain it to me. Has anyone seen or heard of anything like this? Your responses are greatly appreciated. Thanks!