Making Love: Right Time or Wrong Time-Crab Spider Story

Joined with a group of Macro buddies to Holland Woods, Singapore last Saturday, and observed some interesting happenings of the crab spiders (Thomisus sp)...

1. The female crab spider was jumping into the mid air to catch the bee when I saw her. She grabbed the bee tightly with a single thread of silk connecting to the flower. The bee was struggling, trying to escape from the predator. But..Nowhere!! It just need a few seconds for the female crab spider to paralyze the bee...(FL 180mm, 1/40sec-F/18, ISO 400, Manual, Tripod, fill flash at -1.67ec.)



2. The spider brought back the bee to the flower where she was hiding of before. Don't know how will she handle the prey...(FL 180mm, 1/2sec-F/25, ISO 400, Manual, Tripod, fill flash at -1.67ec.)



3. Then I saw a male crab spider (the tiny brown color one) approaching to the female from behind. Thought that he was coming to help...(FL 180mm, 1/3sec-F/25, ISO 400, Manual, Tripod, fill flash at -1.67ec.)




4. When the male spider was climbing onto the female, the female was using her hind legs to kick him off several times. But as she have to hold the prey tightly at the same time, the male managed to climb up...and stick to that position for few minutes..Then just at this moment I realized that the male was most probably mating with the female. My God!!! (FL 180mm, 1/3sec-F/25, ISO 400, Manual, Tripod, fill flash at -1.67ec.)



5. The male spider left the female after he has achieved what he want, moved to a leaf above the flower to hind himself. And the female was carrying the bee moving around the flower. Eventually, she brought the bee to hind underneath another leaf at lower part of the plant, disappearing from my view... (FL 180mm, 1/3sec-F/22, ISO 400, Manual, Tripod, fill flash at -1.67ec.)



Just wondering if I interpret the observation correctly? Will the male get a piece of the prey later on?! Does he do the right thing to mate her at that point of time (assuming that my speculation is correct)? What do you think?? :P

16 comments:

Sivasothi said...

Great stuff!

Anonymous said...

What an interesting series! The male sure chose the right timing...haha. Thanks for sharing!

SD said...

Smashing discovery!

Tiomanese said...

Many thanks to Siva, Colleen and sd for your viewing and comments! Cheers!!

Kevin said...

Nice!! good timing!!

Anonymous said...

Anybody to comment on whether that is indeed the mating position of this particular species of spider?

Tiomanese said...

have posted my photos and the story at the Website of Nature Photographic Society of Singapore,and one of the comments there talk about the mating behaviour of this Crab spider. Please follow the link provided here to read it. You are also very welcome to view all the comments.

http://www.naturephotosociety.org.sg/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=read_count&om=4296&forum=DCForumID14&viewmode=threaded

Anonymous said...

Hey are you a professional journalist? This article is very well written, as compared to most other blogs i saw today….
anyhow thanks for the good read!

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