Brightest yellow spider ever

brightest yellow spider ever
Originally uploaded by bcyrjewelry

Many of you that know me or have read my blog for awhile know that I really like spiders. Not like them as in have pets and carry them around in my pocket, but I'm just very fascinated by them and love that they eat other bugs that bite me.

I was completely surprised to see this extremely bright yellow one dead out in front of my studio the other day. The ants were having a feast, but I was so taken with the extreme color that I had to take a photo! Its a type of crab spider - a Goldenrod crab spider to be exact - which I think are some of the cutest spiders. Crab spiders come in different colors. In fact under the crab family (thomisidae) is a whole genus (misumena) that are 'flower spiders'. These particular ones are actually white and change to be yellow and then can change back to white again depending what color flower they are going hang out on! How fun is that?! Granted the color change takes awhile, longer from white to yellow, faster back to white again. It makes me wonder how this little guy ended up on the concrete in front of my studio... did the ants attack him on one of the yellow flowers next to the studio (makes me think those flowers must be goldenrod?) and were on the way carrying him(her?) somewhere? or was he on his way back to the flowers and got attacked? or just simple up and died right there?. I'm sure if I went and looked closely at the flowers I would see some more hanging around there, but they are camouflaged so well, I must miss them all the time!