Monday morning’s thick fog held some surprises: Pitt’s 40-story Cathedral of Learning “disappeared” yet all the spider webs stood out.
In Schenley Park diaphanous silk connected the flowers. Where is the spider who made this? Will he find the aphids sheltering under the flower head?
On the ground I found many small white “area rugs” like this one.
These are funnel spider webs. Mostly flat, they slope inward to a single hole.
Here’s a closeup of the hole beneath that horizontal blade of grass.
An even closer look reveals the funnel spider lurking inside. The slightest movement on his “carpet” brings him out in a flash to capture his prey.
I tried to make him emerge by touching the web but he knows the difference between a human touch and the struggling movements of prey. He won’t come out for me.
And yes, it’s Throw Back Thursday. Here’s a 2008 article with a lot more information on funnel spiders. Read What’s This Cloud on the Ground?
(photos by Kate St. John)
It is fun to take an ant and throw it on the web to see the spider spin its magic!
As a child I did this too. Drop the ant and almost as fast as you could blink the spider came out and took his prey back to his tunnel. On the more traditional webs where the spider hangs in the middle of the neatly woven web, yes, he would pounce and spin his prey.