Comments & ID Thoughts
It was missing a leg when I found it.
- Submitted by:
- Submitted: Jan 24, 2019
- Photographed: Nov 16, 2018
- Spider: Unidentified
- Location: Montevideo, Uruguay
- Spotted Indoors: Garage or shed
- Found in web?: Yes
- Attributes:
It was missing a leg when I found it.
When I submitted this picture I made a mistake. It was found indoors, in the kitchen and it wasn’t found in its web.
To me it looks similar to Callobius pictus: https://spiderid.com/picture/22848/
It is common for spiders to have missing or partial legs. Depending on the type of spider, the legs evolved to fall off when grabbed by a predator. Molting can be difficult, legs can get stuck in the old exoskeleton. To survive there are leg joints that the spider can break by pulling the leg back hard. These joints don’t bleed as much as others. I think it is an interesting survival mechanism. The legs havevsome ability to regrow. Leg III on the spider’s left side may have been lost or broken before, it isn’t fully developed.
That is interesting. Thank you for sharing. I’m just now beginning to learn more about spiders, I’ve always found them to be interesting creatures but never actually read anything about them. Would you say this one is male? I think it might be because of the shape and size of its pedipalps.
Hi, thanks. I don’t know what spider it is, but I would guess that it is male. I see you’ve been learning about pedipalps – the appendage that can be used to shove sperm into a female spider or remove it from her if it is some other spider’s. Check out the photos on this site that show males and females together. You can do that by going to “more” symbol>pictures > click both male and female. The females are drastically larger, it’s kind of funny.