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Comments & ID Thoughts
It is a big spider ! At first thought it was a Goldenrod Crab Spider aka flower spider but they only get roughly a 1/3 of an inch (10 mm) and this one was close to 2 or 2.5 inches even leg span. It was very non agressive and immediately played dead. Lived here for 30 years and never seen one like it. Unique color with an alternating striated lighter and darker yellow banding, large almost diamond shaped abdomen, distinct trichobothria (or fine hair), four (or five even) black dots in a pyramidal shape on the dorsal side of the abdomen and an almost hourglass like shape browmish in color on the ventral side of the abdomen. The spider was able to retract its long mostly symmetrical front and back legs into making a ball like shape while playing dead and was able to be blown around surprisingly easily for how big it is.
The spider was walking across my driveway mid day on a sunny day after a few days of off and on rain.
- Submitted by:
- Submitted: Oct 25, 2021
- Photographed: Oct 24, 2021
- Spider: Unidentified
- Location: Sandy, Utah, United States
- Spotted Outdoors: Man-made structure (building wall, fences, etc.),Ground layer (leaf litter, dirt, grass, etc)
- Found in web?: No
- Attributes:
She might be Eriophora edax, an Orbweaver. https://bugguide.net/node/view/300786 She looks like a photo I’ve seen before in our photos, I’ll try to find it. She appears to have oviposited her eggs, her abdomen is wrinkled and points downward at the posterior. You gave a great description. The ventral markings on orbweavers tend to be bold with, black, yellow and/or white geometric shapes. They do wrap their legs over their back and anterior for the defensive pose. I haven’t seen one get blown around like that, they really try to avoid it by having a strand of silk tethering them.
https://spiderid.com/picture/7546/ This is the photo I had in mind.
I am unsure of the scientific name, but it is commonly called a cat face spider. It spins a web similar to an orb weaver.
Araneus gemmoides is the scientific name