She’s got venom! She wears black, and she’s spiky like a demon! She’s a maiden of death, leaving behind her vicious fangs a string of hideous, staring corpses. Yeah! She delivers APOCALYPSE!
. . . Well, if you’re a leafhopper, that is.
This little predator is often called the “spined micrathena,” but then again all three of our micrathenas are spiny, so you might as well learn its proper name: Micrathena gracilis (my-cruh-THEE-nah grah-SILL-us). By the way, I’m not being reverse-sexist by calling her a “her.” In almost all cases, when you see a spider living in a web, it’s a female. As a general rule, spider males are quite small, rarely spin webs, and have a single goal in life. And they don’t tend to live very long :/
This little predator is often called the “spined micrathena,” but then again all three of our micrathenas are spiny, so you might as well learn its proper name: Micrathena gracilis (my-cruh-THEE-nah grah-SILL-us). By the way, I’m not being reverse-sexist by calling her a “her.” In almost all cases, when you see a spider living in a web, it’s a female. As a general rule, spider males are quite small, rarely spin webs, and have a single goal in life. And they don’t tend to live very long :/
Micrathenas are notorious for being one of the spiders that commonly builds webs across hiking trails. Micrathenas create beautiful and delicate orbs. There’s nothing clumsy about their webs. They’re shimmery and full of parallel lines so closely spaced that a mosquito cannot sneak through, and the spiders (which prefer to rest belly-up) move about their homes with grace, walking forward with their front three pairs of legs and using the back pair as a smooth-sliding hanger for the giant hind end. Usually, when seriously harassed, micrathenas plummet straight to the ground for safety.
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