Arachnologist on teevee

Jason Bond named a spider after Stephen Colbert, precipitating his Warholian quarter-hour.  Here’s a  link to the video at Comedy Central dot com.

Spider on spider violence.

Glued

Originally uploaded by Malaysian Spiders

…which in an of itself is nothing unusual, but this is a pretty spectacular example.

Atlas of Creation by Harun Yahya

I am insanely jealous of Ainsley, who now owns the Atlas of Creation. Most of the book is juxtapositions of bad pictures of fossils with bad pictures of conordinal living things (fossil fern, living fern; fossil bunny, living bunny; fossil fly, living fly) alongside the erroneous claim that there are no differences between the extinct and extant forms. Anyway, here’s his example of a living caddisfly:

It’s a fishing lure. He stole the image from Graham Owen, from whom he also stole this:

…which he believes is a living spider. A few pages earlier, he juxtaposes a fossil scolytid with a living pentatomid, saying that the living pentatomid and the 25 myo scolytid are exactly the same thing.

Make sure you click through and look at Graham Owen’s fishing lures, they’re worth it. My fave is the solpugid.

Again, I learn something important from Flickr.

Amyciaea lineatipes P Ubin 7 legs PC246954

Originally uploaded by Pen Araneae

I didn’t know there were ant mimic crab spiders. It’s also striking how much it looks like a jumping spider, with the shape of the carapace and the eyes. More info. See also 1, 2

Giff Beaton has lots of great bug pix.

Here they are.