Big Spiders Screen Saver
Close-up images of the most frightening thing most of us will ever see. Also the most harmless. They're your friends, they eat bugs.
Visit the greatest spider page for kids
Artist's Notes
Her name is Argiope aurantia, but most people call them garden spiders, or tomato spiders, or whatever locally grown produce yours hang out on. Only the females are this big, and you can watch her lay eggs and tend them as the summer wears on. Her friend's name is Argiope trifasciata; she lives about a foot away.
A wonderful opportunity to challenge the office level of arachnophobia, or teach your kids about Nature, or just celebrate Halloween with something different. No sound, 1.1 meg file, 800 by 600 resolution, 14 frames. (The music on the web page is just there for the kids, but if I put it on the screen saver, the kids would drive you nuts with it.)
Also available, a rare 15 second video of the spider shaking her web, a habit when you annoy them. In this case, I touched her with the lens. (Anything that takes me two months to get on film is rare.) 1.4 meg file, MPG format.
This one is for Matthew, who at 4 knew that the floppy disks coming out
of my camera could be used to make spiders on his computer, and was fascinated.
Thanks for showing me the world through your eyes. Sometimes we forget.
These spiders didn't get here in time to make the screen saver;
they're just friends of mine.
This is the back yard spider, who arrived in mid-October, as the other spiders are winding down when the weather is getting colder. My friend in Belgium says she is some kind of Araneus, another kind of garden spider. She's a night hunter, and runs into the eaves if you turn on the porchlight. It's hard to get a feel for the size in the pictures but her body is about an inch long.
This one is a Micrathena gracilis, common to the woods in the eastern part of the US. So how did it end up in a gazebo in Chicago? Both pictures are the same spider, it just looks that different from the top and bottom.
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Images and screen saver © Jan Fox 2000
Web content is © Jan Fox 2000
This page is: http://janfox.com/big_spiders.htm
Graphics © Pat's Web Graphics
May 23, 2005
