Telamonia dimidiata – hoaxed since 2002

That’s the stuff for my blog. I found this large, pale jumping spider, having a nice pattern of two red stripes, and a cony bum bum, and it turns out this is Telamonia dimidiata.

Nothing special if there wasn’t Steve Heard in 1999 sending out a funny hoax of a venomous spider (he called it Arachnius gluteus – butt spider!) under some toilet seats. The fake news spread fast in the new world wide web, and people made some modifications on the way (in 2002 according to snopes.com), until a picture of this species gave the hoax-under-the-toilet-seat-spider a face! Salticidae are not venomous and won’t sit under toilet seats for long, because it is just not theirs.

This large female showed the typical jumping spider behavior: when you take pictures they’ll watch you, and eventually try to jump on your camera. It’s not easy to get them off yourself then! Not sure what this behavior means. Are large mammals some kind of food source? Or is it for transportation? Aahh this is not a good question for google, most results explain how they jump, not why they jump at you.

Some species would run and hide, or is it some specimen only? I’ll pay more attention in future which they are.