The Contented Naturalist

At work, one of the places I monitor for visitor safety has a huge wall of solid stone that I have to peer over. It’s too tall for me to clear easily, but there’s a chunk of quartz that protrudes from the wall and makes a fine foothold to give me a boost. As I step up, I also put my hand on the top of the wall to haul myself up.

The rock is covered with interesting lichens; I’ve posted several of them on iNaturalist . But one day as I hauled myself up the wall I noticed a bit of movement near my hand. A little patch of what I had thought was another lichen, had legs! Looking more closely, of course it wasn’t a lichen, but a very furry little jumping spider. This individual’s camouflage was just about perfect for the rock it was on– I was fooled for sure, I bet hungry birds and other predators (like lizards) would be too. Wow!

So moving very slowly, as I kept my grip on the top of the wall, I pulled out my phone and snapped a quick series of photos. Then (of course) I said to the visitors nearby, “Hey, you wanna see a really cool spider?” To my delight they said yes, and we all proceeded to admire the spider, and marvel how well camouflaged it was. If the spider could have understood us, i imagine it would have thought, “Stop calling attention to me already!” Eventually it had enough of us and scurried a little farther away. By now my toes were starting to ache as I balanced on the quartz point anyway, so we bid farewell to the spider. Later I identified it as a Tan Jumping Spider (Platycryptus undatus), using both iNaturalist and our Natural Resources staff.

Looking back through my iNaturalist observations, this is at least the fourth species of jumping spider I’ve found at my park. I think jumpers are really cool, cute little beasts (often furry like my “lichen”). If you’ve ever seen the cartoon “Lucas the Spider,” that’s a jumping spider too.

Of all of the jumping spiders I’ve seen so far, this individual is definitely my favorite. Look at all that fluff! Even its little pedipalps are bristly. Very effective at disguising the brutal predator lurking behind the cuteness. I imagine the bristles help break up the spider’s outline, as well as make its texture look like the craggy bits of lichen on the rock nearby.