Behold, the rare and elusive Pileated Spider


Another of Mary’s bizarre arachnids showed up in the tree outside my office window today.

I don’t get it. It only seems to have two eyes.

Comments

  1. Buzz Parsec says

    I had one of those in a tree in the cemetery at the end of my road about 5 years ago. Do you think they might eat dead people? They are definitely carnivorous. Observe its feeding behavior.

  2. numerobis says

    There’s only two globes visible, but they’re just hiding all the single-neuron eyes in the back. It’s quite a rudimentary system but it works well enough for a spider that has to bash its head into a tree to catch food rather than calmly waiting for food to come to it.

  3. ardipithecus says

    Perhaps they have evolved to look like feathers to thwart predators that go for the eyes first, such as crows.