Female Zebra Spiders

There I was minding my own business when I found a spider minding her own business. I don't mind spiders in the slightest. However, it was in the bedroom, so it is somewhat unlikely to find any food and likely to get flattened.

With a bit of zooming in on my phone and using Google Lens and the fact that the thing jumped a lot, I established that this was a Zebra Spider, a species of jumping spider - or dancing spider if you speak Latin.

I trapped her with the time-honoured empty glass and bit of cardboard method intent on releasing her back into the wild. Surprisingly she was highly adept at climbing glass, although she struggled for the first thirty seconds.

I left her to chill while I hung around on the decking, trying to get more shots through the glass; she soon ventured out of the glass and onto the decking. I was half expecting her to scurry away.

And indeed, she did briefly dash away from the cardboard; however, once she encountered the decking, she was much more cautious and explored her surroundings.

After a while, she was pretty happy chilling in the sun, probably wondering why this big reflective thing (the lens) kept approaching her. She didn't seem overly bothered by the fact that I was taking pictures and chilled for a few minutes before making her escape under the decking.

Since reviewing my images and watching Travis McEnery's excellent YouTube Video found out how intelligent these creatures are and how they predate mainly on mosquitos - they are firmly on our side.

I hope you enjoyed this visit from our arachnid friend, I do hope she will stick around as fewer flies would be great.