Lately it seems as though we have been focusing on way to many mammal species so today we are going to learn about a very cool eight legged animal.  Now, I know some of you may not like spiders but I can guarantee that you will find Jumping Spiders to be very interesting.  I am just going to talk about the broad characteristics since there are over 5000 species of Jumping Spiders.  This makes them the largest family of spiders as they comprise about 13% of all spiders out there.  I just realized that I could complete my Wild Facts project 5 times over just with this one family.  Maybe I should start a second blog called Spider Facts!

Since the this family is so large you can virtually find a Jumping Spider species anywhere in the world; however, I doubt they reside in Antarctica or the in the extreme north such as Greenland.  Basically this means that we don’t have to go on a field trip today.  Grab your glass of lemonade and sit out in the backyard for awhile.  For the record I am not going to do this since it was 25 below with the windchill today.  So who wants to learn about some of the unique behaviours and characteristics of this spider?  Wow, I didn’t realize all of you were so excited.  Well let’s get to it then.

When you look at the picture you probably notice their eyes first and foremost.  This makes sense since these eyes are unique and play a huge role in the Jumping Spiders life.  You see the Jumping Spider spends their days actively hunting other insects.  They aren’t lazy like other spiders that just build a web and hope something flies into it.  These spiders are like a wild cat in the savannah as they wait to pounce on their prey.  They use their keen sense of vision to pick up and track any insect that happens to be in their area.  The spider will then get into position and when the time is right they will pounce.  Jumping spiders can jump about 10 to 40 times the length of their body.  Just so you know their body length is typically between 3-10 mm (0.12-0.39″) so they are pretty small but being able to jump 10-40 times that length is still pretty impressive.

Jumping Spider Fast Fact – Let’s finish up the post talking about their funny looking eyes.  The Jumping Spider will usually have four pairs of eyes so if my math is correct that would be eight eyes.  They typically have these eyes arranged in three rows with two very large eyes in the middle of their flat head.  As mentioned earlier their eyesight is excellent as they rely on it to track their prey.

See, that spider fact wasn’t too bad now was it?  Before you go I recommend checking out the short video of a Jumping Spider in action.  It is from National Geographic so you know it will be good.