Teen Holds Spider With Beautiful Gold Exoskeleton So It Can Attract Pollinating Insects
This is the moment 19-year-old Morgan Thomas from Virginia pets a silver spider with a beautiful golden exoskeleton.
On the Tik Tok video that got almost 30,000 views, we can hear Tomas explaining about the big Argiope (Argiope argentata) spider, filming it up close while it spins a web and walks on his hands.
Thomson, who spends his time out in the woods observing wild species or at his house looking after his pets, breeds and sell spiders and reptiles, and currently has more than seventy of them.
During an interview with Clipzilla, he added: “I have about 70 different animals so I gave up on naming a while ago. This is a female silver Argiope and it’s almost a year old. It just laid an egg sack woven with greenish-gold silk.”
As Thomas explained in the video, the species uses UV-reflecting silk to lure pollinating species to feed on, as well as a distinctive zig-zag in its web design.
Its venom, like that of other Argiope subspecies, is not toxic to humans, however, it can be used to immobilise its prey.
This species engages in sexual cannibalism before or after copulation.
There is significant sexual dimorphism in terms of gender, with the male being somewhat smaller than the female.
The average female is 12 millimetres long, which is three times the length of the average male.
The species also has two pairs of eyes, one primary and one secondary.
