White Crab Spider

Facts about White Crab Spider, "Scientific name for White Crab Spider is Misumena vatia". White Crab Spider is commonly called as crab spider due to it's morphological adaptation to both crabs and spiders. It is classified as arthropods as it has sense organs, distinguishable legs and poisonous stand against its prey.

Crab spiders have an ability to accept change in their environment and they can manage to live up to 100 years. Some of them grow up to 44 pounds (20 Kg). The White Crab Spider camouflage for hiding in the leaves and branches to strangle their prey.

When white crab spider bites, a poison is transferred through the bite to blood that causes severe pain, but it’s not deadly at all. This is their protective stand against falling prey to other bigger organisms. The White Crab Spider also bite smaller insects to paralyze them through this poison.

The female White Crab Spider are more aggressive than the male ones when it comes to prey hunting. Females are more concerned about the cocoons also as they guard the eggs most of the time till it hatches.

The only thing that spreads the rumor that White Crab Spiders are deadly is the excruciating pain caused when humans get bitten. It feels like hammering a nail on the biting spot. The pain stays for few hours and subsides gradually. The cut grows double in size; the surrounding swells a bit and becomes reddish.

White crab spiders are passive spiders. They stay still at a place, wait for their prey. They can stay still as long as a week without budging a bit. Once they trap their prey, they suck it dry.

A male White Crab Spider has two appendages called "pedipalps" a sensory organ, instead of a penis, which is filled with sperm and insert by the male into the female White Crab Spider’s reproductive opening.

White Crab Spiders have oversize brains.
In the White Crab Spider the oxygen is bound to "hemocyanin" a copper-based protein that turns their blood blue, a molecule that contains copper rather than iron. Iron-based hemoglobin in red blood cells turns the blood red

The White Crab Spider have well developed eyesight which helps them catching the prey in the darker areas and in night too. As they use camouflage to hide, it’s quite difficult to identify them instantly. Only when the White Crab Spider are nudged they spread their legs which form a bigger shape enough to identify their presence.

Unlike other spiders, white crab spider doesn’t build webs to catch it's prey.

Spiders belong to a group of animals called "arachnids", mites and Scorpions and a tick is also in the arachnid family. An Arachnids is a creature with eight legs, two body parts, no antennae or wings and are not able to chew on food. Spiders are not insects because insects have three main body parts and six legs and most insects have wings.

The Arachnids are even in a larger group of animals called "arthropods" an invertebrate animal of the large phylum Arthropoda, which also include spiders, crustaceans and insects. They are the largest group in the animal world, about 80% of all animals come from this group. There are over a million different species. There are more than 40,000 different types of spiders in the world.

White Crab Spiders have two body parts, the front part of the body is called the Cephalothorax-(the thorax and fused head of spiders). Also on this part of the body is the White Crab Spider’s gland that makes the poison and the stomach, fangs, mouth, legs, eyes and brain. White Crab Spiders also have these tiny little leg-type things called (pedipalps) that are next to the fangs. They are used to hold food while the White Crab Spider bites it. The next part of the White Crab Spiders body is the abdomen and the abdomens back end is where there is the spinnerets and where the silk producing glands are located.

The muscles in a White Crab Spiders legs pull them inward, but the spider can't extend its legs outward. It will pump a watery liquid into its legs that pushes them out. A White Crab Spider’s legs and body are covered with lots of hair and these hairs are water-repellent, which trap a thin layer of air around the body so the White Crab Spiders body doesn't get wet. It allows them to float, this is how some spiders can survive under water for hours. A White Crab Spider feels its prey with chemo sensitive hairs on its legs and than feels if the prey is edible. The leg hair picks up smells and vibrations from the air. There are at minimum, two small claws that are at the end of the legs. Each White Crab Spiders leg has six joints, giving the White Crab Spider 48 leg joints. The White Crab Spider’s body has oil on it, so the spider doesn't stick to it’s own web.

A White Crab Spiders stomach can only take liquids, so a White Crab Spider needs to liquefy their food before they eat. They bite on their prey and empty its stomach liquids into the pray which turns it into a soup for them to drink.

White Crab Spiders do not have a skeletons. They have a hard outer shell called an exoskeleton-(a rigid external covering for the body in some invertebrate animals). The exoskeleton is hard, so it can’t grow with the spider. The young White Crab Spiders need to shed their exoskeleton. The spider has to climb out of the old shell through the cephalothorax. Once out, they must spread themselves out before the new exoskeleton will harden. Know they have some room to grow. They stop growing once they fill this shell. Female White Crab Spiders are usually bigger than males.
Female White Crab Spiders lay eggs on a bed of silk, which she creates right after mating. Once the female White Crab Spider lays her eggs, she will than cover them with more silk.