The Flying Saucer At Sunset

Lenticular clouds (Altocumulus lenticularis) are stationary lens-shaped clouds with a smooth layered appearance that form in the troposphere, usually above mountain ranges. One was spotted in Singapore recently...

Eyes Of 30,000 Honeycombs

With 30,000 individual facets, dragonflies have the most number of facets among insects. Each facet, or ommatidia, creates its own image, and the dragonfly brain has eight pairs of descending visual neurons to compile those thousands of images into one picture...

A Kaleidoscope Of Colours, Shapes And Patterns

Spectacular and innovative in design, the Flower Dome replicates the cool-dry climate of Mediterranean regions like South Africa, California and parts of Spain and Italy. Home to a collection of plants from deserts all over the world, it showcases the adaptations of plants to arid environments...

Lightning Strikes, Not Once, But Many Times

Unlike light, lightning does not travel in a straight line. Instead, it has many branches. These other branches flashed at the same time as the main strike. The branches are actually the step leaders that were connected to the leader that made it to its target...

Are You My Dinner Tonight?

A T-Rex has 24-26 teeth on its upper jaw and 24 more on its lower jaw. Juveniles have small, sharp blade-shaped teeth to cut flesh, whereas adults have huge, blunt, rounded teeth for crushing bones. Is the T-Rex a bone-crushing scavenger?

Ghost Spider - Happy Halloween!

Punggol Park Connector
North-East, Singapore
October 2012
Cloudy

This Neoscona Punctigera (Ghost Spider) was spotted stationary on a leaf along the Punggol Park Connector. Belonging to the Orb-Weaver (Araneidae) family, it is from the Neoscona genus which has a characteristic longitudinal groove on the carapace which separates all species of Neoscona from species of Araneus (Wikipedia 2012).

  
Merlion Wayfarer has no idea why this spider has such an Halloween-themed name, but here are some clues:
  • For a start, it definitely does not look like a spider, especially with its bent-legged yoga pose.The carapace is M-shaped; It looks like two coconut husks joined together.
  • There are spots on its back which glow in the dark.
  • The black bands on its legs reflect light too.
  • Its deceptive colour signalling and body spot colouration visually lures prey.
  • It is a nocturnal sit-and-wait predator.
  • The spider is so full of "spikes" that it looks like a chestnut.

Being a nocturnal predator, it constructs its web at night, shortly after sunset and removes the web next morning. During the day, it hides among the leaves. When at rest, it assumes a shape that looks like a monkey and that's why it is also known as "monkey spider". Hmm...

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