Music is not my hobby, it is my life, it is what I do, it's what I am. If I stop doing it, I have no reason to live, my life would have simply stopped.
My hobby is spiders. I love spiders--all arachnids really but spiders in particular. I can name the vast majority of them right off. Some people watch birds, I watch spiders. I don't collect them (although I did have a pet tarantula once). Spiders need to be free or they can't do much for our ecosystem--which largely depends on them.
The spider is clearly something that crawled out of the ocean and only changed enough to stay on land but if they chose to go back to the ocean, they could. I don't think a more successful creature exists.
Starting about 350 million years ago, this sea creature that left the ocean became the spider. We have spiders preserved in amber from that long ago. Amazingly, it has changed not a wit in all that time. 100 million year old bee fossils show us that bees were wasps at once time. Roaches have evolved differently for all kinds of environments. But spiders--no matter that the environment (and they live in all of them), they are no different then they were when they made their first appearance on the planet.
Their hard shells became an exoskeleton, their spiny points became hairs, their slime-producing organs began producing a new improved slime called silk. Like all, ocean creatures, they display high intelligence.
Tarantulas, wolf, funnel web and trapdoor spiders are called mygalomorphs. These are a more primitive type of spider. They have vertical rather than diagonal fangs, are generally hairy, tarantulas have 6 eyes rather than 8. Mygalomorphs produce silk but don't spin webs. They have two large protruding spinnerets whereas other spiders have 4 to 8 microscopic ones.
Mygalomorph (pronounced "MIG-a-lo-morf") is a Greek compound of "mugale" or shrew and "morphe" or form. Shrew-form. It looks nothing like a shrew which resembles a mouse with a long, pointed snout.
They are superb hunters. Unparalleled masters of predation.
Jumping spiders are classified as salticidae of which there are some 500 genera and 5000 species--the most numerous of any spider family. Unlike most spiders which have poor vision, salticidae have superb vision. Because they are hairy and do not spin webs, they share some common ground with mygalomorphs. But are much more recent--about 50 million years.
Spiders' eyes are paired and each pair are generally functionally different from the other pairs and are different sizes. Although they look exposed, the eyes have a tough transparent covering. You could touch their eyes with your finger and it won't bother them.
Jumping spiders' eyes are mounted on a kind of cupola or tower and are elevated over the rest of the body. Markedly different from other spiders. Spiders are built amazingly like the armored vehicles used in the military. That's really what they are--nature's armored vehicles.
Jumping spiders wear dew drops for hats.
Cute li'l fella, ain't he?