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Writer's pictureScott M

Spider Update and Bonus Spider Hunting


The pencam embiggens spiders

Aug 25

The spider is still nesting in the same S. Bugbat pitcher. He’s been there since June. He survived sharing the pitcher with a frog last week. Perhaps the frog was focused on capturing prey as it came through the pitcher entrance. He might have missed the tasty spider behind him. Or maybe it’s just professional courtesy.

I have been filming this spider for months now. Most of the time he’s at his nest. I don’t go too far into the pitcher to get close ups, because I have tried to avoid disturbing his web, which goes nearly to the top of the pitcher. (I have speculated that the spider no longer sees the pencam as a threat so it doesn’t run off). What this means is that I rarely catch the spider doing anything.

But occasionally, I catch him away from his normal hangout. This time I caught him spinning web a little above it’s hangout. It was initially facing away from the pencam. Eventually it turned and moved towards the camera. It appears to freeze when it sees the camera. It has one of it's legs up mid-movement, when it froze. (It might have this leg on a web, feeling if there was an intruder. Unfortunately, I can’t tell that in this video) Then it realized that it's just the pencam and went about it's business. This gave me the closest pictures I’ve taken of this spider.


Freeze! I'm invisible


Too much pencam light OOPS



Spider Butt Spider Butt...Does whatever a spider butt does



Bonus spider!

I was filming a giant flower, when I spotted movement on the glass door. It was a tiny spider. I plopped the pencam and stand onto the glass and tracked it down to it's lair. There was a second spider there. Neither of them looked happy to be filmed so I moved on.


Spider on glass






This demonstrates how easy it is to track small moving animals with the pencam. I saw something moving and all I had to do was insert the pencam’s USB cable into my phone and presto I’m ready to record the tiniest of insects or spiders. Those are easy for this pencam. Tracking down the mites that live in pitcher plants, that's a challenge.

See it in action

Spiders




Ants






The pencam would be a very handy tool for a variety of scientific disciplines, not just in the study of pitcher plants. Arachnologists, entomologists, geologists and paleontologists would find it a useful field microscope. It's small, portable, waterproof and relatively inexpensive. It sells for 40$ on Amazon which to me sounds expensive. But I’m cheap. But compared to the price of a high end lens (1000$) or to a probe lens (1500$) or parking in downtown Houston (40$) it sounds downright cheap. Everyone needs one. I don’t leave home without it,

Check out my review on the Teslong Pencam. https://drmayhem12.wixsite.com/insidepitcherplants/pencam-review



A note on cheapness. I have seen the Teslong pencam sold under different names. Not sure why that is. Perhaps they are knock offs or perhaps they sell the same thing in different countries under different names. I mention this because I found the pencam selling on amazon for 12.99$! Seems too good to be true, but for that price, every highschool science class can have a microscope. Or for the price of a high end probe lens you can equip 100 undergrads on a major spider hunt. I will be ordering one of these 12.99$ pencams to see if it’s too good to be true.

Stay tuned.




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