Friday arachnid blogging, with the sexy bits left out

Last Friday's spider, Xysticus, was of plain if pleasing appearance. This week, let's have a look at her more glamourous cousin, Thomisus onustus, whose genus gives the family Thomisidae its name:

Our spider is brilliant yellow, but the species comes in a broad run of bright colours. Some are white with yellow or pink stripes. Some have a prosoma (head/thorax) and legs of deep, nearly blackish purple, and a pink abdomen dappled with white flecks.

It's what I can't show you that makes me sorry. What makes me even sorrier is that I didn't get to see it myself. I found this spider on a flower (where else?) outside Sant Ferran on Formentera. It was a very windy day; stormy, really. On the next flower over was another T. onustus: the darker, much smaller male.

It would be a treat to watch him court the female. Many of the Thomisid crab spiders, you should know, have a taste for S&M. Before mating, the male binds the female to their flower-bed with cords of silk. Would T. onustus do the same?

This bondage is all play-acting, by the way; when the male is finished, the female easily shrugs off the cords. But the act of binding somehow puts her into a docile, receptive state, and she is unlikely to make a meal of her mate (as some spiders do, but fewer than you might think).

Alas, I would never find out whether T. onustus shares the kinkiness of some of its cousins. Just as the male was trying to climb over onto the female's flower, whoosh, a strong gust of wind sent him sailing away, far in the opposite direction. Frustrating for me, and doubtless more so for him.