PAPUA NEW GUINEA .. .. SPIDERS AND INSECTS.

Spiders of PNG are varied with well over 500 hundred species within 30 families, dominated by the familiar Orb weavers, and the Jumping Spiders. Moths and Ants are included in this section but Butterflies are on their own page. Insects in PNG come from 50-100,000 species from numerous families.

The BIRD-EATING SPIDER is large and  fearsome of appearance and is dangerous.  It lives in an open-topped hole in the ground.  Small trips lines radiating from the hole alert the hidden spider to the presence of pray. Though usually shy and not often seen, occasional some leave the shelter of their burrow and wander widely.  The bite is extremely painful and could kill a child.

Jumping Spiders are alert and often comical spiders. Males have black forelegs and a fine white brush of hairs behind the eyes, and the female is all green with a pattern on the back containing false eyespots.  Jumping Spiders search out and stalk their prey before suddenly jumping to capture it.

The ORB Weaver spins a traditional wheel-likeflat web and waits for prey to blunder in.  This photos shows a small lizard, rapidly bound up into  a silken girdle, then consumed at leisure as the orb-weaver pumped digestive juices into its body before sucking in the nutrients from the broken-down tissues.

TREE ANTS and their bulky leaf nests are a characteristic sight in lowland forests, mostly in savannah woodland.  Always busy, constructing a new nest chamber (see left) gathering food for the colony or tending their farm animals these ants are the epitome of social development.  Adults produce no silk.  While some workers hold leaf edges together, others carry larvai from the nursery to spin the silk which binds the leaves of the nest.

Day-flying moths, brightly coloured like butterflies, mostly come from the lowland forest species.

A large and striking family of moths are the fruit-sucking Moths which appear throughout Papua New Guinea.  They like rainforest fruit and can penetrate the thickened skin of wild figs to suck the sweet juices inside.

Fruit sucking species are generally fast-flying with delta wings.  Many rainforest species have patterned fore-wings of greens, browns and black which cover a brightly covered contrasting hindwing.

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