One fine spring day after hopping off my mountain bike for a water break, I spotted a large yellow-faced bumblebee on a flower along the trail. What struck me was how lifeless the bumblebee appeared unusual for these busy creatures, especially in mid-day. As an insect photographer, I never let observations like this go without explanation. My close examination revealed what I suspected, but still could hardly believe. Well camouflaged among the flower petals lurked a small but nasty culprit, a crab spider.
Crab spiders resemble crabs and walk backwards and sideways like crabs.
The largest family of crab spiders, Thomisidae, known as the typical crab spiders, make up about one tenth of the 30,000 species of spiders known worldwide. The diversity in the family of thomisids is astounding. Take for example just a few of the amazing adaptations certain thomisids have developed to help them blend into their environment to fool both predators and prey. A spider in Malaysia mimicked a bird dropping so well that one renowned photographer at first purposely avoided the splotch while photographing another species. A Trinidadian species can easily be passed off as a dried leaf while another species in Africa resembles a fruit.