Portia – The Intelligent Hunter
Identifying a Portia
A Portia bears an excellent camouflage, mimicking fragments of leaf litter detritus. Like other Jumping Spiders, the 2 largest eyes grants excellent vision for identifying it’s prey. The hind legs of a Portia would typically be perched behind and high above the other legs.
The Hunter
The Portia thrives on aggressive mimicry – a born actor. It targets web-weaving spiders by tugging on their webs, imitating the vibration patterns of a trapped prey or a male ready to mate. This attracts the host of the web to come investigate, often into the preying jaws of the Portia. It uses a myriad of attack tactics on different prey, sometimes learning from trial and error.
Pronouncing the name… Portia!?
Some called it Por-tee-ya, while the name itself is often pronounced Por-sha, like the Australian actress Portia de Rossi. I would personally go for the latter. Anyone with confirmation?
Today’s trip to Mandai was a short, really short walk. That’s because we spent most of our time with 2 different Portias!
The first Portia was the White-Moustached Portia (Portia labiata). We found it hanging on a thread of web, and could very likely be on it’s way to prey on another spider. It did a free-fall as we approached it, but we had a leaf below and managed to observe the little fella from close-up!
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While we were about to place the first Portia back on the first plant, another one hopped by! This looks like a male. We were wondering if it had been attracted to the female we were fussing over earlier?!
It landed on one of our flash diffusers, so we were content with shooting it there and then, as a storm was already brewing above our heads.
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Some other shots of the day, some taken while the rest were focused on the Portia.
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A lucky day indeed.. 2 portias! Others might have waited years without spotting any at all.
The complete album can be viewed here.