Funnel Weaver

Description:

Agelenidae C. L. Koch, 1837. There is a good concise description of this spider in Wikipedia which is much more comprehensive than anything I could write. So I will limit myself to mentioning what I have observed. These spiders can be seen on grass land and weave a web shaped like a funnel, hence their common name. They appear to spend most of their time hiding inside or perhaps it should be described as "waiting in ambush inside".I have not actually witnessed them catching a prey insect as it is described in Wiki, but I carried out a rather unscientific little expirement. As you will see in my pictures, the most visible part of the web is the wide, flat horizontal area, in the centre of which there is a "hole". This is, of course the entrance to a funnel shaped tunnel which leads down to the spider's nest (Wiki calls it a retreat). So what I did was simply to get a small twig and, staying back at arms length to avoid being seen, I gently touched the flat part of the web. The reaction was very fast. the spider immediately appeared at the rim of the entrance, saw me and disappeared back down inside just as quickly. That was all I needed to do to understand how this ambush predator works. I hesitate to say any more, for fear of embarrassing myself, but I have to come clean and make an admission and I will explain why. My admission is that when I was doing this little experiment with the twig, I was more than a little nervous because I had heard awful stories about the deadly Australian Funnel Web Spider and at that moment I really had no idea what kind of spider was going to come out of that hole. Of course, now I know that the Australian spider, I was so afraid of, is very much bigger and a completely different creature. But I make this embarrassing admission for a reason and it is this: If you are an inexperienced nature enthusiast like me, and more especially if you are a young person (because I know young people are adventurous) please do not take risks with wildlife. There is often the possibility of danger and it is easy to get out of your depth and end up getting hurt. My little encounter with a harmless tiny spider turned out to be rather comical, but it was also foolish.

Habitat:

The habitat of this spider ( a field behind our house) can be seen in my picture above. It is a kind of grassy tropical meadow which bursts into life on rice fields, between crops, when the land is left uncultivated for a short time. I deliberately took my pictures early in the morning when there was a heavy dew on the grasses because the webs can be more clearly seen in those conditions.

Notes:

As an afterthought, I decided to add another photo of this kind of spider. It is the fourth picture (on the right). I remembered that a few weeks after taking the first three photos, I got a chance to take a picture of one of these Agelenids out in the open. This pretty much gives a view of the whole spider. I don't know if Project Noah will approve of this because it is a picture taken on Jan 4, 2019 and the three original photos in this spotting were taken on Nov 11, 2018. But the spider is exactly the same kind, and the picture was taken at the exact same place, on our field behind our house. So I am hoping that it will be allowed to stand as part of this spotting.