Painted Lady Having a Bad Day

Don't you hate it when you flutter over to a nectar source to get a drink, only to be killed by a a spider? That appears to be the situation for this unfortunate Painted Lady butterfly. As tragic as this is for the butterfly, spiders have to eat too. (Cue the Circle of Life music.)

This picture doesn't provide a good look at the spider. I'm suspicious of a crab spider because they don't trap prey with webs and they're known to lurk near flowers in hopes of grabbing a pollinator. (Wolf spiders don't use webs either, but I think they're usually on the ground, and are more like active hunters rather than passive ambush predators.) I wish I had a good look at the legs; a lot of the crab spiders have front legs that are much longer than their back legs. I'm afraid all I can authoritatively tell you about the spider is that it didn't starve on this day.

July 14, 2021 at Duke Farms
Photo 148186889, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)


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