Think yellow sac spiders are common, boring spiders? Think again!

So I was in my entomology class's lab last wednesday(the one before this recently passed one) tending to my insect collection project. Well I have a box that I use for pinned bugs to dry on before placing them in their display case(I like to spead their legs out and make em look natural and purdy ). As I opened this box, this little yellow blur comes flying out and suddenly stops. I noticed it was a yellow sac spider(NO idea as to what the Latin name is). Luckily I had just emptied out a bottle of dead bugs and was able to quickly scoop it up. I was able to tell it was a small female, and looked rather hungry. My professor gave me a bag of dead mantis nymphs(hundreds...) so I decided why not see if it'd take a dead nymph. Sure enough she was REALLY hungry and nabbed it!

As I'm watching this spectacle with my own eyes I realized I had a microscope next to me. So...I got the bottle under the microscope and was able to view it munching away at the nymph! Sadly it was a regular microscope and not a fancy electronic one that could take video/pictures, so I can't show it to you, but I HIGHLY recommend doing this if you ever get the opportunity! It's truly fascinating!

Well the other day I thought I'd try feeding her again, and when I opened the medicine bottle she's being kept in, she crawled out, dropped, to the floor, and got into one of many piles of paper/shoes in my dorm room lol. I wasn't able to fin her! I was pretty irritated and decided to justlet her live her natural life.

Well the next day I was having a conversation with my friend when I noticed a discolored dot above my dorm window. I thought nothing of it at first but when I returned to my room later that night and noticed it, I decided to take a peek to see if it was a bug or not. Sure enough, it was my yellow sac spider! Shes now safely back in her medicine bottle and VERY fat after having a nice sized cricket!

Just thought I'd share this quirky adventure with you guys.

Latin name for yellow sac spiders: Cheiracanthium (genus)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheiracanthium

Pretty speedy buggers! hehehe

Watching live spiders under the microscope is great! You can see the heart beating and all kinds of neat stuff.

I get photos of spiders under the microscope by just holding my point-and-click camera up to the eyepiece and taking the picture. Takes a little practice to keep it steady is all. No need for fancy cameras or adaptors (that's how I took the pictures of the ant hanging onto the spider). As long as the diameter of the camera lens is less than the diameter of the eyepiece it should work (so if you want to use a full-size DSLR camera you'll need the special microscope adaptor). Most of the cheap over-the-counter cameras should do the job (put it in macro mode to take the picture).

I caught one a few days ago and just decided to feed it a roach, its really neat. With all the zooming around its vial it was doing I thought it would take a while to find its food but it got it instantly. Used some web to stick the roach to the vial and that was it, I think its a sub adult or full grown female, somewhere around a half inch in legspan(probably less I cant measure without a ruler).