SEM Spider

Last week I had some more time on the scanning electron microscope. This time I turned my attention to a spider I caught on my desk. I'm pretty sure it is some form of jumping spider, but I'm not positive. Whatever it is, I know it's fairly common because I've seen them a number of times around the office. This guy (or girl, I don't know) was about half a centimeter long in body.


Wide angle of the body and head. It is laying on its back.


Closer up to one of the two pedipalps, which as far as I know is basically part of the mouth.


Close up of what I believe is some kind of sensory hair/antennae. This structure, whatever it is, is located on the pedipalp, and measures about 5 microns in diameter and perhaps 80 microns long. By contrast, a human hair is about 100 microns in diameter.


Slightly wider angle of the same kind of structure as above. All of the hairs or sensors on the pedipalps looked like this. The almost leaf like structure makes me think these are sensors and not just hair, but I really have no idea.


The spider's body is very hairy. The wavey texture is the spider's skin underneath the hair near the back of the abdomen. The distance between those wavey lines is about 2 microns.


This is the very end of one of the spider's legs.


This is the same thing from another angle. I have no idea what all these bits are.


This is the hair bracketing one of the two central eyes (spiders have 2 pairs of 2 eyes - this is one of the larger central ones).