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| All photos and videos by James Hearn |
So James met up with this cranky wolf spider last Wednesday (December 3) on our driveway. He emailed me his photos and videos (I was with my mother). Wow! At first I thought she was an aggressive huntsman spider. But no, this is a wolf spider, probably Hogna baltimoriana. We'd never seen one act so defensive. Had she maybe been stung by a wasp? No, too chilly for winged insects.
I sent the videos to Eric Neubauer, my wolf spider expert/Texas Master Naturalist friend. He was intrigued with her odd behavior and shared the videos with Russell Pfau, a professor in the biological sciences department at Tarleton State University. (I worked with the pair to write First-Name Basis, a November 2024 essay in Texas Co-op Power magazine about their efforts to name a misidentified wolf spider – Hogna incognita.)
"I think this belongs in the category of why are there distinct ventral markings?" he wrote Pfau and me. "I've noticed that individuals will rarely flash their ventral side by flipping over. They also can end up on their backs while subduing prey and flip back upright as soon as they have it in their jaws. I've seen females with young end up on their backs and assumed they were top heavy, but maybe it was to protect their young."
He sent us a link to similar behavior he found on iNaturalist: California wolf spider.
Always so interesting to observe nature!
