Ecuadorian Brown Velvet Tarantula - closeup, Sani Lodge, Ecuador

comments (4)

Barry

Lion

I love the 8 eyes - I wonder what image they actually see? Posted 3 years ago
1. Ferdy Christant
  
  Lion
  
  I recently did some reading on it and the answer is: not much. It's a wide angle shallow view that is optimized for detecting movement. So they can't see anything with any detail. The eyes also function to detect the difference between light and darkness, where darkness is seen as safety.
  
  Conceptually, you could say that they "see" with their hairs, detecting even the tiniest vibrations. Posted 3 years ago
2. 1. Barry
    
    Lion
    
    Yeah Ferdy, fascinating stuff. I studied Fruit Flies for my doctoral work and they detect movement much better than we do (that is why it is so hard to swat them) but don't have the eye or brain infrastructure to really see images the way we do. On the other hand, bats apparently can create images in their brain using echolocation, as in fact can blind humans (make clicking noises with their tongues) since they can describe what they see (unlike bats). We tend to think that we just "see" what is in front of us, forgetting that we take in information through our eyes and our brain "creates" an image in our brains. Posted 3 years ago
  2. 1. Ferdy Christant
      
      Lion
      
      Great info, Barry. I think a lot of visual illusions are also based on exploiting shortcomings in our brain in forming images, where it sometimes has to make up stuff. Kind of like Photoshop :) Posted 3 years ago

The Ecuadorian Brown Velvet Tarantula

The theraphosid Megaphobema velvetosoma was described in 1995 from Ecuador. It is very closely related to Megaphobema robustu (Ausserer, 1875) but differs by velvet-brown (female) respectively brown-blackish (male) colour. The ventral tibia spur bears a long spine spine-shaped process. the spermatheca is regurarly rounded.

Info 6 0

Similar species: Spiders

Species identified by Ferdy Christant