European Nursery Web Spider, Heeswijk-Dinther, Netherlands

Variable in color, but not really in pattern. With only 3 species of Nursery web spiders in the Netherlands, this one is easy to single out.

They superficially resemble wolf spiders, yet the main difference (not seen here) is in their eyes. Nursery web spiders have eyes that are all of equal size, whilst wolf spiders have 2 huge eyes combined with much smaller eyes.

The "web" in the name refers to the web they built for offspring, not for hunting. Hunting is just sprinting and biting. As with most spider species, it sucks quite a lot to be a male.

Despite the abundance of eyes, a male appearantly isn't easily distinguished from just being generic prey. So the male must bring a gift, typically a prepacked fly, and very obscenely wave that it comes with good intentions. If seen and not in a bad mood, the male may survive this encounter. With female jaws occupied, he'll do what he came for, which was not to hand out food.

More love is awarded to the offspring instead, for which she builds the nursery web. She'll first carry around the sac, then build the web, and guard it until they first shed skin.