Fringed Jumping Spider

Appearance

Females of the jumping spider ''Portia fimbriata'' have bodies 6.8 to 10.5 millimetres long, while those of adult males are 5.2 to 6.5 millimetres long.

The front of the cephalothorax is large and angular, and the face is broad, high and flat. Both sexes also have fine, faint markings and soft fringes of hair. However, the female has a white fringe from the pedipalps to the tufts passing between the anterior lateral eyes and the anterior median eyes then going down just above the eyes so as to form an M, while the back half of the male's cephalothorax has a white band round the bottom edge and a white groove down the back.

While male spiders' palps are larger than females', the palps of ''P. fimbriata'' females have a fringe of hair that makes them look about as larger as males'. The abdomens of both sexes are dark brown, with white spots on the upper side.

Habitat

''P. fimbriata'' is found in the rain forests of India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, Taiwan, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Malaysia including Malacca, Indonesia, and in Australia's Northern Territory and Queensland.

Food

Members of the genus ''Portia'' have been called "eight-legged cats", as their hunting tactics are as versatile and adaptable as a lion's. All members of ''Portia'' have instinctive tactics for their most common prey, but can improvise by trial and error against unfamiliar prey or in unfamiliar situations, and then remember the new approach.

They can also make detours to find the best attack angle against dangerous prey, even when the best detour takes a ''Portia'' out of visual contact with the prey, and sometimes the planned route leads to abseiling down a silk thread and biting the prey from behind. Such detours may take up to an hour, and a ''Portia'' usually picks the best route even if it needs to walk past an incorrect route.