Maratus volans

Size: Male and female up to 5 mm body length

Family: Salticidae (Jumping Spiders). The world's most diverse and abundant spider family, with over 500 described genera and 5000 described species, which is more than 13% of all described spiders.

References:

About the Peacock Spider

The peacock spider is an amazing and beautiful spider. I would not like to be one though. Male peacock spiders perform an elaborate courtship dance to try and impress a female. If the male continues his dance when the female is not interested, she attempts to attack, kill, and feed on him. She may also do this after mating. In this case, presumably, her attack isn't because he had poor dancing skills. Sometimes the male can escape by jumping.

Therefore, if you are a male peacock spider, it's very important to be good at dancing and at jumping.

Peacock spiders are very small, like a few millimetres, and you need some specialised photographic equipment to get a really good picture of one.

Note that dead spiders usually fade in colour, so nearly all the spiders will look blacker or darker in colour in real life than they do in the photos of dead spiders from the museum.

Photo taken at Australian Museum, Sydney. Higher Resolution 2260 x 1884.

Photo taken at Australian Museum, Sydney. Higher Resolution 1759 x 1214.

Photo taken at Australian Museum, Sydney. Higher Resolution 1512 x 1176.

Photo taken at Australian Museum, Sydney.

Male Peacock Spider. Photo taken at Australian Museum, Sydney.

Male Peacock Spider. Photo taken at Australian Museum, Sydney.

Female Peacock Spider. Photo taken at Australian Museum, Sydney.

Male Peacock Spider. Photo by Jurgen Otto.

See Also

Australian Mammals
Australian Birds
Australian Reptiles
Australian Frogs
Australian Fish
Australian Wild Plant Foods

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