Floating motionless on the water, or resting on a plant with just her hairy front legs touching the surface film, a giant of the pond waits patiently for the tremors that will alert her to her next meal.
This aquatic assassin is the female raft spider, among Britain’s biggest arachnids. She’s quite capable of snatching small fish from the pond.
Normally, though, her diet consists of tadpoles, pond skater bugs and unsuspecting flailing insects that have fallen in and then become fatally trapped by the water’s surface tension.
Raft spiders are easily identified by their handsome chocolate-brown bodies with cream stripes, and also by their habitat – they’re more or less confined to crystal-clear pools on heaths and bogs.
Most live on England’s southern heaths, with other strongholds in north-west England and the Scottish Highlands.
In June, the female spiders are often seen guarding their huge spherical egg sacs, which they tuck under their abdomen and somehow carry around, gripping the top in their mouthparts. It must be a bit like going for a stroll with a huge football clamped in your mouth.
Top image: raft spider at Canford Heath Nature Reserve in Dorset. Credit: Jordon Sharp/Getty Images
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