We've seen them ambushing prey, eating prey and looking for more prey.
They're members of the Thomisidae family of spiders. They can move sideways and backwards.
And they excel at camouflage.
Spiders consume 400-800 million tons of prey, mostly insects, each year, according to Professor Jason Bond, a noted spider authority and the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
In comparison, humans consume somewhere around 400 million tons of meat and fish each year, Bond says.
And although "nearly all 47,000-plus spider species have venom used to kill their insect prey, very few actually have venom that is harmful to humans," Bond points out.
How many crab spiders have you seen nailing a pest? Or just hanging out on flowers, such as zinnias? They're there.
Just waiting...
They excel at waiting, too.
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