Watch as hundreds of baby Wolf spider emerge from squashed mother.
Actually, the babies most likely didn’t climb out of the mother, they climbedoff the mother, says Norman I. Platnick, a spider biologist—aka arachnologist—with the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
It’s hard to tell what species of spider is seen in the video, Platnick says, because the footage is fuzzy and far away. But he says there’s a good chance it is a wolf spider (a member of the family Lycosidae). Mother wolf spiders are known to carry their egg sacs around with them.
“When the spiderlings hatch, they climb on the mother’s abdomen and spend their first days there before dispersing,” Platnick says. “So these spiderlings were on the mother, and did not crawl out of her.” – National Geographic
Location: Hallett Cove, South Australia