Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 July 1893 — Chameleon Spiders. [ARTICLE]

Chameleon Spiders.

Almost all travellers in tropical regions have wonderful stories to tell of the strange mimiory of leaves and flowers by insects. Sometimes the purpose of the imitation appears to be concealment, and sometimes the laying of a snare to catch other insects. A curious instance of this is related by Mr. H. H. J, Bell. While traveling on the Gold Coast of Africa last year, he noticed in the bushes a singular-looking white flower with a blue center. Stopping to examine it he he found, to his astonishment, that it was not a flower at all, but a spider’s web, and the supposed light-blue heart of the flower was the spider itself lying in wait for its prey. The logs of the cunning spider, yellow mottled with brown, were extended in such a way as to resemble the divisions between the petals of the flower. The web itself, very delicately woven into a rosette pattern, was white, and the threads that suspended it from the bushes were so fine as to be almost invisible. Trie whole thing had the appearance of being suspended in the air upon a stem concealed beneath. When Mr. 801 l knocked the spider from its porch into a white gauze net, his surprise was increased upon seeing his captive instantly turn from blue to white. Its former mimicry had boon practised as a snare; now it was playing a similar game for the sake of concent ment. But the end of tho performance was not'yet reached. When Mr. Bell shook his captive its body again changed color, becoming this time of dull green-ish-brown. Later ho captured another larger specimen of the same species of spider, whose flower web resembled an orchid. This spider exhibited tho same remarkable power of changing Its color.