ambitious lil devil.......

[Paul]

Well today while I was watering the plants on my balcony, I noticed what I though was a small moth spinning rapidly in place midair below a horizontal branch of my little Ficus. Now I have a plethora of orb weavers which call my balcony home during the summer so I figured that the insect had snagged itself on one of the sticky cross bars of an orb web. Turned out I was wrong on a couple counts. Firstly, what I mistook for a small moth was instead a fat midge. Secondly, it had not gotten snagged on a piece of webbing. Instead, a little zebra jumping spider (Salticus scenicus) had apparently pounced on the midge -- though whether while the midge was at rest or in midair I have no idea. The two were suspended by the spider's dragline and were spinning as a result of the midge's attempt to fly. By the time I got to my camera, they were at the foot of the Ficus. The midge's body -- not counting wings or legs -- was easily twice that of the jumper.