In Disguise

I apologise to the spider phobics out there. There seems to be a bit of a plague of Redbacks at work at present, I swear I find another one every time I swap a bin at work. They seem to love hanging out on the lids of the wheelie bins inside the bin cages. Im quite grateful I wear gloves, to be honest. Spider bites arent fun. So, an explanation of the photos. Well, I thought I would introduce the many disguises of the Redback. The top photo is of a male Redback. He is very small, his abdomen wouldnt even be half a centimeter across, and he has no red or strong black colouring. You pick him from his brown stripe on a white abdomen.That and he looks like a Redback that has been coloured in wrong. Male Redbacks mature in about 90 days and they are short lived, mostly because they encourage the female in sexual cannibalism! During mating he somersaults his abdomen infront of the females jaws and is consumed by her during mating. The bottom two pictures are of female Redbacks at different juvenile stages. It takes approximately 4 months for the female to mature, so it takes a little while for her to grow into her colours. she starts off the ligher brown colour with white splotches amongst her red stripe, then slowly turns black and loses her white. She will grow to about the size of a pea. Now that you are all educated, I really wish they werent hanging out in the bins so much at work.