The Jack of mimicry

[Prajwal J Ullal]

Was just watching around for the mid evening resting beauties, the butterflies, while I spotted a really big sized (about 10-12mm) red ant and would move along the dried bushes that was near me. Initially I almost got fooled and thought it was just a normal ant, and when I thought it would be a good subject for macro photography I realized it was the ant mimicking jumping spider. After moving along the dried Tulsi plant it jumped into this plant which had lots of small red ants, though this beauty didnt catch any of those and rather kept moving swiftly from one leaf to the other.

EXIF:
Canon 550D
Canon 100mm macro
f/13
Shutterspeed 1/200
ISO 200
Handheld, Inbuilt flash used
Location: Bharikoppa, Hubli

[Mrudul Godbole]

Nice close up. Good details on the eyes. Was it eating the leaf? Thanks for sharing.

[Prajwal J Ullal]

Thanks, It wasnt eating the leaf, rather seemed to be preying around

[Sabyasachi Patra]

The head portion has come out well. How much of a crop is this?

[Roopak Gangadharan]

nice ...amazing how some species evolve on mimicry.
TFS
Roopak

[Abhishek Jamalabad]

Very nice angle. These spiders are very interesting subjects for photography or even observation.
Ant-mimicking spiders do not normally feed on ants. In fact, there have been observations of these spiders getting accidentally targeted by other ant-eating spiders. I had written a bit about their natural history (plus my own observations) long back- http://www.indiawilds.com/forums/showthread.php?10363-Myrmarachne-Ant-mimicking-Spiders

[Prajwal J Ullal]

Sabyasachi Sir, its almost a full frame, hardly 5% crop