Unusual Creature!

I was watching and scrutinizing all my hoyas last weekend. I studied all the growths and patterns of development and compared them to what i remember from two weeks ago. I am glad there are some progress, a few peduncles are promising to produce flowers. A few flower buds are already forming in some, and some umbels are already about to open the blooms. I unleashed some twining vines, clipped them to where they should be to have a semblance of order.

And then i found an unusaul creature. I was observing it thinking it is a big black ant. It is just almost one centimeter in length, from tip to tip of the body.  I immediately took some photos because it was an unusual ant. Later on at the house after transferring the shots to the computer, i suddenly realized it is really an "unusual ant" because it actually has four pairs of legs. Ants are insects, so they only have 3 pairs of legs. My creature has 4 pairs, therefore it is a spider! This is the most unusual spider i have seen, because the body is that of an ant, and the mandibles do not look like anything i have seen yet. Moreover, its lenght is almost the same as the length of its body! How so very incredible.

 Look at those strong 3 pairs of legs, it really looks like an ant. But there is another pair of leg in front, which acts like an antennae, that are extending forward.

I am lucky it didn't move away with my presence, with the macro lens almost touching it. I wonder if it saw itself on the lens and maybe it was so scared that it was frozen in place! Look at those eyes, it has a lot; a big pair in front, smaller pair beside it, and another small pair at the side almost at the back of the head. I wonder why it was provided with a lot of eyes around its head. And those mandibles, is that size really vital for it to live? I suddenly get so interested in learning about it.

At this angle we can see the relationships of the body parts. The very very slim waist makes it very similar to ants. The 4 pairs of legs very visible here, together with the eyes and that very unusual mandible almost longer than its head or its abdomen.

I tell you I am so engrossed with the photos but i only have 5 of them, only these 3 are more vivid. Then i posted it in the arachnophile group in FB asking the authorities for its identification. Lo and behold, it is called ant mimicking spiders, Myrmarachne sp. There's a lot of species of these genus, it is very difficult to point one species like this one. So I am already happy with that genus, that suffice for now! I learned a lot of information from this supposedly "ant", turning out to be a spider, a Myrmarachne species.

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