Nursery Web Spider
Pisaurina mira
Scientific Classification
: Animalia : Arthropoda : Arachnida : Araneae : Pisauridae

Nursery web spiders are spiders of the family Pisauridae. They resemble wolf spiders (family Lycosidae), but they carry their egg sacks by means of their jaws and pedipalps. When the eggs are about to hatch, a mother spider will build a nursery "tent", put her egg sack inside, and mount guard outside. The wolf spiders have two very prominent eyes in addition to the other six, but the eyes of the nursery web spiders are nearer to the same size. Many species of nursery web spiders are able to walk on the surface of still bodies of water, and may even dive beneath the surface for a time to escape enemies. In escaping predators they may very well jump a distance of five or six inches. They do not find it easy to make their way up extremely smooth surfaces such as glass, however.