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Introducing another inhabitant of the Daintree rainforest, the Ogre-faced or Net-casting Spider Deinopsis subrufa is cryptically discrete in shades of brown and grey, but once detected is recognizable by its enormous posterior median eyes and 40mm long body.

According to a website examining eyes, female net-casting spiders of Australia have the largest eyes of any spider. They also have an amazing ability to capture photons (particles of light), as many as 2000 times the number absorbed by human eyes.

Perhaps their most distinguishing feature is the peculiar deployment of silk to capture prey. Using comb-like structures on the tibia of their hind legs, they construct a rectangular net from a woolen-looking, bluish-tinted silk with a 400 to 600% stretch capacity. They hold the corners of this highly elasticised net with their four front legs and then wait for prey. When prey is detected, the spider propels itself forward with blistering speed, stretching the net over and around the prey. Once captured, the prey is then secured further with silk fed from the spider’s spinnerets with the hind legs.

Spiders concern participants on nocturnal tours in the Daintree more than any other creature. Some people are completely immobilised by their fear of these fascinating animals. This is not the case with renowned artist Louise Bourgeois, who has created a nine-metre high spider as an ode to her mother, which now resides on the banks of the River Thames overlooking central London.

Cycads have an evolutionary history dating back to the dry, cool age of the Triassic, when much of the world’s terrestrial landscape was inhospitable to spore-producing plants. They have carried the evolutionary breakthrough of the seed from an ancient group of now-extinct plants called Bennettitaleans, to the present.

Cycads are pollinated mainly by weevils and thrips, which carry out much of their life cycle within the tissues of the male and female cones. In what could be considered an insightful adaptation to global warming (albeit at a micro-level), an ABC Science Online article by Stephen Pincock reveals how another species of cycad Macrozamia lucida uses a stockpile of sugars, starch and fats to heat their cones to around 12 degrees Celsius above air temperature to encourage thrips to evacuate to the more appealing climes of the female cones.

Whilst cycads are pollinated by weevils and thrips, the distribution of their seeds is reliant upon another group of animal carriers.

The world’s tallest cycad Lepidozamia hopeii can reach twenty-metres. Every five-years-or-so, female plants produce large cones that mature over about ten months. They then collapse and bright-red seeds adorn the forest floor at the base of the plant. Mammals carry individual seeds away from the intensity of competition and remove the delectable red aril from the seed, leaving the camouflaged core to recruit away from the competitive disinterests of the parent plant.

I was just out photographing cycad cones for a new entry, when I happened upon this bizarre creature. It would appear to have eight legs, with the forelegs raised completely over the animal, presumably in an expression of defense. The noodle-like embellishments on the ventral surface of these legs (at least) appear to add a degree of emphasis to the expression.

Tucked under the bulk of the animal, between the short leg in the foreground (pointing towards the bottom left corner of the image) and the bulbous mass aligned with the central vein of the leaf, is another appendage that looks suspiciously like a palp. This would imply that the head of the animal is most proximal to the top left corner of the image and that the rear legs have been hyper-extended up and over the animal’s back.

The total length of the animal, legs excluded, is less than 4 mm.

Any ideas?