Meet the Napoleon spider, named so because the black spots on this spider’s back resemble the famous French emperor Napoleon. In dutch this spider is called ‘blinkende krabspin’.
I encountered this little fellow at Massembre, a small town in the Ardennes Forest in the Southern part of Belgium. There was a giant meadow of blossoming flowers, and on one of those, a cornflower, it sat. It’s the only one of its kind I’ve ever seen.
Some information about it: the male is not quite as big as the female, only 3 – 4 mm long. A female can be 8 mm long. This makes me think this is a female. According to Wikipedia, it likes grass lands, close to a forest, and high vegetation.
About colours, mature males have a black abdomen with two white marks. In mature females, the background colour of the abdomen can be red, yellow or white. (Source: wikipedia.com)
As is common to all crab spiders, they are hunters of insects and catch these with their front legs. They don’t make a web.
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