Category Archives: Natural History

Mysterious swimming spider

I recently read a fascinating post about fishing spiders on SpiderBytes (a fun and informative blog full of excellent photos). The post reminded me of a curious spider I observed once in Maine, swimming on the surface of a lake. The spider stood on its outer four legs, and stroked the inner two pairs together like oars in order to move forward. I managed to locate my old field notes from that trip, and I'm including them here in case anyone has any idea of what sort of spider this is.

SwimmingSpider