honeyvalley

The members of the ‘Tetragnathidae’ family of spiders are commonly known as the long jawed spiders. Called so because of their relatively longer mouth parts or more specifically called ‘chelicerae’, or the fangs. The other thing that distinguishes them is their first pair of legs being much longer than their second pair. These are orb-weaver spiders, building small to medium sized webs, generally suspended horizontally or at an inclination, above or close to water....

Came across this big group of individuals swimming around in a small stream in Coorg. They could easily have been mistaken for a school of fish and I did too. However, they seemed to be swimming on the water’s surface, with the upper half of their bodies outside, unlike most fish. Looking closely, realized that they weren’t fish at all, but a completely different kind of creatures. They were insects, more specifically, beetles....