wolf spider with all her babies: If you think spiders are scary, imagine coming across one wearing a crown of real babies.
Actually, you don’t have to. Because the American photographer, Ben Salb, himself recorded this amazing view.
His image, “Wolf Spider Mother,” recently won first prize in the insects and arachnids category of The Nature Conservancy’s 2023 World Photo Contest—and it’s not hard to see why.
“What’s special about this recognition for me is that this mother spider and her spiderlings were in my neighborhood park,” Slab, who lives in Washington, D.C., wrote in an Instagram post.
I was neither on safari nor in the jungles of Madagascar (no hater, just jealous). “I was in the suburbs.”
According to National Geographic, wolf spiders are the “runners of the spider world” because they don’t wrap their prey in their webs, instead, they follow their prey (like the wolves that inspired them. Name).
They have adapted to almost all environmental conditions and can be found everywhere from the tops of icebergs to the craters of volcanic mountains and even in Britain.
They are also unique in that females carry their egg sacs on the back of their abdomens. Then, when their baby spiders hatch, they climb onto the mother’s back where they live until they are big enough to face the world on their own (usually about seven days).
The overall winner of this year’s conservation competition was Tibor Litauszki, from Hungary, for his stunning underwater portrait of a newt eating freshly laid frog eggs.
Contest judges reviewed more than 189,000 photographs taken by more than 80,000 individual photographers from 191 countries and territories around the world.
“Our annual photo contest is an inspiration,” contest director and judging coordinator Alex Snyder said in a statement. Photographers from all walks of life helped nature by showing what was important to them.
He continued, “The judges and I were taken on a visual journey as we reviewed thousands of images from amateurs and professionals alike. These images impact not only the power of photography but the importance of global conservation efforts in the field.” They emphasize protection.
The Nature Conservancy, an international environmental organization, said in a press release that the images submitted to its competition “help us connect with the power and dangers of the natural world – with close-ups of creatures large and small, picturesque landscapes in all seasons and amazing scenes. Exploration on land and sea.
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