Behavior
Jumping spiders are generally diurnal, active hunters. Their well-developed internal hydraulic system extends their limbs by altering the pressure of body fluid (hemolymph) within them. This enables the spiders to jump without having large muscular legs like a grasshopper. Most jumping spiders can jump several times the length of their body. When a jumping spider is moving from place to place, and especially just before it jumps, it tethers a filament of silk (or dragline) to whatever it is standing on in order to protect themselves if their jump should fail. Should it fall for one reason or another, for example if the prey shakes it off, it climbs back up the silk tether. Some species, such as Portia will actually let themselves down to attack prey such as a web spider apparently secure in the middle of its web. Like many other spiders that leave a practically continuous silk trail, jumping spiders impregnate the silk line with pheromones that play a role in social and reproductive communication, and possibly in navigation.
Certain species of jumping spiders have been shown by experiment to be capable of learning, recognizing and remembering colors, and of adapting their hunting behavior accordingly.
Read more about this topic: Jumping Spider
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“He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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