Peacock Spider 7 (Maratus speciosus)

The spider is a male Maratus speciosus (Coastal peacock spider) and this is its way to appeal to a potential female mate (the brown spider at the end). It is approximately 4 mm in length and inhabits coastal dunes near Perth in Western Australia. There are many equally colourful spiders in Australia that do something similar, have a look at the other videos on my channel. However the asymmetric and staccato legwork of this one is unique, and so are the clown face and orange hairs on its back. Hard to believe but there is no footage of this species yet in any wildlife documentary and although it has been known since 1874, it was not until I photographed and filmed it recently that the world took notice. If you are after a scientific paper that I coauthored this spider's courtship you can download 119.1 from the Peckhamia website http://peckhamia.com/peckhamia_number...
Thanks to David Knowles from Perth for providing me with the spiders shown in this clip.

Check out also my other peacock spider videos https://www.youtube.com/user/Peacocks... I have filmed 11 species so far, all with different behaviour and colour patterns. And If you want to be the first to hear about my new discoveries in the peacock spider world I invite you to visit my Facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/PeacockSpider

Still images of this spider on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59431731...
For still photographs of other peacock spiders check out my flickr collection:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59431731...

Filming, editing and music selection: Jurgen Otto
Equipment"Canon 60D and 100 mm macro lens.

Music in order of appearance:
Fossils (Graham Pagano)
Didgeridingo (David Anstey)
All music from stockmusicsite.com

Still images of this spider on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59431731...

Recently I observed an immature of this species performing a similar dance, check it out on my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=...
David Hill and I described this phenomenon in Peckhama 122.1 which you can download from the Peckhamia website http://peckhamia.com/peckhamia_number...