This thing crawled up on my bench a few minutes ago. Does anyone know what it is?
It has eight legs and is predominately black and I’m assuming it’s some kind of spider. There are some markings in the middle of its “back” that look surprisingly like the digits “741”. It has what look like little 2 and 3 legged parasites, some of which have colored stripe markings and some are pretty plain. It seems to be partial to succulents.
There are bumps along each side above the legs and they seem capable of having things attached to them. There are more of those striped parasites that have somehow become attached to several of these bumps.
It doesn’t look like it’s really dead and in fact looks a little dangerous. I shocked it by placing the leads from my bench supply across the legs that didn’t have parasites. To my surprise, it flipped over on its back. I righted it and it remained still but still has an ominous look about it that makes me think it’s not dead.
I applied power again, this time upping the voltage to +/- 15Vdc and the same flipping behavior repeated itself. I tried righting it with power applied and now it won’t stay on its feet and insists on flipping over.
I’ve sketched what it looks like with the parasites attached.
.
