Pictures of a jumping spider (salticidae family ???) in New Jersey

I found this tiny jumping spider in my house and took a few pictures. this spider is very small.

Jumping spiders are amazing creatures. Unlike other spiders they do not build webs to catch preys, but they pounce on them (hence the name). They have two huge eyes facing forward (and 4 smaller ones), and have excellent vision, despite their small brain (100,000 neurons or so), and despite the very low resolution of their retinae (on the order of 5 pixels horizontally and 12 pixels vertically). They can move their retinae to change their gaze, and can even vibrate them to increase the effective resolution of the image. Using this trick, they can get a good estimate of the size, direction, and distance of their prey (see wikipedia) for more details).

The pictures were taken with a Nikon Coolpix S4, which is not the best thing for macrophoto.

If you happen to know the species of this salticida, drop me a note at yann [at] lecun [dot] org.

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