Wolf Spider fangs

Here's a close look at the fangs of a wolf spider exoskeleton. Fairly strong backlighting has rendered them translucent. The viewing angle has placed the fang on the right in a position where the tiny aperture through which venom is injected is clearly visible. Also present are the cheliceral teeth, resembling the serrated cutting edge of a saw. These help in grinding up prey allowing the spider to extract as much moisture from its meal as possible. This was taken with a Nikon D60, with an older Nikon AI-105 mm f/2.5 portrait lens (focused at infinity), mounted on a PN-11 extension tube. Reverse mounted on the front of the 105 was a Bell & Howell "Increlite" 1 inch focal length regular 8 mm movie projector lens. Lighting was provided by the pop-up flash on the camera bounced off foil reflectors of a home-made macro bracket.

Here's the projection lens in its improvised mount:

www.flickr.com/photos/61377404@N08/10058873163/in/album-7...

 

DSC-6286

 

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Uploaded on September 11, 2013
Taken on September 24, 2010