Wolf spider wears 'crown' of babies in jaw-dropping photo

If you think spiders are scary, imagine coming across a spider wearing a crown of real-life babies.

Actually, you don’t have to. Because American photographer Ben Salb has captured the jaw-dropping sight himself.

His image, titled 'Wolf Spider Mama,' recently won first prize in the insects and arachnids category of The Nature Conservancy's 2023 Global Photo Contest – and it’s not hard to see why.

"What’s special to me about this recognition is that this mama spider and her spiderlings were just [in] my neighborhood park," Slab, who lives in Washington DC, wrote in an Instagram post.

"I wasn’t on a safari nor in the jungles of Madagascar (not hating, I’m just jealous). I was in suburbia."

Wolf spiders are the “sprinters of the spider world”, according to National Geographic, because most of the thousands of species in the family, don’t spin webs – they chase down and pounce on their prey instead (like the wolves that inspire their name).

They have adapted to almost all climes, and can be found everywhere from icy mountain tops to volcanic lava tubes, and, yes, even in the UK.

They are also unique in that the females carry their egg sacks on the bottom rear of their abdomens. Then, when their spiderlings hatch, they climb onto the mother’s back where they live until they’re old enough to face the world on their own (usually around seven days).

The overall winner of this year’s Nature Conservancy contest was Tibor Litauszki, from Hungary, for his stunning underwater portrait of a newt eating freshly laid frog’s eggs.

The contest's grand prize went to Hungarian photographer Tibor Litauszki for this ethereal imageTibor Litauszki/TNC Photo Contest 2023

The competition’s judges reviewed more than 189,000 entries, snapped by more than 80,000 individual photographers, from 191 countries and territories around the world.

“Our annual photo contest is an inspiration,” Alex Snyder, the contest’s director and judging coordinator said in a statement. “Photographers from all walks of life helped give voice to nature by showing us what mattered to them."

He continued: “The judges and I were taken on a visual journey as we reviewed thousands of images from amateurs and professionals alike. These impactful images underscored not only the power of photography but the importance of The Nature Conservancy’s global efforts in conservation.”

The Nature Conservancy, an international environmental organisation, said in a press release that the images submitted to its competition “help connect us to the power and the peril of the natural world – with closeups of creatures great and small, painterly landscapes in all seasons and amazing scenes of exploration on land and sea.”

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