Let Cake Eat Them
Zoom out a tad and the overall impression is of a disembodied black wolf’s noggin perched atop a lemon-frosted cake at what would be the WORST. BIRTHDAY PARTY. EVAR. unless your last name is “Addams”. Oh, it gets worse: as seen in the short “in action” video posted by Andreas Kay at Rumble, the front edge of the “frosting” is really a pair of wiggling pedipalp front legs concealing the hungry harvestman’s fangs. Small as they may be… fangs, fangs a lot.
Leaf Me Alone
Kay captured (photographically, that is) our featured Bunny Harvestman specimen in July of 2017 during an expedition to the Amazon rainforest in eastern Ecuador. While turning over a new leaf is usually considered a good thing, don’t try it in the jungle or you might get the surprise of your life. OK, so the harvestman was equally surprised but we’ll leave it to him or her – let’s just say “IT” – to report on the experience at its own blog, or whatever passes for blogs among harvestmen.
Forest Feeding
We really can’t say if Metagryne bicolumnata is endangered or not, as it’s only been known to science for about 60 years. German arachnid specialist Carl Friedrich Roewer had the dubious honor, back in 1959, of being the first human to describe the species. First human do do so and live to tell the tale, amiright?
A Hare-Raising Site
While Roewer only brought back sketches of the Bunny Harvestman, Flickr member Andreas Kay really brought Metagryne bicolumnata into our living rooms (thanks so much, dude) via his brilliant photographs and steady hand on the video camera. “I have been documenting the diversity of life in Ecuador as an independent scientist since 2011 and sharing over 25.000 photos on my page Ecuador Megadiverso,” states Kay, “hoping to raise more awareness for these threatened treasures.” Life, indeed, finds a way… to frighten the bejabbers out of us – not that there’s anything wrong with a wolf-headed were-rabbit flexing an octet of spindly jointed legs.
All images in this article have been graciously made available by Flickr member Andreas Kay under a Creative Commons 2.0 Generic license.

