Kogane-Gumo

The theme this week is going to be insects, and as it is summer the insects are out to play, propagate, and do whatever insects do. At any given moment there are around 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 insects on earth - seriously, that's a real number. For every one of us, there are 1.5 billion bugs. This is an Argiope amoena or kogane-gumo in Japanese which, might as well mean big #@!!% spider (20-25mm). Bugs really do come super-sized in Japan. In North America, Argiope aurantia is commonly known as the "black and yellow garden spider" because of the similarity of the web stabilimenta, however I have yet to see any spider this large in the states. I choose a more benign photograph, one that does not show her full-fuzzy beauty, to spare the arachnophobes in the audience.