Tales from Rohan

Here in the North of Benin there are a lot of mango trees. There is also a type of spider here called the mango spider that like to spin their sturdy yellowish webs from mango trees. They eat a variety of insects including mosquitos and also a type of pest that causes some kind of blight on mango trees. In short, they are a very good thing. They also happen to look like some machine invented for a sci fi movie. There are usually several around a tree and sometimes I have seen more than 100 in the same spot.

I’ve been trying to get some good pictures of the mango spiders, but it is difficult since they are usually backlit against the sky and there is rarely anything to provide a sense of scale. Then I found this medium sized specimen below, conveniently at head height in a small mango tree on the University of Parakou campus. The largest ones are roughly twice the size.