The two-striped jumper, or Telamonia dimidiata, is a jumping spider

Spider

Spiders are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, and chelicerae with fangs that inject venom. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all other groups of organisms...

 found in various Asian tropical rain forests, in foliage in wooded environments.

Description

Females can reach a body length of 9–11 mm, males can reach a length of 8–9 mm. The female is light yellowish, with a very white cephalus and red rings surrounding the narrow black rings round the eyes. Two longitudinal bright red stripes are present on the opisthosoma

Opisthosoma

The opisthosoma is the posterior part of the body in some arthropods, behind the prosoma . It is a distinctive feature of the subphylum Chelicerata...

. The male is very dark, with white markings, and red hairs around the eyes. The species is non-venomous.

Description

They appear in Singapore

Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

 (new record), Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

, Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, Bhutan

Bhutan

Bhutan , officially the Kingdom of Bhutan, is a landlocked state in South Asia, located at the eastern end of the Himalayas and bordered to the south, east and west by the Republic of India and to the north by the People's Republic of China...

.
They are non-venomous

Email hoax

Since 2002, the spider has been the subject of an email hoax claiming that it was a fatal spider found lurking under toilet seats in North Florida

North Florida

North Florida refers to the northernmost part of the U.S. state of Florida, including some counties that border the state of Georgia. It also borders the Big Bend with Madison County and Taylor County to the east and the Central Florida region to its south....

. This hoax was a rehashing of an older email circulated in 1999 with similar claims, except under the name "South American Blush Spider (arachnius gluteus[sic])" - literally "butt spider". Similar email hoaxes (with details of the original changed here and there) have been found in other parts of the world claiming that the same thing happened in that country. No such events appear to have occurred, and the story is considered an urban legend

Urban legend

An urban legend, urban myth, urban tale, or contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories that may or may not have been believed by their tellers to be true...

. The spider poses no danger to humans.

External links

• Description
• Spider myths and hoaxes
• Salticidae.org: Color photographs of both sexes