Ants?

Yes ants. We have a couple of hundred species around here, this is the Savannah Spiny Ant (Polyrachis sp,) a prickly little customer, but not a real biter. There are two sets of spines on the thorax. You can just see them in this picture.

Speaking of parts, ants- being insects have three body segments- the head, the thorax (where all the legs are attached, plus wings) and the abdomen- the fat bit at the end. In ants this bit contains the formic acids/venom and the nozzle to squirt it, or in the case of many ants- a wasp-like sting.

Well look closer. The body is in two parts, not three. It has only a head and an abdomen. The thorax (middle section) is false. Yep, it's a spider that imitates an ant species. Instead of a head and thorax, spiders have a "Cephalothorax" which literally means "Head-middle" because spiders' head and thorax are the same unit. In this ant-imitating Jumping Spider, the Cephalothorax is divided to look like the first two segments of an insect body. Now, another observation. Spiders have 8 legs, insects have 6. Also, insects have feelers. The ant-imitating spiders use the first pair of legs, which are greatly reduced as false feelers- holding them out the front while walking- solving two problems in one. The first pair of legs has little segments just like insect feelers. The way these spiders move is also just like the ant species they imitate. Many of the mid-sized ant species have a spider that specifically imitates them. The Savannah Spiny Ant has an exact copy, as does the Green Tree ant. The spider shown imitates a species of grey ant very similar to the Savannah Spiny ant.