In April 2023, Gordon and I did a trip to Mawson's hut in Kossie Nat park.
We parked near Round Mountain, hiked to first night's stay at Gray Mare Hut, then to lunch at Valentines' Hut then to a tent at the Tarn near Cup and Saucer, then to Mt Jagungal then back to the car.
One of the more memorable aspects of the walk was the behaviour of the wolf spiders related below. BTW, I reported this to the Australian Museum who came back eventually and told me that I was imagining things. Huh. I replied to tell them that they were missing out on a world-class discovery by disbelieving me. So there.
Here are my notes from just after the hike.
Suddenly I saw a ferocious fuzzball come bouncing along the track at me, legs all churning in a frightening display of aggression. It was obviously gunning for me because when I backed away and stepped aside it changed direction and kept coming at me. Then it stopped a few of my paces away and froze, as if it had decided I was too big a foe to take on. Stamping and poking gently with a walking stick could not provoke the previous frenzy, it just ran away a few steps and froze again and just sat there. We walked on, leaving it to consider it's life-choices.
This scenario played out about four times in the three-day hike. In total we came across about sixteen of these spiders, six of which were dead, squashed by outraged hikers maybe? (We certainly didn't kill any of these magnificent critters, but I can imagine some less enlightened responses.)
There seemed to be a pattern. Initial bouncing/running activity, followed by freezing.
Whether this was aggression or bluff towards us, I don't know, but it certainly got our attention.
Possibly what we saw was not directed at us (which is what the museum person was alluding to, I guess) Maybe the spider was having a tussle with an invisible (small) opponent like a predatory wasp that we didn't see and we were just innocent bystanders. That might explain all the jumping/bouncing that seemed to be the initial part of the show.
Maybe he was just jumping for joy. It was a particularly pleasant Autumn day.
My favorite theory is that the spiders were all infected by a brain parasite that was trying to get them eaten....
I did manage to find an anecdotal report of similar behaviour: Mt Kosciuszko, Snowy Mountains, NSW - Hiking Fiasco
I’ve seen some strange things over the years, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen a sizeable spider bounce out of the grass and stop dead in the middle of the track to give me an eye-balling.