#javier aznar

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Puma in Canandé Reserve.

Photo credit: Javier Aznar

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A rarely seen crab spider (Onocolus sp.) blends into the foliage in the Jama-Coaque Ecological Reserve in Ecuador.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JAVIER AZNAR

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The bold jumping spider clambered aboard Javier Aznar’s finger.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAVIER AZNAR

Perched on a banana flower, this bromeliad spider in La Maná, Ecuador, waits patiently for an unlucky pollinator to drop by.

In Madrid, a female crab spider (Misumena vatia) feasts on a katydid as a much smaller male crab spider of another species (Thomisus onustus) perches on her abdomen.

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Fantastic fungi: Mushrooms spout in nature’s damp corners, a Nat Geo report (and casual foragers) find. The image of these orange fungi sprouting in a cloud forest in Ecuador got more than 300,000 likes on our Instagram page. Many researchers believe mushrooms are the key to life, but we may not be doing enough to protect them.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JAVIER AZNAR, @JAVIER_AZNAR_PHOTOGRAPHY

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What’s for dinner? This tree is a pantry to an acorn woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus), holding its acorn stash. The species has unusual behaviors, such as living in large groups, breeding cooperatively, and hoarding acorns. They wedge acorns into the holes they've made in the trunk. This image came from Arizona, but this type of woodpecker is living from Canada to Colombia.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JAVIER AZNAR, @JAVIER_AZNAR_PHOTOGRAPHY

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I come to drink your … water: A tent-making bat flies down to a pond in Ecuador’s section of the Amazon. Photographer Javier Aznar saw this and other bats swooping down to the pond to drink. He never thought he’d get a quality image at night. Bats have the fastest horizontal movement of any animal on earth and a built-in sonar system, Nat Geo reports.

Photographer: Javier Aznar

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Face-to-face with the devil: It’s nocturnal, has six spiny legs, and is omnivorous, meaning it doesn’t have a problem chowing down on other insects. The devil katydid (Panacanthus cuspidatus), featured in a recent post on Nat Geo’s Instagram, is “one of the most unreal insects I've photographed in the Ecuadorian Amazon,” says photographer Javier Aznar.

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Walk into my parlor: A spider web is amazingly complex. And deadly. In the image above, featured on our Instagram page, an Amazon thorn spider (Micrathena schreibersi) feeds on a small stingless bee while hanging off a spiderweb in Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park. The spider in the photo is a female, with large spines on the abdomen, while the males are smaller and with shorter spines.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JAVIER AZNAR @JAVIER_AZNAR_PHOTOGRAPHY