A guava branch with a yellow fruit and leaves eaten into holes is overrun with animals. At lower left a huge black, hairy spider lies over a hummingbird beside a small nest of white eggs; another sits on the trunk below a gray silken mass. Columns of large ants march along the twigs, winged ants gather at lower right, and webs with smaller spiders fill the top. Maria Sibylla Merian drew the scene for plate 18 of Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium (1705), engraved by P.

Sluyter. She wrote that she usually found the largest spiders on guava trees, that they normally eat ants, and that for lack of ants they take small birds from their nests. The Natural History Museum identifies the scene as a pinktoe tarantula eating a ruby-topaz hummingbird. Linnaeus named the spider avicularia, little bird, after this plate.

Langsdorff and others ridiculed the idea of a bird-eating spider, but researchers now know Merian recorded a real predation. It is in the Smithsonian Libraries in Washington, DC.