Favoritos de sambeehler

Don't disturb a rain spider on her nest, @magrietb!

The spiders seem to like nesting in this species of conebush, saw a number of nests in them.
Inside the nest were lots of lovely little spiderlings.
This is slowed right down (about 8x) this took less than half a second on film.

Roman Passion

Length approx. 25mm
Started filming a few seconds in, so whole encounter took approx 90seconds. Full video here: https://youtu.be/UOZ53L8qk0A

I saw the male circling the female, then suddenly dart in behind her. He held her in his jaws, her abdomen bend up and over her head. They continued back and forth for 90seconds, at times it became frenetic and he whacked her up and down on the sand a number of times (as in GIF), which made me think perhaps they weren't mating but that one solifuge was killing the other. But in the end they separated unharmed.

From Wikipedia:
" Life cycle
..Reproduction can involve direct or indirect sperm transfer; when indirect, the male emits a spermatophore on the ground and then inserts it with his chelicerae in the female's genital pore. To do this, he flings the female on her back.
The female then digs a burrow, into which she lays 50 to 200 eggs – some species then guard them until they hatch. Because the female does not feed during this time, she will try to fatten herself beforehand, and a species of 5 cm has been observed to eat more than 100 flies during that time in the laboratory. Solifugae undergo a number of stages including, egg, postembryo, 9–10 nymphal instars, and adults."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solifugae#Life_cycle

Links to more mating vids here: https://www.inaturalist.org/comments/2330202