Unidentified spider on a leaf after shedding its skin. The empty skin is hanging by a silk thread below the leaf. Moulting takes place several times during a spider's lifetime, but most often when it is young and growing. To shed the old exoskeleton, the spider swells and flexes its muscles to split it, and then crawls forward and pulls its legs out of the old exoskeleton. Photographed in the Ecuadorian Amazon.