Experiments on the International Space Station suggest spiders can weave normal-looking webs in space—they just need a surprising resource.
Tag Archives: Spiders
Eighteen Species of Tweezer-Faced, Spider-Slaying Pelican Spiders Discovered in Madagascar
Quick: what has eight legs and a face like a pair of hairy salad tongs? If you’re a spider, you know exactly what I’m describing—a beast, which, at least to smaller spiders, is an otherworldly, eldritch terror: the pelican spider. Now, new research published today in the journal ZooKeys details the discovery of a whopping 18 new species of pelican spider from Madagascar.
This Thumbnail-Sized Spider Shoots an 80-Foot-Long Web Bridge to Cross Rivers
If Marvel’s Spider-Man always seemed a little too far-fetched, you’re going to have an even harder time wrapping your head around the Darwin’s Bark spider. It’s no bigger than a thumbnail, but it can shoot a web at distances of over 80 feet, allowing it to cross rivers and spin massive traps.
Continue reading This Thumbnail-Sized Spider Shoots an 80-Foot-Long Web Bridge to Cross Rivers
305-Million-Year-Old ‘Almost Spider’ Unlocks Arachnid History
A new fossil found in France is almost a spider, but not quite.
The arachnid, locked in iron carbonate for 305 million years, reveals the stepwise evolution of arachnids into spiders. Dubbed Idmonarachne brasieri after the Greek mythological figure Idmon, father
of Arachne, a weaver turned into a spider by a jealous goddess, the “almost spider” lacks only the spinnerets that spiders use to turn silk into webs.
Continue reading 305-Million-Year-Old ‘Almost Spider’ Unlocks Arachnid History
Airborne Spiders Can Sail on Seas
Spiders that travel on the wind are also adept sailors when they land on water, researchers have discovered.
Morito Hayashi, a spider researcher at the Natural History Museum in London, says that it had been assumed that a wet landing would be deadly for what are known as ballooning spiders—those that drift to new habitats on wind-blown silken threads that they spin to lift themselves aloft.
The Fat Cat Collective 