Spider acrobatics

[broacher]

Great little video of an Australian spider taking down a larger ant. (Be sure to pause and go back over the attack to watch the technique better).

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/19/science/spiders-ants-hunting.html

85% capture rate! That’s closing in on dragonfly efficiency. The article closes with a biomolecular engineer:

"Dr. Bhamla says humans don’t treat arachnids and insects “as being capable of building tools; we think of humans and primates being the ones doing it.” He added, “Now you have these spiders, which have come up with another way to go after these ants.”

Does spider web ‘roping’ then fit the formal definition of animal tool use?

Interesting tidbit about how rare it is for spiders to attach ants (less than 1% of spider species).

[Ajott]

It´s behind a paywall for me unfortunately

[jgw_atx]

Try this “gift” link instead:

This Acrobatic Hunting Trick Is Straight Out of the Spider-Verse

[Ajott]

Thanks!

Pretty cool stuff. Spiders are just amazing.
For “my” spider (Stegodyphus) ants are the biggest enemy. Spider are bad ass hunters… ants going after spiders are even more bad ass … and spider going for ants…ya well, you guessed it :-D

[bug_girl]

Lol thx for that, I usually have my website settings set to block that paywall but this time it also blocked the video lollll.

[broacher]

@jgw_atx

Try this “gift” link

Thanks. I keep forgetting that not everyone uses the Brave browser (which easily avoids these walls).

[broacher]

They’re both incredible creatures with tons of abilities and behaviours that we’re only starting to really appreciate and understand.

But yeah, that was one badass takedown! And the speed, the flip, sticking the sticky, and then dancing around the ant…backwards?! Woah.