Newly discovered spider species builds spider decoys out of dead bugs

I had to share this. One of the coolest things I've ever seen.

source

The spider, which was first discovered in Peru by entomologist Phil Torres and separately in the Philippines in 2012 by entomologist Lary Reeves was recently pointed out again by Wired Science, uses leaves, debris and dead insects to shape its spider design. It's remarkable, the legs actually extend and the design really looks like a giant spider.

The fake spider design is much larger than the real spider (~30mm on the decoy vs just a few millimeters for the real spider) and the real spider can camouflage nicely under all the dead bodies and debris it put together. Power in size, power in numbers, power in dead bodies.

How cool is that? How exactly does an animal evolve to produce this sort of behavior? The obvious suggestion is that it does this to scare away predators, but how would a spider figure out how to do this? Furthermore, how does it know how many legs it has in the first place? It creates it's decoys with 8 legs...

Fascinating discovery. Nature never ceases to amaze me.

reply to post by DeadSeraph


We shall all soon be bowing down to our eight-legged overlords!

Long-live Arachnia!

Just goes to show that we are not the only intelligent species on this planet, a matter of perspective really.
We humans just happen to advance mentally with mathematics, literature and space travel...in our exclusive niche.
Other species advance in their rightful way according to their environment.
This is a really cool topic and I'm glad your brought this bit of fresh air into a stuffy room of conspiracy.
S&f

reply to post by DeadSeraph


Pretty amazing...what better way to pass the time...

One of the more remarkable things about this is that they have discovered 2 separate species that both exhibit this behavior. One species in peru, and another in the philippines. The odds that 2 different species that far apart would both evolve to exhibit the same behavior seem astronomical.

Maybe it is evolving as we did with cave paintings. Its web after all is often unique and a form of artistic expression. Why not create something in its own image?

DeadSeraph
How cool is that? How exactly does an animal evolve to produce this sort of behavior?

That's a very good question, and one I can't answer. I'd love to know how such a behavior evolves. I can think of other aspects of evolution that are similarly difficult to explain, much more difficult than things like the complexity of the eye for example, which some people think is difficult to explain but really isn't.

Or how about the spider Portia that usually preys on web based spiders and it actively solves how to surprise the spider, not just blindly running/jumping onto/into the web?

Yeah, the have brains that rival Dan Quayle's, but they use "logic"!

Derek

Mind blowing! How does it know what it looks like? I mean, they don't have mirrors. How does it count to 8? This shows a level of awareness....I can't even find the words.
This has me pondering the nature of consciousness and the consciousness of nature (again).

Very cool spider.

Magnificent architectural feat !!
Maybe it's been something from the animal kingdom, creating crop circles

reply to post by DeadSeraph



I don't know if it's the beer, but I'm slightly interested in this spider. I mean it's effing brilliant. For a creature that as far as we know has not even seen it's own reflection to show this kind of self awareness. We really need to take a good hard look at ourselves. We may not be the smartest, nor only creatures as well developed as we think.

You want to take a look at the program "Inside the animal mind" repeated on UK bbc2 11.20pm 29th of January 2014, It blew my mind!
Somehow a dog has been trained to find a lure under six meters of water in a lake a mile long, the dog must be detecting a molecule of 1 in 1 billion.
And the stuff with the shark, well.....

reply to post by DeadSeraph


So somehow this spider knows what it looks like and makes a replica of itself for strategic purposes... And this has been found in two species
If that's not evidence of consciousness and intelligence in a spider, then I'm not sure what is...


Very cool find

riffraff
Mind blowing! How does it know what it looks like? I mean, they don't have mirrors. How does it count to 8? This shows a level of awareness....I can't even find the words.
This has me pondering the nature of consciousness and the consciousness of nature (again).

Hmmm, maybe it met another spider of it's own kind and modeled from it?

Arnie123
Just goes to show that we are not the only intelligent species on this planet, a matter of perspective really.
We humans just happen to advance mentally with mathematics, literature and space travel...in our exclusive niche.
Other species advance in their rightful way according to their environment.
This is a really cool topic and I'm glad your brought this bit of fresh air into a stuffy room of conspiracy.
S&f

there just dumb animals doing things by rote just like automatons.

it's all instinct.

i think we need to stop acting OMG towards animals behaviour which is rote/instinct and work on how to travel TO OTHER PLANETS.I mean are just dumb animals.Has an animal invented a cellphone/facebook/or a nintendo?

Animals are for food.so stop being all wishy washy and sentimental.remembers spiders sting with poison.many people have been killed by spiders.

I am sick of seeing all those adverts saying give me $20 a month to save the tiger,the cheetah the leopards,the lion..why.

save them?

save them for what?

and if was humans beings that going extinct would ANIMALS do telethons for us?

We need to ASSERT OUR MANKIND SUPERIORITY and focus on things like the War on Terror and keeping America Safe.

It's stories like this that drives me to continue striving for a way back into college for a zoology degree. To be able to go forth and study the magic that is nature would be a dream come true! That said, spiders have always creeped me out so knowing there's one out there with the means of creating macabre dummies is certainly nightmare fuel.

reply to post by DeadSeraph


I adore spiders. I have a Costa Rican Zebra spider. I watch her incessantly, and know that she reacts to energy, vibrations, moods. I think that wildlife are connected to source energy, all that infinite intelligent energy that mirrors back to us who we are. Why would a spider not perceive her own body structure?

reply to post by DeadSeraph


That is EVER so awesome!

I love spiders anyway, but this makes me appreciate the entire spider family even more!

beckybecky

Arnie123
Just goes to show that we are not the only intelligent species on this planet, a matter of perspective really.
We humans just happen to advance mentally with mathematics, literature and space travel...in our exclusive niche.
Other species advance in their rightful way according to their environment.
This is a really cool topic and I'm glad your brought this bit of fresh air into a stuffy room of conspiracy.
S&f

there just dumb animals doing things by rote just like automatons.

it's all instinct.

i think we need to stop acting OMG towards animals behaviour which is rote/instinct and work on how to travel TO OTHER PLANETS.I mean are just dumb animals.Has an animal invented a cellphone/facebook/or a nintendo?

Animals are for food.so stop being all wishy washy and sentimental.remembers spiders sting with poison.many people have been killed by spiders.

I am sick of seeing all those adverts saying give me $20 a month to save the tiger,the cheetah the leopards,the lion..why.

save them?

save them for what?

and if was humans beings that going extinct would ANIMALS do telethons for us?

We need to ASSERT OUR MANKIND SUPERIORITY and focus on things like the War on Terror and keeping America Safe.

--
So just let them go extinct?
Lets not admire our fellow creature?
Mankind's Superiority is only as good with all beings on this planet.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no tree hugger, but I'm not going to go around and just NOT acknowledge our environment.
There are a lot of emerging technologies based on the emphasis of other animals throughout our planet.
Instead of worrying about the war on terror, worry about the war on nature, the collapse if bee colonies, the vanishing monarchs and forest...all vital for our survival BTW.
Your opinion and everyone is entitled to it, but....
Your point an on the issue is literally INVALID.