Just in time for Halloween, we have a story about a huntsman spider that was recently spotted scaling a wall while dangling a mouse. I don’t think we’re safe anymore.
Netizens reacted with humour and awe at the hunky creepy-crawly.
And while you should know your enemy, when it comes to spiders the more you know, the more you realise you’re outnumbered.
Just last year, 13 new species of spider were discovered in Queensland Australia in just 10 days. Researchers digging in the earth with abalone knives and pen knives unearthed new eight-legged terrors like the brush-footed trapdoor spider (watch your step) and the mouse spider (probably a relative of Mr Mouse Dragger).
Though the person who took the video of the huntsman spider gasped “That’s so cool” we think he was a bit naive. After all, have you seen Spiderman?
That dude is a lot more powerful than he looks.
Next thing you know he’ll be taking down the biggest dude in the room – oh.
True to life, spider silk is so strong, it gives them a decided edge by helping to immobilize much more powerful prey. And even the web’s construction is cunning – spiders weave web strands that vibrate with different frequencies so they can tell where in the web a hapless prey is trapped using the unique vibrations of the threads.
Scientists at Cornell University also recently found (by inserting an electrode into a jumping spider’s brain (YIKES) that those tiny arachnids can hear sounds more than 350 body lengths away (more than 3 meters) – clapping, chairs creaking – through their LEG HAIRS. No wonder they make it into so many monster movies.
But when you think about it, the things that are more scary than the monster are the creepier monsters that prey on it.
Meet the giraffe assassin bug, a little known predator with a really long neck that is an expert at sneaking up on spiders. To reach them, the bug either cranes its neck (which can be up to half its body length) and grabs them, or approaches the spider by plucking apart threads and gently releasing them so as to create no vibrations. The spider often stays unaware of the stealthy advance until it is attacked by a needle-like mouthpiece.
Or take the spider wasp, an airborne predator that should make spiders everywhere (even the huntsman) run and hide during mating season. Come summer, the wasp tussles the spider in a life-or-death match (it usually wins), delivers a paralysing sting and drags the spider into its mud nest. The egg it lays in the spider’s abdomen later hatches into a larva with a free meal of paralysed spider.
On that topic, the superheroine Wasp will be joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2018.
Watch out, Spider-man.
Just kidding!
Feature image belongs to Opoterser
By Vincent Tan
