alt Hacker NewsNewly discovered spider builds spring loaded snare to catch ants
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It is truly fascinating, I wonder how it evolved like that. Before becoming a spring as it is today how was it hunting in the past? What constraints made it need such a mechanism instead of a typical web?
I'm from where these spiders were found. The ants they're predating are an equally fascinating and super aggressive species of green weaver ants (that have other cool predators like "mimic" jumping spiders).
The videos are amazing. Sadly I think theses types of adaptations make it easier for the species to go extinct since its so highly specialized.
I wonder why biological organisms are capable of such absurdly high accelerations. Article reminded me of cnidocytes which apparently produce anywhere between 40,000 and 5,410,000 g. Is it because of the small masses involved?
Of course it’s an Australian spider
The part from the paper which is so interesting is why the ant bites the trap in the first place. The paper suggests that the spider puts out a pheromone that attracts the ant and triggers the ant to aggressively bite the snare, but the pheromone only does this for the spider's target species, the green tree ant. The researchers watched three other ant species check out the snare, go "meh", and move on, unharmed, without showing any aggression towards the snare.
this gives me children of time vibes
link to the paper here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48635929
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It is the year 2038. A new brand of slingshot is almost immediately removed from store shelves after multiple children receive through-and-through wounds.
HN pedantry time:
>discovered a remarkable new spider species...
Recently evolved then?
Or perhaps...
"An international team of researchers has recently discovered a remarkable spider species..."
Heh, for a second there this read like some of the Portiid adventures with Bianca and Fabian from Adrian Tchaikovsky's book "Children of time". If you find this kind of thing interesting and are a fan of sci-fi, I highly recommend the book.