138 results
- Animals
This spider makes its home in the burrows of extinct giant ground sloths
Caves made by extinct giant ground sloths make the perfect home for a newly discovered type of long-spinneret ground spider from Brazil.
- Animals
This spider uses trapped fireflies to lure in more prey
Male fireflies trapped in the spider’s web flash femalelike lights, possibly luring in other flying males and allowing the arachnid to stock up on food.
- Animals
Daddy longlegs look like they have two eyes. That doesn’t count the hidden ones
Despite its two-eyed appearance, Phalangium opilio has six peepers. The four optical remnants shed light on the arachnids’ evolutionary history.
- Animals
Here’s how spiders that go overboard use light to find land
When elongate stilt spiders fall into water, they head for areas that don’t reflect light in the hope of finding dry land, experiments suggest.
- Animals
The first known scorpion to live with ants carries mini hitchhikers
Small arachnids hitch a ride on the scorpion, possibly to get inside food-rich ant nests.
- Animals
In a first, these crab spiders appear to collaborate, creating camouflage
Scientists found a pair of mating crab spiders blending in with a flower. The report may be the first known case of cooperative camouflage in spiders.
- Animals
Some cannibal pirate spiders trick their cousins into ‘walking the plank’
A pirate spider in Costa Rica uses a never-before-seen hunting strategy that exploits the way other spiders build webs.
- Animals
In a first, genetically modified silkworms produced pure spider silk
An effort to engineer silkworms to produce spider silk brings us closer than ever to exploiting the extraordinary properties of this arachnid fiber.
- Animals
These are our favorite animal stories of 2023
Spiders that make prey walk the plank, self-aware fish and a pouty T. rex are among the critters that enchanted the Science News staff.
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The challenges of seeing the profusion of tiny life
Editor in chief Nancy Shute marvels at the diversity of tiny life-forms known as protists.
- Life
A metal ion bath may make fibers stronger than spider silk
The work is the latest in a decades-long quest to create artificial fibers as strong, lightweight and biodegradable as spider silk.
- Animals
These huntsman spiders do something weird: live together as a big, happy family
Five unusual species of spider moms let youngsters live at home way past the cute waddling baby phase.
