Hardest Spider in the World

[the Jester]

Boy, the real world sure is good at creating monsters.

Link

If you, like Mark Zuckerberg, plan to kill something and eat it, pick something that's either smaller than you or can't fight back, or preferably both. Otherwise you might bite off more than you can chew.

Not every predator takes things that easy. The desert long-eared bat happily munches on deadly scorpions, and recent footage showed a ground beetle tackling a toad several times its size. That's impressive, but toads are not exactly vicious predators.

To really display your ballsiness as a predator, you need to take on other predators – preferably ones that would eat you given half the chance. That's exactly what the spider-eating spider Palpimanus gibbulus does. This arachnid thug muscles its way into other spiders' homes and attacks them head-on.

The team captured spiders in pitfall traps and by searching under stones, and kept some of them in their lab. To find out what they could hunt, they tested 92 P. gibbulus and 65 P. orientalis. In each trial they put a single spider in a Petri dish, along with a single prey spider, and observed whether the Palpimanus could catch it.

It turned out they could catch each of the 29 kinds of spider they were offered, and caught all but one species in more than half the trials. It didn't matter which family the prey came from, nor what size they were: Palpimanus was equally happy catching spiders a third its size or twice its size.

In one series of experiments, they presented P. gibbulus with a jumping spider called Cyrba algerina, which also habitually eats other spiders. P. gibbulus caught it in 90 per cent of trials, although in the other 10 per cent it was itself captured.

What's their secret? According to Pekár, Palpimanus have a battery of adaptations that help them hunt other spiders.

The most obvious is their massive front legs, which they use to grab their prey. Like many hunting spiders, they have dense tufts of extremely sticky hair on the tips of their legs. When Pekár glued these hairs together, the spiders became much less successful at hunting.

Palpimanus isn't fast but it's stealthy, closing on its prey so carefully that the prey may not be able to detect any vibrations from its footfalls. That means it can get up close, at which point it lunges, grabs the prey with its forelegs and administers a venomous bite.

In many cases the prey spider bites right back, but this doesn't do it much good. Palpimanus has a cuticle tens of micrometres thick, over twice as thick as any of its prey species and possibly the thickest for a spider of its size, so bites rarely do it any harm. Apart from the trials with Cyrba algerina, only 1 per cent of trials ended with the prey species killing Palpimanus.

Pekár thinks that Palpimanus hunts by entering other spiders' webs and burrows – a related Ugandan species has been seen doing just that. Confident in its armour, Palpimanus could trap its prey in their homes and overwhelm them.

Its intricate offensive strategy puts Palpimanus on a par with the more famous spider-eating spiders Portia. Found in tropical forests, Portia wait for their prey to be distracted by food before attacking, and sometimes twang their prey's web to mimic the impact of a twig, disguising their approach. They can even plan new strategies to handle unfamiliar prey.

Can Palpimanus also learn and plan? There is much less information than there is for Portia, says Pekár, so we can't say for sure. But Palpimanus does use different strategies for prey in webs, in nooks and crannies, and in the open, so it is versatile. Pekár suspects it can learn from its experiences and change its strategies accordingly.

 

[Dragonbait]

I refuse to believe it! Spiders have Int 0 and Cha 2! They should not be able to plan strategies or learn and they have difficulty distinguishing themselves from a chair or a rock.

That science stuff is nonsense!

 

[Raven Crowking]

Removed

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I had seen stuff on Portia before- just this year, as a matter of fact- but this is new. Ahhh, Mother Nature...she one scary SHUT YO' MOUTH!

 

[Dausuul]

That right there is a Name-level spider.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I refuse to believe it! Spiders have Int 0 and Cha 2! They should not be able to plan strategies or learn and they have difficulty distinguishing themselves from a chair or a rock.

That science stuff is nonsense!

I would say that any creature that hunts down, kills, and eats other creatures has a perfectly functioning sense of self.

Those game stats are nonsense!!

 

[Nebten]

Must be one of Shelob's kids . . .

 

[steeldragons]

Read the thread title and figured it would be something about, like, stats for a diamond spider or a granite spider-shaped golem or something.

..the real world is MUCH spookier than any fantasy world I visit. Yikes!

--SD

 

[Mark CMG]

You've got to wonder how much wagering was going on in Pekar's lab during the trials.

 

[nedjer]

Love those bugs.

Don't know how they do with other spiders, but the Brazilian Wandering Spider is meant to be the most deadly to humans.

Not sure if the high death rate is due to the venom in the intensely painful bites, or the severe priapism it brings on. No sudden turns if you get bitten by one of those critters.

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