Spiders hunt in packs of hundreds to swarm prey

[Still Waters]

Pack hunting spiders exist in places other than your nightmares. While most spiders enjoy solitary lives, 20 of the roughly 50,000 known spider species live in colonies. One species, Anelosimus eximius, lives in extremely large colonies of up to 1,000 individual spiders that work together to build webs spanning several meters. When prey falls into their web, these social spiders coordinate and attack their victim together, which allows them to take down much larger prey than they could if they hunted alone. Until now, exactly how these spiders carry out such coordinated attacks was a mystery. 

It turns out, the spiders use vibrations in their mega-web to choreograph a synchronized swarming process, the study found.

https://www.livescience.com/social-spiders-hunt-in-packs

This study was published March 7 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2115103119

[HandsomeGorilla]

Alright, as your resident arachnid enthusiast, I once again would like to clear a few things up

Headlines about spiders are, more often than not, misleading or fear provoking. This one would fuel nightmares in arachnophobes, thinking these spiders would trap you in a giant, communal web and they'd all gather around to consume you lol. Another recent media trend is with the Joro spider of the Trichonephila genus, making it seem like they're giant, dangerous, invasive critters with a goal of dominating the country. 

The great majority of spiders are lone wolves and pretty cannabilistic. These are a unique species and you probably wouldn't even suffer many consequences if a load of them DID bite you in unison. They're more or less innocuous towards humans, and their webs, despite the size, are still only suited to trap insects and other more suitably sized prey 

[jethrofloyd]

 

 

 

[Alchopwn]

Australia doesn't have Angels and Devils, the spiders and snakes got them.