If the only thing more terrifying to you than a spider is a spider chasing you, you’re not going to want to watch this video of Festo’s latest creation. Using eight reconfigurable legs, the BionicWheelBot can creepily crawl along the ground, but then transform into a wheel and roll at an alarming speed. Someone find…
Environments make species. This was the fundamental biology lesson that was drilled into Charles Darwin when he visited the Galápagos Islands back in 1835, a trip that ultimately inspired his theory of natural selection. Nearly 200 years later, scientists in Hawaii have stumbled upon a fascinating evolutionary quirk…
Quick: what has eight legs and a face like a pair of hairy salad tongs? If you’re a spider, you know exactly what I’m describing—a beast, which, at least to smaller spiders, is an otherworldly, eldritch terror: the pelican spider. Now, new research published today in the journal ZooKeys details the discovery of a…
Spiders are typically thought of as solitary creatures that don’t partake in social pleasantries unless it has something to do with mating. But as new research shows, the African velvet spider is an exception to this rule. Mother spiders are assisted by closely-related virgin females who, in addition to engaging in…
Spiders in the family Migidae don’t get out much. Known as “tree trapdoor spiders,” they are unapologetic homebodies, spending nearly their entire lives chilling in a single burrow. Unlike their close, but much more famous relatives the tarantulas, tree trapdoor spiders are teeny, with most species small enough to fit…
If Marvel’s Spider-Man always seemed a little too far-fetched, you’re going to have an even harder time wrapping your head around the Darwin’s Bark spider. It’s no bigger than a thumbnail, but it can shoot a web at distances of over 80 feet, allowing it to cross rivers and spin massive traps.
Imagine this thing that has actually happened: Your infant has a strangely-shaped skin lesion. Seeing this disgusting skin lesion and thinking it might be anthrax, you take your child to the doctor. “Doc, I think I my kid has anthrax,” you might say. The doctor’s eyes roll. “It’s obviously a spider bite,” doc probably…
Say hello to Califorctenus cacachilensis, a new species of spider found in a remote mountain region of Baja California Sur. This elusive, softball-sized arachnid prefers the dark and cozy confines of caves, which seems entirely appropriate given its gruesome appearance. Also, we are never going into caves ever again.
When a suspicious looking box labeled “two pair shoes” arrived in Australia from Northern Europe recently, the Australian Border Force sent it through an x-ray. They didn’t find shoes, of course. Instead, the box contained a terrifying assortment of venomous snakes, spiders, and scorpions—as if the country needed more…
Funnel web spiders are a perplexing bunch. The eight-legged Australian creatures can kill with their venom, but are simultaneously required for creating the antidote. Now, it turns out their venom might have another purpose—protecting the brain from the damaging effects of a stroke.
Spiders are already horrifying, with their eight beady little eyes and spindly legs and sticky webs. They also probably eat more meat than your mind can wrap your head around—more meat than humans eat, even.
Today has been a stressful day in American science news. So, it seems like the perfect time to site back and relax with a nice, comforting story about an Australian Zoo asking people to catching deadly fucking venomous spiders for it.
Imagine the most elegant of dinner parties. The meal: a ground snake. Your guest: a tarantula. No silverware necessary, as your dining partner has brought its digestive juices with it.
In further proof that everything is stranger and more terrible in Australia, footage of an enormous banded huntsmen spider dragging a dead mouse up a fridge in Coppabella, Queensland, went viral on social media this weekend. Pizza rat has never felt so quaint.
American Horror Story’s sixth season begins next week, praise be to Twisty the Clown, and we can finally see if the show will live up to its intricately deceptive marketing. What is the theme? Is it The Mist, which still sounds awfully vague? Or is this arrestingly horrific new promo giving us a taste of what’s coming?
Researchers from the UK and Spain have shown that spiders are capable of tuning their webs, allowing these eight-legged critters to receive specific information about their environment, including the presence of prey, potential mates, and the structural condition of the web.
Most people wouldn’t describe spiders as “beautiful.” But have you ever seen a peacock spider? Scientists just found seven new species of these exotic, multi-colored arachnids.
I can explain.
Here’s time lapse footage of a garden orb spider building out its web. It’s really interesting to see the process from the start when it seems like a few random strands are connected to each other and especially cool to see it at the end when it’s all completed and ready to catch its first prey. The whole web spinning…
