This Sneaky Spider Fools Predators by Mimicking an Ant
The world is a pretty dangerous place for insects, with only the clever or terrifying able to survive out in nature. The number one rule in nature is that you must find a way to not get yourself eaten. Usually this means you must run, hide, or fight. While I generally think of insects using venom or frightening claws to get predators off their backs, there is another way that works pretty well for some. If you can make yourself look like something that those predators don’t find tasty, then there’s a good chance that they won’t even bother with you. Scientists recently discovered a spider that tricks predators into leaving it alone by looking and even walking like a nasty ant. And they take this mimicking business to the extreme.
Scientist Paul Shamble was walking around in the New York woods one day, and noticed a kind of jumping spider crawling around among the foliage. This in itself was not immediately strange, but then he realized the spider was walking in a strange and kind of funny manner. What Shamble thought was funny turned out to be the spider actually mimicking the walk of an ant, something spiders aren’t generally known to do. He concluded that it must be some form of mimicry, as many different insects will mimic the color and/or shape of other usually-poisonous insects in order to fool predators. While predators might find the jumping spider quite tasty, they definitely won’t find an ant to be very appetizing. Ants are filled with lots of powerful chemicals that make them taste bad to most other insect predators.
Shamble decided to take the spider back to his lab to study. It was clear that the spider’s body mimicked the shape of an ant, but what was more astounding was the way they walked like ants. One thing the spider did was walk in very winding paths, which is similar to the way ants walk when they are following a chemical trail left by other ants in their nest. But these spiders didn’t simply walk in a winding path like the ants. They had an even better trick up their sleeve. While walking like an ant the spider would also hold up its two front legs out in front of their head, making them look quite convincingly like an ant’s antennae. When testing his theory by showing predatory jumping spiders animations of regular jumping spiders as well as a these ant-mimicking jumping spiders. The predators went for the regular spider every time, barely even glancing at the ones mimicking ants. I guess if you look like an ant and walk like an ant…
Have you ever seen an insect moving or acting in a strange way? Did you find out why they were doing this?