Search Results for: Arachnid
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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.
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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.
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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.
By Jake Buehler -
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.
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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.
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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.
By Nancy Shute -
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.
By Meghan Rosen -
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.
By Susan Milius -
Animals
This spider literally flips for its food
The Australian ant-slayer spider’s acrobatics let it feast on insects twice its size, a new study shows,
By Freda Kreier -
Paleontology
Glowing spider fossils may exist thanks to tiny algae’s goo
Analyzing 22-million-year-old spider fossils from France revealed that they were covered in a tarry black substance that fluoresces.
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Animals
Invasive jorō spiders get huge and flashy — if they’re female
Taking the pulse (literally) of female jorō spiders hints that the arachnid might push farther north than a relative that has stayed put in the South.
By Susan Milius