Search Results for: Spiders
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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.
- 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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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 - Animals
Some young sea spiders can regrow their rear ends
Juvenile sea spiders can regenerate nearly all of their bottom halves — including muscles and the anus — or make do without them.
- 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 - Archaeology
A spider monkey’s remains tell a story of ancient diplomacy in the Americas
A 1,700-year-old spider monkey skeleton unearthed at Teotihuacan in Mexico was likely a diplomatic gift from the Maya.
By Freda Kreier - Tech
Scientists turned dead spiders into robots
In a new field dubbed “necrobotics,” researchers used a syringe and some superglue to control the dead bodies of wolf spiders.
By Asa Stahl - Animals
One mountain in Brazil is home to a surprising number of these parasitic wasps
Darwin wasps were thought to prefer temperate areas. But researchers scoured a mountain in the Brazilian tropics and found nearly a hundred species.
- Animals
In noisy environs, pied tamarins are using smell more often to communicate
Groups of the primate, native to Brazil, complement vocalizations with scent-marking behavior to alert other tamarins to dangers in their urban home.
- Ecosystems
Marjorie Weber explores plant-protecting ants and other wonders of evolution
Cooperation across the tree of life is an understudied driver of evolution and biodiversity, Marjorie Weber says.
By Meghan Rosen - Animals
News stories have caught spiders in a web of misinformation
Nearly half of news stories about peoples’ interactions with spiders contain errors, according to a new analysis.
By Betsy Mason - 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