When you think of animals that hunt in groups, you probably come across a lion or a hyena. But now it seems that spiders do that, too.
If you are afraid of spiders, you should skip this one. Because while you will find one spider in the regular web, there are spider species that live in social groups. This applies only to a few of the 50,000 known species. And those groups also go fishing together. The researchers took a closer look at exactly how they do this in South American species.
They did a test with fake prey in an existing network that also made the wires vibrate. In these types, the web is in the form of a network. Just before the photo. They don’t stick to that very well. And yes, its volume can reach several cubic metres. Huge webs, in other words, contain thousands of spiders.
Back to the experiment: when the prey fell on the web, all the spiders began to move. Then they stopped again. Spiders seem to be very good at observing the vibrations of prey, but also the vibrations of all other spiders. This allows them to hunt very efficiently and capture prey hundreds of times its size.
One lucky thing: They are often social spiders that live in small groups. So the chances of you being chased by a group of terrifying giant spiders are slim.
Read more: How do spiders hunt “in unison”?
