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+17 +1
A Nursery Rhyme Plagued a Woman For Months, And The Explanation Is Fantastic
When darkness fell, the child began to sing. Almost every evening, the shrill voice – somewhere distant and alone – would endlessly call out the same haunting nursery rhyme in the dead of night.
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+22 +1
Spiders Have Exploded Over This Greek Town, Coating Everything in a 1,000-Foot Web
If you aren't fond of spiders, this scene will sound like a nightmare. A 300-metre-long (1,000-foot) field of spiderweb has sprung up in western Greece in the town of Aitoliko.
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+20 +1
Thirty-seven new spider species discovered in Queensland
Dozens of new creepy crawlies have been discovered on Queensland's Cooloola Coast in the space of one weekend, and scientists believe there are many more out there waiting to be found. The thought of 37 new spider species might send shivers down most people's spines, but for spider expert Robert Whyte, it is exciting.
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+22 +1
The spiders who came in from the cold
A sprawling study of spiders across northern Canada has turned up more than 100 species in provinces or territories where they had never before been recorded. The findings, by researchers from McGill University, provide a valuable new benchmark for monitoring biodiversity across Canada’s vast northern expanses. Using traps to sample 12 selected sites from Labrador to the Northwest Territories, McGill PhD student Sarah Loboda and Prof. Chris Buddle collected 23,000 adult spiders representing more than 300 species.
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+36 +1
Spider silk is five times stronger than steel—now, scientists know why
The next time you brush aside a spiderweb, you might want to meditate on its delicate strength—if human-size, it would be tough enough to snag a jetliner. Now, scientists know just how these silken strands get their power: through thousands of even smaller strands that stick together to form this critter’s clingy trap.
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+17 +1
Infected ‘Zombie Spiders’ Forced to Build Incubation Chambers for Their Parasitic Overlords
Parasites that control the behavior of their hosts for their own benefit are a well-documented natural phenomenon, but the discovery of a previously unknown relationship between a parasitic wasp and a social spider is particularly upsetting.
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+5 +1
Watch giant Amazon spider prey on opossum
This is the first video documentation of a large mygalomorph spider preying on an opossum. While surveying in northern Peru, a team of scientists from University of Michigan found a tarantula dragging a young opossum along the ground. The team was studying interactions between arthropods and small vertebrates in a lowland Amazon rainforest. The study found that arthropod predations accounted for a surprising amount of mortality amongst Amazonian vertebrates.
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+26 +1
Catapulting spider winds up web to launch itself at prey: study
Just when you thought spiders couldn't get any more terrifying.
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+31 +1
Curious Kids: why do spiders need so many eyes but we only need two?
Human eyes are very complex and are good at doing many jobs at once, while spiders have different sorts of eyes that do different jobs.
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+2 +1
Woman finds venomous brown recluse spider in her ear after complaining of earache
Susie Torres noticed a slight pain in her ear Tuesday morning. It was a venomous – but harmless – brown recluse spider.
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+17 +1
Scientists Demand 'Paradigm Shift' After Study Shows 'Frightening' Decline of Insects and Spiders
"A decline on that scale over a period of just 10 years came as a complete surprise to us," said one researcher, "but fits the picture presented in a growing number of studies."
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+14 +1
Orb-weaver spiders’ yellow and black pattern helps them lure prey
Being inconspicuous might seem the best strategy for spiders to catch potential prey in their webs, but many orb-web spiders, which hunt in this way, are brightly coloured. New research finds their distinct yellow and black pattern is actually essential in luring prey. The findings are published in the British Ecological Society journal: Functional Ecology.
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+23 +1
Some spiders may spin poisonous webs laced with neurotoxins
The sticky silk threads of spider webs may be hiding a toxic secret: potent neurotoxins that paralyze a spider’s prey.
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+18 +1
Great Fox-Spider Assumed Extinct in UK Found at British Army Training Area After 27 Years
One of Britain's largest spiders, the Great Fox Spider, once thought to have gone extinct, has been spotted for the first time after 27 years at a Ministry of Defence training ground in Surrey. After being untraceable for more than a quarter of a century in the UK, finally this year the conservationists report the sighting of 22 Great Fox Spiders, including mature males and one mature female.
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+20 +1
Scientists Confirm Certain Spider Bites Inject Something Even Worse Than Venom
A tiny brown invasive species of spider that's creeping its way across the UK has a dangerous reputation for dissolving flesh, one that many experts have argued isn't deserved.
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+14 +1
Spiders eat snakes around the world, surprising study reveals
North American widow spiders, not tropical tarantulas, have a particular taste for reptiles, according to a sweeping analysis of data across six continents.
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+11 +1
Jumping Spiders Seem to Have a Cognitive Ability Only Previously Found in Vertebrates
Tiny little jumping spiders, with their magnificent eyes, seem to be able to do something we'd only ever seen before in vertebrates: distinguishing between animate and inanimate objects.
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+15 +1
Scientists tweak daddy long legs genes to create daddy short legs
To some they're charming, to others they're creepy. But regardless of your feelings about the daddy long legs spider, odds are good you've seen the ubiquitous arachnid cruising up a wall or over its silky web somewhere. (And no, it's most certainly not capable of killing you.)
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+12 +1
This is the oldest fossil evidence of spider moms taking care of their young
Her corpse, preserved alongside her offspring in amber for 99 million years, is the oldest physical evidence for maternal care in spiders, says Paul Selden, an invertebrate paleontologist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. This fossil is one of four showing that some ancient spiders guarded their egg sacs and may even have raised their young, Seldon and his colleagues report September 15 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
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+15 +1
Spider Uses its Web Like a Giant Engineered Ear
Bridge spiders "outsource" their hearing by building webs that double as acoustic arrays, allowing them to perceive sounds from great distances.
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