Spiders create effigies to trick enemies

The two scientists discovered that a spider species has the ability to create decorative objects with the same shape and color as their bodies, in order to distract the enemy as wasps.

A Cyclosa mulmeinensis spider matures with the insect's corpse (left) and egg sack (right). - (Photo: I-Min Tso)

Many animals seek to distract predators with camouflage art. Some of them have body color identical to the surrounding environment. Some species develop strange patterns to disperse the enemy's attention, such as butterflies with large eye-shaped motifs on the wings, or colored tails.

However, biologists have never seen any animals design their dummies to distract their enemies. But that's what Cyclosa mulmeinensis spiders have done. Ling Tseng and I-Min Tso, two biologists of Taichung University (Taiwan), found this spider to decorate their network with dead dead insects and their eggs.

It is worth noting that decorations always have the same size and color as their bodies. Therefore hornets cannot distinguish spiders from online decorations. Two researchers filmed spider webs for days to track wasps' attack on spiders.

' We found that wasps often attacked decorations, not on spiders. When both spiders and decorations appear online, bees will treat them as an identical series of oval shaped objects. When we removed the ornament from the network, spiders were attacked directly by wasps , 'the two researchers explained.