Scientists discovered that the Australian “ballista spider” uses a silk cone trap to catapult prey into its web, a feat of spider engineering never before observed.

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A recently discovered spider species in Australia’s tropical rainforests has stunned researchers with a hunting technique that launches prey through the air using a spring-loaded silk trap.

The ballista spider builds sophisticated spring-loaded snares to catapult its prey.

The findings hint that vocal motor control might have evolved from a shared ancestor. Plus, sea turtles’ navigation skills are only so-so and what’s next for the International Space Station.

Narendra et al. describe in an Australian ballista spider a spring-actuated snare that is triggered by green tree ants. They show that the snare’s architecture delivers exceptionally high instantaneous power, likely evolved to rapidly remove captured ants from trails, outperforming other silk-based catapult systems.

A bizarre species of spider from the rainforests of Far North Queensland springs a nasty surprise.

A recently discovered spider species in Australia’s tropical rainforests has stunned researchers with a hunting technique that launches prey through the air using a spring-loaded silk trap.

An international team of researchers has discovered a remarkable new spider species in the rainforest of North Queensland that spins an ingenious and powerful spring-actuated snare to catch a single s...

Narendra et al. describe in an Australian ballista spider a spring-actuated snare that is triggered by green tree ants. They show that the snare’s architecture delivers exceptionally high instantaneou...

Discover how insects navigate using vision, memory and cues from nature. A clear, engaging look at ants, bees, and the remarkable abilities of tiny brains.

Job #AJO32408, Assistant Professor in Cell and Developmental Biology, Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, CA

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Quantifying animal behavior often requires segmenting continuous actions into discrete, interpretable states, yet most automated pipelines infer actions from keypoint dynamics and are limited by keypo...

Pande et al. show that visually hunting spiders have convergently evolved forward-facing eyes. The positions and orientations of the eyes show the greatest morphological disparity and fastest evolutio...

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Learn how the newly discovered ballista spider builds a durable snare specialized in trapping a single ant species.

A spider living in the rainforests of Queensland, Australia, builds a snare trap reminiscent of a Roman-era ballista weapon that it uses to catapult green tree ants into a web 30 centimetres above

A bizarre species of spider from the rainforests of Far North Queensland springs a nasty surprise.