This Never Before Seen Spider Looks Like a Leaf

[SciTechPress]

This Never Before Seen Spider Looks Like a Leaf:

typhlonectes:

For Matjaz Kuntner, it was just another evening trek through southwestern China’s Yunnan rain forest—until his headlamp illuminated a strand of spider silk.

That’s not so surprising on its own. But what attracted the arachnologist’s attention is the silk appeared to attach a leaf to a tree branch. After looking closer, Kuntner realized one of these leaves was actually a spider.

“If there’s a web, there’s a spider,” says Kuntner, of the Smithsonian Institution and the Evolutionary Zoology Laboratory in Slovenia.

The arachnid uses its silk to attach leaves to tree branches, and then hides among the branches, according to a new study in the Journal of Arachnology. The researchers still aren’t sure why the spider does this, but they believe it’s likely to hide from predators or sneak up on prey…

via ScitechPress.org