Vampire jumping spiders identify victims by their antennae
Evarcha culicivora jumping spiders, also known as vampire spiders, are picky eaters by any standards. Explaining that the arachnid's environment is swamped with insects, Ximena Nelson from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, says, "You can see from the diet when you find them in the field that there is a high number of mosquitoes in what they eat." And when Robert Jackson investigated their diet further, he found that the spiders were even more selective. The delicacy that E. culicivora prize above all others is female blood-fed Anopheles mosquitoes, which puzzled Nelson. How could these picky spiders pick out blood-engorged Anopheles mosquitoes from the swarms of similarly sized insects infesting the area? Nelson and Jackson decided to do some jumping spider psychology to find out how the arachnids pick out blood-fed female Anopheles mosquitoes from the crowd and they publish their discovery that the spiders identify the females by...