Days after Rodney Griffiths returned home from a four-month tour of Helmand province with 16 Air Assault Brigade, the family’s pet dog Bella mysteriously died.
Son Ricky, 16, then spotted the giant spider, prompting the soldier’s wife Lorraine to move the family out of [...]
Continue reading about Afghan spider forces Army family out of home
The ability to work together and capture larger prey has allowed social spiders to stretch the laws of nature and reach enormous colony sizes, UBC zoologists have found.
The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, may also explain why social spiders thrive in tropical areas but dwindle with increasing latitude and [...]
Continue reading about Spiders Who Eat Together, Stay Together — And Form Enormous Colony Sizes
A trapdoor spider species found along the coast of California last year is the new eight-legged tribute to Stephen Colbert.
How will the faux conservative talk show host take this news? Viewers of the Comedy Central show “The Colbert Report” will find out Wednesday when East Carolina University biologist Jason Bond appears as a guest.
Bond [...]
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“Animals Nobody Loves” by Seymour Simon, 2001, Chronicle Books, $7.95, softbound, 48 pages:
Before you even get to the Table of Contents in this book, you are confronted with the large, face-to-face image of some pretty alarming creatures: a spider, a piranha and a cobra first, then a vulture on the introduction page.
These are, indeed, [...]
Continue reading about Book Focuses On ‘Animals Nobody Loves’
The Etruscan shrew (Suncus etruscus) is one of the world’s smallest mammals. It is about four centimetres long and weighs merely two grams. Being a nocturnal animal, it hunts predominantly with its sense of touch. Professor Michael Brecht (Bernstein Center for Computional Neuroscience, Berlin) now reported on the particularities of its hunting behaviour at the [...]
Continue reading about Success By Learning: Smallest Predator Recognizes Prey By Its Shape
An East Carolina University biologist has brought his admiration of Neil Young to a whole new class. Or species, to be exact.
Jason Bond, an ECU professor of biology, has named a newly discovered trapdoor spider, Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi, after the legendary rock star.
“There are rather strict rules about how you name new species,” Bond said. “As [...]
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A report publishing online on May 1st in the journal Current Biology, a publication of Cell Press, provides the first evidence of an animal using ultraviolet B (UVB) rays to communicate with other members of its species.
In a series of mate choice experiments with the Chinese jumping spider (Phintella vittata), the researchers found that female [...]
Continue reading about Female Jumping Spiders Find Ultraviolet B Rays ‘Sexy’
