The art of deception! meet the amazing spiders in Philippines that build fake spiders out of trash

A new species of spider that makes fake spiders look like effigy out of debris and dead insects has been discovered in the Amazon rainforest.

But this is not the only spider that has this remarkable skill. Another one lives in the Philippines, far away from its Peruvian cousin.

How and why did these spiders evolve to create such elaborate sculptures?

The Philippine spider was found by Lary Reeves, a graduate student at the University of Florida, who was studying the effects of deforestation on butterflies. He was walking down a mountain trail when he saw a web with a spider in the middle. He realized it was not a spider he had seen before and went back to take a closer look. He discovered that it was actually a decoy made of web, trash, and insect remains.

The real spider was hiding in a small pocket behind the decoy’s body. It was very small and well camouflaged.

The decoy looked like a large spider with eight legs spreading out from its center. It was about the size of a half-dollar coin.

Reeves found it in March 2012, on the island of Negros.

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The University of Florida did not know that another spider with a similar talent would be found in Peru by entomologist Phil Torres later that year.

The Peruvian spider also made decoys out of web and debris, but its design was different. Its legs were mostly pointing downward, and it added some silk lines to make it look more realistic.

Torres found the Peruvian spider in an isolated area of the jungle along the Rio Tambopata. He and his colleagues went back to study it in December 2012. They observed how the spiders maintained and rebuilt their decoys after heavy rains destroyed them.

They also wondered what the purpose of the decoys was. Were they meant to attract prey or to deter predators?

How did the spiders learn to make them?

To answer these questions, they planned to do some experiments on their next visit, such as recording how the spiders collected and used their materials. They also noticed that the spiders were very creative with what they had.

“One that had recently molted had integrated his shed skin into the decoy,” Reeves said.

The discovery of two spiders that make fake spiders in different parts of the world suggests that there may be more of them out there. They just need to be spotted by someone who knows what to look for.

The researchers want to collect DNA samples from the spiders and analyze them. This way, they can find out how the decoy-building spiders are related to other Cyclosa spiders that also use debris in their webs.

Cyclosa spiders have different kinds of web designs, from simple trash clumps to complex spider shapes. The researchers want to know if these designs reflect the evolutionary history of the spiders.

Are the spiders that make more elaborate decoys more distant from their common ancestor?

DNA sequencing can answer that question, but getting the permits to collect DNA from the spiders has been very difficult and is still not done.

Another possibility is that both spiders have evolved to make decoys independently, because they face similar threats from predators. The decoys are so big that they seem to be more useful for defense than for offense.

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The mystery of why these two spiders, on opposite sides of the world, are making decoys remains unsolved. The researchers think that there are more spiders like them out there, waiting to be discovered.

“I don’t think it’s surprising that this happening,” Reeves said.

“I think that no one’s noticed in the past is surprising.”

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