These spiders excel

These spiders excel

Written by Gennaro Touma Edited by Sarah Loine Fraser

You don’t always need a book or a good horror story. Sometimes, if you dare look closely, you can find one in your backyard. Researchers have just confirmed the internal works of the brutal food technology that some spiders use, and their web prey to the silk threads is tightly drew in the silk threads, then wanders in toxic digestive fluids to absorb the entire beam to stabilize its meals alive.

“Spiders from the Oluborida family, who are usually a few millimeters away, have confused scientists because they lacking poison – a widespread substance between spiders and” really linked to their evolutionary success, “says Alex Winnsor, a neurologist at the University of Massachusetts who did not participate in the new research.

There was another mystery. It was already known that Ulobleidae spiders have caught their prey hundreds of meters away from silk, then wandering on them, but researchers did not completely suspend the dramatic vomiting function. Interesting, the study team gave a closer look at how to prepare these predators for a snack for themselves. The results were published in BMC Biology.

To support the scientific press

If you enjoy this article, think about supporting the award -winning press Subscribe. By buying a subscription, it helps ensure the future of influencing stories about the discoveries and ideas that make up our world today.

By analyzing one type called Plumipes UloboraThe researchers emphasized that these spiders lack the poison glands and therefore unable to give the poison in the classic spider method: their injection into their prey with a super sting. But scientists have found that genes are produced effectively toxins that resemble toxins in the digestive system of spiders-especially in the middle region-and these potential toxins seem “very strong”, says the author of the study participating in the study, an evolutionary biologist at Lucan University in SMRAND.

Injecting these fluids the digestive system Flipals in the laboratory proved high toxicity: only 230 ng – one billion grams – exploited more than half of the flies within an hour. The researchers have organized that these spiders are already installed by their prey to death in this way. It is strange that some spiders from other families are killed with the usual toxic bites, it is also known to have toxins in their digestive fluids, says Zankouli. This fact raises what you call a “great question”: What role do these materials play for species outside the UloBoridae family?

Winnsor says that the discovery of the study “solves the puzzle inside the spider’s biology.” He adds that the next step can be the investigation of whether the digestive system toxins appear in other animals, such as some lizards. “If these compounds have some special ability to subjugate insects, you may expect to appear in other groups of animals,” says Winnsor. If this is proven true, “this may be a frequent answer in the animal kingdom.”