🕷️If you’re not a fan of spiders, then this might be the bird for you! 🐦The Streaked Spiderhunter (Arachnothera magna) lives in forests throughout parts of southeast Asia, such as Vietnam and Cambodia. As its name suggests, a main part of its diet includes spiders. It forages in the trees looking for spiders to pluck from their webs—and even uses the webbing to help sew its nest together! Another staple in its diet is nectar; its long narrow bill helps it reach the sweet stuff deep inside flowers. Photo: Tareq's Photography, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons #AnimalFacts #birds #ornithology #StreakedSpiderHunter #spider #dyk #nature https://www.instagram.com/p/ClCY7FEv5So/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Tiny peacock spiders make up for size in pizzazz. Males, like Maratus volans pictured here, are only about 5 mm long, but they’re famous for their flashy midsection and leg-raising mating dance. To enchant a female, they display a flap-like body part called a fan. There are more than 40 peacock species including one, Maratus jactatus, that was nicknamed Sparklemuffin for its iridescent scales. It’s a lot to impress a potential mate, but there's a lot at stake: if a female spider doesn’t like your dance moves, she might just eat you alive. Photo: Jürgen Otto

5 Amazing Animal Movers

Whether they’re foraging for food, evading a predator, or just heading home to nest, nearly all animals move at some point in their lives. Evolution has produced some amazing methods of locomotion.

Dragonfly envy

Hovering flight is an aerodynamic challenge: in nature, only dragonflies and hover flies can manage the feat while keeping their bodies perfectly horizontal. Dragonflies hover by deploying their four wings in a specific order; helicopter blades spin on a rotor while the pilot constantly adjusts blade angle. Today, engineers look to dragonflies for inspiration in designing small-scale robotic devices.

Jumping spider

These spiders make extraordinary leaps—up to 25 times their body length--to capture prey and avoid becoming prey. Instead of using leg muscles, the spider pumps fluid into its legs to achieve hydraulic liftoff.

Gripping gecko

How do geckos manage to walk on the ceiling? It’s thanks to as many as a billion microscopic stalks ending in tiny pads called spatulae (SPAH-choo-lee) that contact the surface whenever a gecko plants its feet. Spatulae are so tiny that they are subject to the same molecular forces that hold liquids and solids together.

Springing flea

How does the tiny insect launch itself into a jump that may be more than 200 times its body length? Its muscles, slowly but continually, compress a rubber-like protein called resilin at the base of its legs. When that stored energy is released, the insect takes off like a stone from a slingshot!

Hopping kangaroo

Kangaroos hop comfortably at 13-16 miles (20-25 kilometers) an hour but can go a lot faster—up to 44 miles (70 kilometers) per hour--in short bursts. Surprisingly, the animals seem to use the same amount of energy at both speeds.

Meet many more marvelous creatures in the exhibition, Life at the Limits!

Images: Dragonfly, Wikimedia/R. A. Nonenmacher; Spider, AMNH/D.Finnin; Gecko, AMNH/D.Finnin; Flea, R. Hooke Micrographia; Kangaroo, Wikimedia

Experts once considered cave dwellers to be evolutionary dead ends. Charles Darwin himself wrote of these “wrecks of ancient life,” and “living fossils.” But now we know better. As scientists find new cave species and probe their DNA, we’re learning that this hidden world is as dynamic as the one above ground. Far from being dead zones, caves are evolutionary laboratories.

The cave spider (Trogloraptor marchingtoni), first discovered in the dark zone of a cave in the coastal forests of Oregon, differs from other spiders so much that scientists created a new family to classify it. One feature that sets it apart: unmatched toothed claws at the end of each leg that are likely used for capturing prey.

Meet more amazing creatures in Life at the Limits, open for one more month!

Hurry! Only two more weeks to see Spiders Alive! at the American Museum of Natural History. This beloved exhibition gives visitors an opportunity to discover some of the planet's most versatile animals through interactions with live spiders, larger-than-life models, live presentations, and more. 

Spiders Alive! closes November 29. Get your tickets today. 

Eeek! It's an eight-legged Fossil Friday.

Spiders evolved more than 300 million years ago, long before dinosaurs walked the Earth. This is a rare 100-million-year-old fossil of a spider in limestone. Spiders do not preserve well in sediment because they have a relatively soft “shell” or exoskeleton. For every 1,000 or so insect fossils found, there’s only one spider.

This weekend, see 16 species of arachnids in Spiders Alive! now open at the American Museum of Natural History.

Want to be scared by spiders? Go to a horror movie. Want to be awed? Get up close and personal with the real thing. Tarantulas, like this Ivory ornamental tarantula, are bigger than most other spiders, so they provide a perfect—and supersized—window into a fascinating world.

Because tarantulas are big, they frighten people. But their venom is generally harmless to humans, and they make a lot of it. That abundance makes tarantulas popular with scientists studying the medical properties of venom ingredients.

See this and a dozen other arachnids in Spiders Alive! now open at the Museum. 

Behold, the brown recluse!

Brown recluses aren’t often out during the day. Instead they hide, at times inside houses—in an attic, basement or behind a piece of furniture. In South America, the tendency has earned them a nickname: la araña detrás de los cuadros, or “the spider behind the picture.”

The bite of a brown recluse isn’t terribly painful, so why does the spider have such a fearsome reputation? The short answer is: its venom.

Brown recluse venom can cause a deep wound that takes weeks or even months to heal and can produce symptoms like nausea and a fever. If you are unlucky enough to be bitten, hope the culprit was male. A female’s venom can be twice as concentrated as a male’s.

Living things can respond very differently to venoms. Though toxic to humans, guinea pigs and rabbits, brown recluse venom (Loxosceles reclusa) has little effect on mice and rats. Scientists aren’t sure exactly why. 

See the brown recluse and 16 other arachnids in Spiders Alive! now open. 

Meet the Desert Hairy Scorpion, Hadrurus arizonensis.

At home in the deserts of the American Southwest, this animal beats the daytime heat in burrows. Like all scorpions, it hunts at night, feeding on insects, spiders, lizards and even an occasional small mammal. The largest scorpion in North America, it also lives the longest—in captivity, desert hairy scorpions can survive up to 25 years!

Check me out: My tan body is covered in brown hairs, which help me detect vibrations.

Family: Iuridae

Species range: Southwestern U.S. and Mexico

Habitat: Terrestrial; Sonoran Desert; digs burrows in the ground

Should you worry? The venom in my tail is painful to humans, but not deadly.

See this and other arachnids in Spiders Alive! open now at the Museum.

Spiders evolved more than 300 million years ago, long before dinosaurs walked on Earth. Those ancient spiders didn't build webs but sought the safety of burrows dug underground. There, they were shaded from the Sun and protected from predators.

Only about 50 percent of known spider species spin webs. Others hunt their prey or burrow underground. Spiders make many different kinds of silk, each with a property—toughness, flexibility, stickiness—specific to the task it performs.

Learn more in the new exhibition, Spiders Alive, now open.

Amazing Facts To End (Or Fuel) Your Arachnophobia

Scientists have identified more than 44,500 spider species so far (for comparison, there are about 6,000 mammal species). Before you head out to the American Museum of Natural History to see the 16 species featured in Spiders Alive! curated by Lorenzo Prendini, curator in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology, here are some amazing arachnid facts:

More arachno-facts, right this way!

Did you know? Spiders evolved more than 300 million years ago, long before dinosaurs walked on Earth! Those ancient spiders didn't build webs but sought the safety of burrows dug underground. There, they were shaded from the Sun and protected from predators. 

See 20 species of live arachnids in the exhibition Spiders Alive! now open.

Happy birthday, E.B. White! 

Born on July 11, 1899, Elwyn Brooks White grew up to be the famed author of Charlotte’s Web, a timeless story of love and loyalty between a spider named Charlotte and her friend Wilbur, the runt pig. The book, which has charmed children and adults alike since it was first published in 1952, features many spider details that have some basis in scientific fact, and this is no coincidence. E.B. White relied heavily for his research on Willis J. Gertsch, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History, in what was then the Museum’s Department of Insects and Spiders.

In the many months White spent studying spiders before starting to write Charlotte’s Web, he pored over scientific texts, eventually meeting with Gertsch in person, with a list of questions in hand. The results are readily apparent in certain details—Charlotte is sedentary, near-sighted, stuns her prey, works at night—all based on scientific facts about many spider species. White's attention to arachnid anatomy, as seen in the following passage, is rare for a children’s book:

“You have awfully hairy legs, Charlotte,” said Wilbur, as the spider busily worked at her task.

“My legs are hairy for a good reason,” replied Charlotte. “Furthermore, each leg of mine has seven sections—the coxa, the trochanter, the femur, the patella, the tibia, the metatarsus, and the tarsus.”

White even acknowledged the curator's help in naming his title character. Awed and inspired by a spider in his Maine barn, the author had at first thought the book’s inspiration was a gray cross spider of the genus Epeira. But after consulting Gertsch, he came to name her Charlotte A. Cavatica, after a common orb weaver, Araneus cavaticus, one of the 20 arachnid species featured in the current exhibition, Spiders Alive! Hence this exchange in the book:

“My name,” said the spider, “is Charlotte.”

“Charlotte what?” asked Wilbur, eagerly.

“Charlotte A. Cavatica. But just call me Charlotte.”

As far as possible in a fantasy, White used his research to remain true to Charlotte’s spider nature, down to the bitter end—that she would die after she had produced her egg sac, her “magnum opus,” while away at the County Fair. The publisher, Harper & Brothers, had misgivings about the death of the heroine in what was essentially a children’s book but “on this point [White] refused to budge,” writes Michael Sims in The Story of Charlotte’s Web: E.B. White’s Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic. “Natural history could not be dodged: Charlotte’s species of spider dies after spinning its egg sac.” White’s choice stands the test of time. Charlotte’s Webis as popular and enduringly poignant as when Eudora Welty first described it in her 1952 review. “What the book is about,” Welty wrote, “is friendship on earth, affection and protection, adventure and miracle, life and death, trust and treachery, pleasure and pain, and the passing of time. As a piece of work it is just about perfect, and just about magical in the way it is done.”

Discover more about orb weavers and other arachnids at the live-animal exhibition Spiders Alive!.

We're spending the morning with the stars of the new exhibition, Spiders Alive! opening Saturday, July 4. Pictured is the Western black widow—one of the few species harmful to people in North America, the black widow can be identified by the red hourglass shape on it's underside. Learn more about this exhibition and its eight-legged residents.

Feast your eyes on the fearsome jaws of the camel spider!

Researchers from the American Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of Namibia, and Texas A&M University have created a visual atlas and dictionary of terms for the many strange features that adorn the fearsome-looking jaws of a little known group of arachnids. Called camel spiders, baardskeerders [beard-cutters], sun spiders, wind scorpions, and other colorful names, Solifugae are an order of arachnids that are neither spiders nor scorpions, and are notable for their intimidating jaws.

In research out today in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, the scientists present the first comprehensive analysis of jaw morphology across Solifugae. Their jaws, or chelicerae, are the largest for body size among the group of animals that possess these specialized mouthparts—including horseshoe crabs, sea spiders, and arachnids—and bear most of the structures used for their classification. Despite their prominence in folklore around the world, these animals, known as solifuges, have scarcely been studied, and much remains unknown about their biology.

Read the full story on the Museum blog. 

Have you recently discovered a new species?

If the answer is yes, you'll need to name the new species. The naming process allows discoverers of new species to get a little creative (within the framework of binomial nomenclature, of course). 

Some use the opportunity as a shout-out to friends, loved ones, or Canadian rock stars. Pictured above is the Neil Young spider (Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi), first identified in 2007 by East Carolina University biologist Jason Bond and Curator Emeritus Norman Platnick. (Would-be species namers, know this: it’s considered very bad form to name a species after yourself, so forget leaving your own moniker stamped in the annals of scientific discovery.)

Learn more about new species in Episode 4 of Shelf Life: The Skull of the Olinguito. 

Goblin Spider

Meet the creepy critter known as the goblin spider! These spiders were named for their unusual appearance and secretive habits. While fearsome in this photograph, goblin spiders are actually tiny—a large one might be a tenth of an inch long; this spider has been imaged with a scanning electron microscope so that we can observe the minute details of its anatomy.

In 2006, 459 species of goblin spiders were known. Today, the count is up to more than 1,000 thanks to an ongoing, worldwide study led by the American Museum of Natural History. Scientists believe there are at least that many more goblin species still left to describe. 

Stay tuned for more spooky science all week, and find out how you can celebrate Halloween at the Museum!