Researchers trekking through the Amazonian forest of Peru’s Tambopata Research Center recently came across what appears to be a new species of spider. The discovery is significant due to the tiny 5mm-long (1/4-inch-long) spider’s talent for weaving decoy spiders approximately 10X bigger than itself in the middle of its web in order to scare off predators. In an interview with National Geographic, wildlife biologist Phil Torres describes how he and his partners first came upon the spider: “It looked like a spider that had been killed by a fungus—it had this flaky, evaporated look to it. But then the thing started moving, and we realized that there was something alive in there. There was another one near it with a similar design. We put two and two together and realized that this was a fake spider. There was a small spider living behind this fake spider constructed out of debris.” You can read the entire interview by visiting NationalGeographic.com, and read Torres’ own blog post about the find.
