Tiny terror's a scary thought
5:00AM Sunday May 27, 2007
By Catherine Woulfe
Portia labiata
Scared of spiders? Best you stop reading, because tucked away in a lab is a spider that hunts other spiders, learns from its mistakes, looks before it leaps and might actually be smarter than mammals.
Dr Simon Pollard and fellow spider biologist Dr Robert Jackson have been living and breathing super-smart arachnids at the University of Canterbury for almost 30 years.
Portia labiata is their star, and the female Portia is smarter and more deadly than the male.
She looks like a speck of dirt and moves, says Pollard "like a baby robot learning to walk".
But when this spider gets hungry, she also gets horribly, scarily smart.
"In a way jumping spiders have the eyesight of a primate and the cunning of a small mammal," Pollard says. "And Portia seems to be especially cunning as it preys on other spiders, including other jumping spiders, which is like lions hunting tigers."
Portia remembers rhythms she's tried with particular spiders, and knows what's worked and what hasn't. She knows some spiders spit - and remembers to keep her distance. When hunting spitting spiders, she will sneak around for hours until she's in a position to drop down right on top of them.
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