Essay On Pelican Spider

A Smithsonian researcher led a team that discovered 18 new species of spiders in Madagascar that looked like pelicans. The spider is formally known as Archaeids which has an extended, arching carapace and two extra-long mouthparts, the chelicerate, which creates an illusion of a neck and a beak that gives the arachnid a pelican appearance.

National Geographic described the spider as quiet as an owl, quick as a cobra, small as a grain of rice, and is more like a venomous pike when it strikes its prey.

The Smithsonian noted that the purpose of the unusual appearance of the Archaeids is to make it prey hunting easier. The pelican spider eats only spiders, not other insects. After it stalks or lures a target spider to its web, the pelican spider will thrust its two chelicerate downward to impale the prey and hold it at a safe

The same practice is done by the pirate spiders of the Mimetidae family which is known for tugging on the webs of other spiders to coax its next meal, Hannah Wood, a veteran arachnologist and Smithsonian researcher who led the team to Madagascar, said. But she observed that the species does not eat another pelican spider. Wood reached that conclusion after she dropped several pelican spiders in a petri dish, but it did not attempt to eat one another and instead gave each other space.

It wanders through the forest at night and waves its first pair of legs like a pair of large antennas. The spider makes big figure-eights as it walks while searching for draglines.

The species is not only a cannibal; it is also a very old species. Wood, the curator of arachnids and myriapods at the National Museum of National History of Smithsonian, said the pelican spiders likely have been on Madagascar since Pangean times, or 180 million years ago. It was likely on Madagascar before it became an island and likely was ahead of the bird from which the island got its