arachnid

Nan Songer, a spider expert living in California, played an integral part in the Allies’ success in World War II by supplying silk for bombsights.

Using their silk threads as a catapult, members of a family of orb-weaving arachnids rocket themselves and their webs through the air to capture prey.

Other recipients of the award for laugh-worthy achievements experimented with alligators on helium and vibrating worms.

A type of jumping spider called Afraflacilla had never been documented in India—until now.

The Asian longhorned tick, first found in the country last year, is now present in several states.

This discovery closes a 170-million-year gap in the fossil record.

Scientists explore why male peacock spiders are so colorful. 

The whip spider senses the world in weird and wonderful ways.

Prey stick to orb-weaver spider webs because their waxy outer layers mesh with spider silk to form a matrix glue.

Inspired by the Sorting Hat from the Harry Potter series, scientists aptly dubbed this pointy spider Eriovixia gryffindori, after the fictional yet formidable wizard Godric Gryffindor.   

Artists and scientists collaborate to highlight the importance of insects and arachnids.

Trap-jaw spiders have the fastest, most powerful bite of any arachnid, scientists show. 

The predatory toxins employed by animals separated by millions of years of evolution are virtually identical, a study shows.

Specialized filters allow jumping spiders to see more colors than scientists previously thought.

A video of the colonial arachnids taken by a local man has gone viral.

A round-up of recent discoveries in behavior research