If you sit in an Australian park or garden for long enough, chances are you might catch a flash of brilliant feathers out of the corner of your eye: the superb fairywren. With its bright blue and soft brown plumage, it was voted Australia’s “bird of the year” in 2021, “narrowly defeating the tawny frogmouth […]
Tag: arachnids
“In the blink of an eye, 6 of them hurtled towards me. Out of nowhere 1 landed on a branch just 5m away. I tried to back away, but I was easy prey…”
Twenty metres up, the canopy looks like a highway. Different shades of green, yellow and grey leaves fuse, creating the illusion of an endless rainforest. I spent most of 2013 in the canopy of a cloudforest in Colombia, collecting insects and arachnids from inside bromeliads and mosses. I was studying how their availability influences the […]
“Imagine a rainbow-coloured kitten, shrink it down to the size of your fingertip and add a few more legs.” It’s time to rethink these tiny and cute killers
If I asked you to imagine a spider, what would be your first thought? For most people, that imaginary creature would be solid, black and hairy, with long legs and piercing fangs, perhaps skittering about in the depths of a dark cave. I’d like to suggest an alternative to what the archetypal spider looks like. […]
Giant spiders that can grow to size of human hand thriving in the UK
Thousands of giant spiders that can grow to the size of a human hand are thriving in the UK, thanks to a successful breeding programme from Chester zoo. The fen raft spider is a harmless arachnid that plays a vital role in aquatic ecosystems, but 15 years ago was on the brink of extinction because […]