AN AFRICAN jumping spider uses its agility not just to hunt, but also to steal food from the mouths of ants.
Menemerus spiders have eyes pointing forwards, sideways and upwards, allowing them to “see like a primate and hunt like a lion”, says from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. With his colleague Robert Jackson, Pollard filmed 98 spider-ant tussles at Lake Victoria in Kenya. In each case, they saw that when an ant grabbed a lake fly, a spider lurking nearby snatched it out of its jaws (Journal of Arachnology, ).
The spiders…
