Imagine you're a spider.

_{You live at the center of a latticed shadow world of your own design.}

Nothing escapes your notice. The wind cannot blow, an ant cannot crawl, a fly cannot buzz, a dust mote cannot fall, without your knowing. You are an ambush predator of perfect and deadly elegance, a master of your domain, claiming your prey as they struggle to exhaustion in the web of your machinations.

You are thus completely surprised when you are stabbed to death from above without ever seeing what killed you.

_{sydney funnel web}

Imagine you're a spider.

You sit at the center of your web, relaxed, mellow, awaiting prey. The wind is a known quantity and disturbs the warp and weft of your web in in patterns your species and its antecedents have mastered over the eons. You are unflinching, confident in your unassailability. No threat could possibly approach you without your knowledge.

You are thus completely surprised when a delicate feathery touch brushes across your urticating hairs. You are even more surprised when you are stabbed to death from the side without ever seeing what killed you.

NOSPIDERS

_{why is there no spider picture here? spoiler alert ...}


Imagine you're a spider.

You feel the convulsive vibrations of captured prey as it weakens in your trap. You amble toward the creature that will shortly become your delicious dinner, confident in your victory and soon-to-be repast.

You are thus completely surprised when the prey is much larger than the tremors of your web suggested and when it strikes you down and turns you into lunch instead. You see it coming this time -- but not for long.

Hi. Obviously you're not a spider (unless Portia fimbrata has unexpectedly learned to read in which case, welcome to sapience, little buddy! 😊) but if you were a spider, the above are a few samples of what your last moments might look like if you lived in Australia and came eye-to-eye with ...

_{... this badass motherfucker right here}

What is Stenolemus giraffa, you ask? More popularly known as the giraffe assassin bug, giraffa and its cousins bituberus (who specifically mimics captured prey), lanipes (who will starve rather than eat anything not a spider 😮) and others (who I may or may not mention) are the spider-hunters of the insect world.

For some context, it is important to be aware that spiders are scary bastards in their own right. Portia as mentioned above, is possibly the smartest arthropod, capable of accomplishing elaborate feats of cognition by streaming one datum at a time through its tiny "brain". We have orb-weaver spiders like Eriophora, jumping spiders, trapdoor spiders -- every single one of them a murderous venomous befanged hunter-killer shaped by millions of years of evolution to be a deadly predator.

With all that in mind, puts a little more perspective on the capabilities of the assassin bugs . Clearly from the name, they generally specialize in killing and eating their fellow arthropods. For the Stenolemus series, spiders are something of an irresistible challenge.

The insect world is full of fascinating strategies and counter-measures. The Stenolemus assassin bugs apparently use multiple techniques to take down spiders. Sometimes, they make like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible and strike down from above the web to snatch the spider out of its web. Death from above, sucker!

But there's more! I'll let one of the experts take it away:

Using laser vibrometry, this study demonstrates how S. giraffa avoids alerting the spiders during its approach. When breaking threads, S. giraffa attenuates the vibrations produced by holding on to the loose ends of the broken thread and causing them to sag prior to release. In addition, S. giraffa releases the loose ends of a broken thread one at a time (after several seconds or minutes) and in this way spaces out the production of vibrations in time. ... Finally, S. giraffa preferred to break threads in the presence of wind, suggesting that this araneophagic insect exploits environmental noise that temporarily impairs the spiders' ability to detect vibrations. (Soley, 2016) - emphasis mine

They also wait for windy conditions before making their move because that way, any vibrations they do release are lost in the background noise of wind rustle.

Another is to crawl onto the web reaaaaaaal slooooooowwwww. Sometimes, they get more adventurous; they snap the super-taut rubber-band-like strands and hold them so they don't vibrate 😱

But it gets even better: some of them are so bold they don't even bother sneaking. They get on the web and play it like a goddamn violin, sending out vibrations that exactly mimic the struggles of captured prey (I am not exaggerating; scientists have measured this with lasers and it is exact; see References below) When the spider comes over expecting a captured meal, it becomes the meal.

Yet it still doesn't stop there. In the course of reading up on this, it turned out there's an even more bizarre counter-arachnid technique utilized by an even more distant relative of Stenolemus. This one's called Acanthaspis petax and its particular technique is a particularly gruesome form of camouflage.

_{A. petax in action}

These guys, unlike the Stenolemus crew, does not hunt or kill spiders; they prefer ants instead. Indeed, jumping spiders hunt them. Thus this countermeasure where they slaughter a horde of ants, guzzle down their innards and then wear them like a gigantic suit of dead goddamn bodies! When the spider sees this, it has no idea what to make of it. I mean ...

_{Spiders be like, what even is this?}

Confused by the giant rat-king of ant corpses (and possibly wary of the fact that ants themselves are dangerous prey), the spiders steer clear and A. petax lives to Texas-Chainsaw-Massacre another day.

Oh and of course these are pretty much all from Australia, land of monsters and nightmares and crawling chaos.

_{i mean, what other continent can boast of this chimeric madness right here?}

So. If you find yourself having a bad day, where it seems like everything's out to get you? I'd like you to do one thing for me.

I'd like you to imagine you're a spider.

🕷🕷🕷🕷🕷🕷

References

The Bug that stalks spiders on their own webs - the article that inspired the above before I went digging for the primary sources below. Gods I love pop science.

Assassin bugs deceive spiders with coat of many corpses

Fine-scale analysis of an assassin bug's behaviour: predatory strategies to bypass the sensory systems of prey - Soley, Fernando G. 2016; DOI: 10.1098/rsos.160573

Assassin bug uses aggressive mimicry to lure spider prey - Wignall, Anne E. & Taylor, Phillip W. October 2010; DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2010.2060

Assassin bug lures spiders by mimicking prey

Alternative predatory tactics of an araneophagic assassin bug (Stenolemus bituberus)

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