Orb-Web Spiders Evade Predators Using a Bird Poop Disguise

Many animals camouflage themselves to avoid being eaten by predators, but few are as strange as a spider that disguises itself as bird poop.

The orb-web spider's silver body and the white, silken, disc-like decoration on its web give it an uncanny resemblance to bird droppings. The spiders may use this disguise to avoid being captured by predatory wasps, researchers say.

"These predators usually will form a search image to hunt for spiders, and [they] usually will not be interested in bird droppings," said lead study researcher I-Min Tso, a behavioral ecologist at the National Chung-Hsin University in Taiwan. Read more...