Minuscule Spider Snags Prey Four Times its Size

Throughout the history of evolution, the most dominant creatures have worked to survive, oftentimes, preying on smaller and weaker animals. Of course, that's not always the case in rare circumstances. And science shows that's certainly true for the Zodarion cyrenaicum spider: a tiny, solitary anthropod native to the Negev desert in Israel. This creature routinely kills ants up to four times its own size, according to a recent study published in the journal Naturwissenschaften-The Science of Nature.

Lead study author Stano Pekar of Masaryk University in the Czech Republic worked to observe the natural prey and predatory behavior of the spider's eating habits in a laboratory. The spider feeds almost exclusively on the Messor arenarius aunt, according to a news release, and can devour this large insect in just about a minute.

Researchers discovered that the spider deliberately chooses to hunt Messor arenarius above all other ant species in the sand dunes, which they believe may be because of a pheromone produced by the ant that makes it more desirable for consumption than others.

Pekar's team also discovered that adult female spiders typically capture the large morphs, while the tiny juvenile spiders are more likely to prey on smaller ants. However, the spiders were still much smaller than their prey in all studied cases. Just a single bite was all it took by one spider to immobilize and capture prey.

However, how male and female spiders go about attacking ants varies a bit. Thanks to the spider's tiny size of 17 millimeters, female adult spiders quickly attack from behind, followed by a retreat to avoid any counter attacks by the ants. On the other hand, juvenile spiders climb on the dorsal side of the ant and immbolize its abdomen with a bite.

And while the venom glands of adult ant-eating spiders are about 50 times larger than those of the juveniles, it only takes about twice as long for the venom from the younger ones to take effect.