Social Spiders - Scary

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http://scienceblogs.com/zooillogix/Social%20Cob%20Web%20Spiders.jpg
Communal Cobweb Spider - Anelosimus studiosus (Hentz, 1850)

No - these are not pictures from Indiana Jones. They are webs created by social spiders. That's right, spiders that like to live together, often by the thousands. Spiders are rarely known to work together, but there are a few species (about 20 out of 38,000) which just love their brothers and sisters. Its kind of like Thanksgiving, but the food flies or walks in. As you can see, these guys like to go big - the webs above were from Texas, where the main prey was, thankfully, mosquitoes. Others, such as the ones below, live in South America and catch prey individually and bring it back to the nest.

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn9820/dn9820-1_600.jpg

Pretty wild behavior from a small bunch of arachnids.

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