This spider from New Zealand has lightning fast jaws
There are plenty of insects and reptiles out there that are quick when it comes to prey, but this trap-jaw spider might just be too fast for them.
Researchers at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History have discovered some tiny Mecysmaucheniid "trap-jaw" spiders can snap their jaws so fast, that they needed to be captured at 40,000 frames a second by a high speed camera.
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The spiders are only found in New Zealand and southern parts of South America, with the quickest of the 14 species of trap-jaw spider closing their jaw more than 100 times faster than the slowest.
"This research shows how little we know about spiders and how much there is still to discover," Hannah Wood, curator of spiders at the museum, said in a statement. "The high-speed predatory attacks of these spiders were previously unknown. Many of the species I have been working with are also unknown to the scientific community."
Wood examined how these trap-jaw spiders used their unusual head anatomy, like the closely related pelican spider, and how they would stalk prey with their chelicerae (jaws) wide open -- snapping them shut when they got close enough. It's the type of predatory behaviour that's been witnessed on ants, but not arachnids.
Not only are some of these trap-jaw spiders fast, four of the spiders boast a power output exceeding the known capacity of their muscles.
It's a finding which shows that a spider's movements aren't necessarily powered by their tiny muscles, according to the statement, but have perhaps developed structural mechanisms in their bodies which allow the storing of energy -- thanks to evolution.
This would allow these trap-jaw spiders to release stored energy in a way that power would be near instantaneously amplified, like some kind of super power. It's a discovery that will be further investigated by researchers, potentially having implications for future technologies outside of natural history science.
"Many of our greatest innovations take their inspiration from nature," Wood said. "Studying these spiders may give us clues that allow us to design tools or robots that move in novel ways."
So long it doesn't bite us, at least.
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