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The power of capture: How do social spiders collaborate to hunt prey larger than themselves?
In nature, social spiders reveal an unusual form of cooperative behavior. These spiders display powerful capturing power by living in groups rather than pursuing survival alone. Although most spiders live alone and even attack each other, some spiders choose to gather in groups of thousands. Such group living allows them to capture prey larger than themselves, such as Small birds, bats, and even large insects.
Social spiders usually live in tropical areas, where prey is abundant and provides a large food source.
These social spider groups improve prey capture efficiency by jointly weaving large webs, allowing each spider to obtain more food through network cooperation. Because multiple spiders can hunt prey together, they are often able to catch objects much larger than themselves. This cooperation not only benefits hunting activities, but also brings obvious benefits in the maintenance of the nest. Rather than one spider building and maintaining the web alone, the entire colony of spiders participates together, which not only saves each individual's energy but also makes their nest stronger.
Social spiders are surprisingly successful at capturing prey because the webs they build are large enough and have multiple spiders working together to overwhelm the prey. This hunting strategy allows them to effectively defend against threats from other predators or thieves.
In a huge social spider colony, up to 50,000 individuals can live and hunt together.
These social spiders exhibit varying degrees of social behavior. According to research, during the evolution of social spiders, social phenomena have appeared independently nearly twenty times. The behavior of most social spiders can be called parasocial, which means that they can cooperate in reproductive care and use the same nest. , and there is a certain degree of generational overlap.
The behavioral patterns observed in these spider societies can vary depending on the species. For example, in some species, all females may participate in reproduction, while in other species, reproduction bias often occurs, and some females may not be able to reproduce, reflecting the impact of competition on reproduction when resources are limited. The impact is particularly important.
What's more interesting is that the life of social spiders is not always peaceful. In the process of hunting or nesting, they still face the threat of thieves. Although their social structure is relatively stable, such social life still breeds competition and conflict. Competition between certain species causes them to exhibit different strategies for obtaining food resources.
Among social spiders, there are also species that exhibit subsocial or quasisocial characteristics. This means they may choose to live in groups during certain seasons, while reverting to a solitary lifestyle during other periods. This flexible social behavior allows them to adjust their life patterns as the environment changes, especially when resources are scarce. This approach can help them survive better.
Further explanation, some social spiders form synchronized migrations to establish new colonies, similar to social insects such as ants and bees.
After these spiders mate, multiple females usually move to new nests at the same time and lay eggs in the new location, thus forming a new social community. Notably, the genetic diversity of these social spiders is relatively low because typically only a few males participate in different ways in the establishment of new colonies. This inbreeding phenomenon will limit genetic variation and put the entire species at certain risks.
Although social spiders display such remarkable predatory abilities and cooperate in hunting in groups, for humans, this cooperative behavior is still worth pondering. Can we learn deeper wisdom about cooperation from the world of these tiny creatures and apply it to wider human society?
