Here's a BBC documentary on them, with David Attenborough. They form a complex 3D map of their surroundings, and execute highly varied strategies to capture prey, which is mostly big, fierce spiders. They also dance like space aliens.
Extremely metal. This is the animal avatar of Sabaton- powerful, but highly intelligent.
Portia spiders are amazing but this post is missing the point a little, I think. This features list pretty much applies to all jumping spiders (and the post's picture is of a different kind of jumping spider, not specifically a Portia). Large vision range, jump distance, limb regeneration... That's all standard kit.
Portia is special because it ONLY hunts orb weavers (spiral web makers) and has a large variety of complicated hunting techniques. Many portias have been observed switching techniques when one fails and using particular techniques in appropriate circumstances. Some of their hunting strats involve leaving the view of their pray and traversing a complicated route through the environment in order to arrive in a more advantageous position, like directly above (mission impossible zipline attack) or directly in front (balls out leaping tackle attack), which seems to indicate impressive memories. It can also walk over prey's webs seemingly timing their footsteps with the blowing of the wind or pluck the edges of the web to make their prey respond to a fake "fly caught in the web" event. Overall they seem bizarrely calculating compared to any other spider.
Unfortunately it's not that pretty. I'm not surprised the post uses the more popular "fuzzy" jumping spider species, which are pretty cute. Portia's bodies are camouflaged to look like dead leaves and twigs and they twitch when they walk to try and mimic a windy bit of foliage.
worfhill on May 2nd, 2020 at 12:20 UTC »
If they learn to make fire, the human race could be screwed.
GreenStrong on May 2nd, 2020 at 12:57 UTC »
Here's a BBC documentary on them, with David Attenborough. They form a complex 3D map of their surroundings, and execute highly varied strategies to capture prey, which is mostly big, fierce spiders. They also dance like space aliens.
Extremely metal. This is the animal avatar of Sabaton- powerful, but highly intelligent.
ABetcetera on May 2nd, 2020 at 13:39 UTC »
Portia spiders are amazing but this post is missing the point a little, I think. This features list pretty much applies to all jumping spiders (and the post's picture is of a different kind of jumping spider, not specifically a Portia). Large vision range, jump distance, limb regeneration... That's all standard kit.
Portia is special because it ONLY hunts orb weavers (spiral web makers) and has a large variety of complicated hunting techniques. Many portias have been observed switching techniques when one fails and using particular techniques in appropriate circumstances. Some of their hunting strats involve leaving the view of their pray and traversing a complicated route through the environment in order to arrive in a more advantageous position, like directly above (mission impossible zipline attack) or directly in front (balls out leaping tackle attack), which seems to indicate impressive memories. It can also walk over prey's webs seemingly timing their footsteps with the blowing of the wind or pluck the edges of the web to make their prey respond to a fake "fly caught in the web" event. Overall they seem bizarrely calculating compared to any other spider.
Unfortunately it's not that pretty. I'm not surprised the post uses the more popular "fuzzy" jumping spider species, which are pretty cute. Portia's bodies are camouflaged to look like dead leaves and twigs and they twitch when they walk to try and mimic a windy bit of foliage.
Still, a really incredible spider.