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Hersilia-2016-06-19-002
19 June 2016
- Classification
- Photograph
- Museum
- Wikimedia Commons
- Rights
- CC BY-SA 4.0, as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
About this work
Hersilia is a spider genus of the Hersiliidae family. This may Hersilia savignyi. Here it is immobilizing a Cicada by wrapping around. It has lightning speed, giving the victim no chance to escape.
Being very well camouflaged for life on the varicolored trunks of trees, they have an interesting way of capturing prey. Rather than making a web that captures prey directly, they lay a light coating of threads over an area of tree bark and wait hidden in plain sight for an insect to stray onto that patch. Once that occurs, they direct their spinnerets toward their prey and circle it; all the while casting silk on it. When the hapless insect has been thoroughly immobilized, they can bite it through its new shroud.
