Today, I want to take everyone to know about the spot-bellied fly elephant.
Spot-bellied fly elephant
Hyllus diardi
Arthropods, Arachnids, Arachnids, Aphididae, Fly-Elephant Genus. It inhabits areas with hot and humid climates, commonly found on tree trunks and walls, and feeds on small insects such as mosquitoes and flies. At present, it is only found in Yunnan and Guizhou. Photo taken at Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden.
In the family Arachnidae , the spot-bellied fly elephant is a larger , with males about 15 mm long and females about 16 mm long. When it comes to spiders, many friends will have stereotypes of spiders such as horror, poison, and scavengery. In fact, for a long time, humans have too many misunderstandings about animals such as spiders.
With more and more popular knowledge about spiders, the above stereotypes of spiders by the public are changing. In 2017, a short anime called "Little Spider Lucas" turned the world upside down, with a Douban score of 9.4 points, and the prototype of the protagonist is a jumping spider. Lucas's image shattered the public's stereotype of spiders, so it quickly became popular on the Internet, being called "the cutest spider in the world" by the media.
The spot-bellied fly is also a cute creature similar to Lucas.
The dorsal carapace of the female spider is black, mostly densely covered with white hairs, and there is a bunch of long black hairs that bend backwards on each side of the near front; the foot is black, densely covered with white hairs; and most of the abdomen is densely covered with white hairs; so the appearance of the female spider looks hairy and very cute. Because of the extremely high bristle density, people have always thought that white is the body color of the female spider, which is actually a visual misleading, and its body color is actually black.
Unlike the little spider Lucas in the anime who sells cuteness by his eyes, the real-life jumping spider mainly relies on his eyes to perceive his prey, and the spotted fly elephant is no exception. The study found that as a nomadic spider, the spot-bellied fly has developed vision, it has eight eyes, of which the front middle two eyes are the largest, and the other six eyes are the same size. To make matters worse, spiders in the family Aphidopteridae are the only species of spiders that can have a slightly rotated head and thorax. Their heads can be twisted at a very small angle, making tilting their heads, turning their heads, raising their heads, bowing their heads, etc., combined with eight eyes, which makes them have the ability to perceive "like a tiger". As a result, the ability to hunt is also improved.
There is a class of jumping spiders, portia spp., which feed on some web-weaving spiders. In the process of hunting, the hole spider first runs to the webs of other spiders and uses the foot jitter net to imitate the insects that are unfortunate to fall into the web, and when the spiders on the web mistakenly think that the prey has fallen into the web and prey, the hole spider will hunt the spider with better vision and flexible bounce.
In addition, spot-bellied fly elephants will also "spit" silk. The silk it "spits" is mainly used in two ways, on the one hand, it weaves a thin web near the nest to enhance the perceptual function; on the other hand, like the previously reported Malay spider Phaeacius malayensis, when the spot-bellied fly elephant wanders to a high place to the end of the wall or branch and has no way to go, it will jump to other places, at this time it will "spit" a bundle of silk from the spinner and stick it to a high place to alleviate the damage that the dive may cause.
Special thanks: Dr. Huang Guiqiang of Liupanshui Normal University in Guizhou Province for his guidance on this article!
Huang Guiqiang, Doctor of Agronomy. He is currently working in Liupanshui Normal College in Guizhou Province, engaged in the systematic research of insects in the Tianniu family, and has published 21 academic papers, 1 new genus of Tianniu, 8 new species of Tianniu, 2 new species of Lijin turtle, 7 new species of spiders, and presided over 1 project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Coordinator: Lian Huiling
Character arrangement: Tamoto
Poster Design: Zheng Biyin
"""Poke map into the special topic "《