A predatory moment, frozen in geological time You’re a hungry spider who is rushing toward
A predatory moment, frozen in geological timeYou’re a hungry spider who is rushing towards a wasp that has become entangled in your web when all of a sudden everything goes sticky, you can’t move, frozen in place like the proverbial Tantalus with your food in sight but forever beyond your reach. Very soon after you are engulfed in another wash of sticky sap oozing out of a tree and everything goes dark. The spider may ironically have also been courting a painful death, since these wasps are parasitic and known to lay their eggs in spiders and other insects, with the larvae slowly consuming the insect from the inside out, preserving it alive by leaving the vital organs for last. Such a moment was caught by a unique fossil pictured below, that turned up in a hundred million year old piece of amber from what is now the Hukawng valley in Burma.In addition a male spider was englobed in the same chunk sitting on the same web. Whether he was gingerly creeping up it in order to try and mate or living there with his partner remains unknown. Nowadays most spiders are solitary, though there are a few gregarious species, but this behaviour may have been more common in arachnids back in the Cretaceous. While it wasn’t the oldest spider web ever discovered in amber, it is the only case of spider combined with its trapped prey within its web ever found.LozImage credit: Oregon State Universityhttp://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2012/oct/fossil-ancient-spider-attack-only-one-its-type-ever-discoveredhttp://www.livescience.com/23796-spider-attack-found-in-amber.htmlhttp://www.geologyin.com/2014/08/100-million-year-old-spider-attack.html -- source link
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