The Australian ballista spider builds a spring-loaded snare that is set off by ants of one species only. The power is in the ...

Scientists have discovered a “ballista spider” that builds a spring-powered silk trap designed specifically to catch aggressive green tree ants. The ant unknowingly triggers the mechanism itself, ...

(Roy Toft / National Geographic Stock) Spider monkeys have complex behaviors that vary from group to group, according to a comparison of five isolated populations in Central America. In some groups ...

Instead of waiting for prey to stumble into its web, it uses a spring-loaded trap to launch ants into it. The spider was ...

Lead researcher Professor Ajay Narendra said the trap may even be chemically baited.

This nocturnal rainforest spider has evolved an unusually specialized hunting strategy, using a silk-powered snare to target ...

Newly discovered, the ballista spider rests underneath a leaf during the day. Scientists have witnessed the spider build a ...

Chalk up another entry into the canon of animals that definitively use tools in order to find a meal–in addition to the likes of primates, dolphins, octopuses and certain birds, you can now add ...

When an ant bit into a suspicious spider silk clump that appeared like an enemy, the taut spider silk snapped free. At that moment, the ant was catapulted into the air with an acceleration of about ...