Meet The Spider That Survives By Literally Looking Like Crap

Spiders are obviously terrifying to many people. But it's easy to forget that they're also prey for a lot of animals, so spiders are even more terrified of small chirpy birds than you are of them. A certain kind of spider has evolved to escape the threat of birds, however, by developing a very interesting type of camouflage: They look like bird poop.

The bird-dropping spider (Calaenia Excavata) looks like what would come out of a bird after it ate a regular spider. Thus, birds are uninterested in them and leave them alone, because apparently they have too much self-conscious dignity pick through their own feces in order to find a meal. This does require the spider to stay completely immobile when birds are around, because even birds get suspicious when dung suddenly makes a break for it.

As for the spider's prey, while it would be embarrassing to get caught and eaten by a sentient pile of bird poo, the bird-dropping spider actually employs an entirely different method to catch moths. The spider emits a pheromone that smells very similar to the kind of pheromone that female moths dispense when looking for a mate. The spider dangles from a leaf or branch, waits until a male moth comes close enough, then pounces. So many moths' embarrassing last words are, "Oh wait, you're not my wife, you're that poo spider!"

And if one falls on your windshield, a squeegee will still get rid of it just fine.

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