Below are three species of trap door spiders and their style of defensive protection.
Example 1 belongs to an Australian trap door spider called Stanwellia nebulosa. It creates a burrow with a balanced pebble that it pulls down during a retreat if it is attacked.
Example 2 is also Australian. It is called Lampropodus iridescens. It creates a side shaft with a trap door that it pulls closed if it has to retreat from an attacker.
Example 3 is the Australian Dekana. It digs two exits. One exit is the main burrow. The second exit is a trap door covered with loose debris. The debris disguises the burrow but is loose enough to allow the spider to easily push through and escape from an attacker.
Another unique trap door spider not pictured here is the American Cyclocosmia truncata. It has a simple burrow but the spider has a flat armor plated abdomen that fits snugly against the walls of the burrow giving it a natural shield if attacked.
Ero pirate spiders create hard protective shells out of mud or rocks to protect their eggs. Most of these types of spiders mount their eggs on stalks and cover them with mud that hardens to protect. The South African species has a different approach. They create egg sacs covered with an armor of pebbles and hang it from a thread of web. The below example is similar to a crane bucket and is even equipped with a hook to hold the cross cabling.
This spider hides by mimicking a dried leaf. This protects from predators as well as providing an edge in the hunt for their own food.
Now here is an evolutionary wonder. In the rainforest of Madagascar, the Phyrarachne rugosa hides itself by passing as an almost identical match of the bird droppings of fruit eating birds in the trees it inhabits.
| Evolution, or design? How did the trap door spider gain the knowledge to design a burrow with a balanced pebble sized to cover it's safety chamber? He is quite an engineer. But not half the engineer that the designer of the crane bucket the African Ero pirate made for her eggs. It baffles the mind to think a spider can evolve itself to the image of a dried leaf, and this idea becomes absurd when you look at a spider disguised as bird droppings. By chance or by design? The design speaks for itself. |