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| Bigfoot spider Trogloraptor |
A new family of spider has been discovered with large legs and called the “Spider Version of Bigfoot.”
This relatively large spider got its name from the place which it lives and the way researchers believe it feeds on its prey.
“They live in caves, they make a few strands of silk from which they suspend themselves from the cave ceiling, and we think they simply hang their legs in the air, in the dark, and wait for prey to come by,” said Charles Griswold, Curator of Arachnology at the California Academy of Sciences in an interview with BBC News.
Though these feeding patterns have never been officially observed and recorded, Griswold and his colleagues suspect that once the Trogloraptor has its prey within its reach, it then snatches it up with its “remarkable claws and feet.”
These claws and feet, say Griswold, resemble switchblade-like knives or hooks, and are used to “snap and trap” their prey.
This discovery is a historic one for the field of Arachnology:
While there are many different species of spiders which exist in the world, this is the first time in 12 years that a new family of spiders has been called for. In 2000, a new family was needed to identify a newly discovered arachnid in South America, according to Griswold.
As for North America, it’s been well over 100 years since a new family has been warranted to identify a new type of spider. Now, after 122 years of assuming we knew all we needed to know about creepy cave spiders, the Trogloraptoridae has been discovered and introduced into the world.
A team of “citizen scientists” from the Western Cave Conservatory, together with archeologists from the California Academy of Sciences and San Diego State University are credited with finding this new family of spider in the caves of southwestern Oregon, though these spiders have also been found elsewhere in the Western United States.
Researchers from San Diego State University found even more of these spiders in old-growth redwood forests.
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