Posted on by Erin Zimmerman

Every Day is a Crappy Day for the Bird-Dropping Spider (Celaenia excavata)

Celaenia excavata
(via: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki)

Common Name: The Bird-dropping Spider

A.K.A.: Celaenia excavata

Found: Eastern and Southern Coastal Australia

It Does What?!

Quick, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind when someone says “disgustingly inedible” ?

If you said “Why, poop, of course!”… congratulations, you think just like Celaenia excavata. And if the thing you’re trying to look inedible to is a bird, naturally, you go with bird poop. Such is the evolutionary reasoning behind the politely-named Bird-Dropping Spider. And while remaining motionless is a must, looking the way it does allows the spider to sit comfortably atop a leaf all day, secure in the knowledge that spiders’ main predators, birds and wasps (who apparently aren’t into eating bird poop either), won’t take an interest.

“Nobody here but us droppings.”
(Thanks to Ron Atkinson at www.findaspider.org.au)

But the mimicry doesn’t end there for this sneaky little guy- by day it sits inactive and gross-looking, but by night, it hangs upside down from a leaf and releases the mating pheromones of a female moth. When some unlucky male moth comes looking for a good time, the spider snatches it right out of the air with its powerful front legs and wraps it up for dinner. The moth may be eaten right away or, if its capturer isn’t feeling hungry quite yet, be hung under a leaf next to the spider’s egg sacs, which, oddly enough, look like nuts (see top photo).

Believe it or not, Celaenia excavata isn’t the only spider out there masquerading as merde. Another such trickster is Mastophora cornigera, a North American species which is part of a group known as the Bolas Spiders, or Fishing Spiders. Not content to hope their prey wanders into arm’s reach, bolas spiders release pheromones to attract male moths, then dangle a line of silk with a sticky blob on the end. Once a moth gets close enough, the spider swings its line and –yoink– rips the poor thing right out of mid-air. Whoever thought up Spiderman’s web-slinger clearly had a bolas spider in mind.

So there you have it, the leisurely lifestyle of a successful spider: pile of poo by day, upside-down fisherman by night.

Says Who?