Come into my parlour (original) (raw)
SPIDERS are known for many things. Sociability is not one of them. Most spiders are more likely to try to eat their neighbours than befriend them. Given that there are at least 43,678 species of the critters, though, it is not too surprising that a few have overcome their natural grumpiness and teamed up to form societies. So far, about two dozen such social spiders have been identified. And among them, something really strange has just been found. For one type of spider society turns out to involve two different but closely related species. It is as though anthropologists had discovered villages populated both by human beings and chimpanzees.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Come into my parlour”
From the January 26th 2013 edition
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