Agelena Labyrinthica It is a very common small spider in Europe, which lives near forests and grasslands and builds Give them from the typical “labyrinth” shapeintricate and full of branches. Perfectly harmless to manon the other hand, can be a risk for its conscious: in case of need, in fact, this spider is not made to resort to cannibalism. A new study published on Animal Behaviourhowever, shows that this trend is not indiscriminate: in front of its brothers or sisters, even the most hungry spider stops before devoureding them alive.
Hungry but peaceful. The study was conducted on a group of spiders raised in the laboratory, to which food was removed: the aim was to discover how the specimens would behave, all members of the same family. The team’s expectation was that the spiders would begin to devour each other, which instead did not happen.
Animals have shown a very low degree of mutual aggressionconsequence of a series of chemical “social signals” that serve to communicate belonging to the same family unit. In simpler words, Brothers and sisters know how to say each other “Don’t eat me, we are relatives!”.
Respect (only) for the living. Even more interesting is the fact that some of the spiders who participated in the experiment were raised in solitude, and have shown all the aggression that the spiders grown in company have repressed. This is in line with other studies of the same team, which they have shown how insulation reduces sensitivity to social signals.
A last detail. If it is true that brothers and sisters of these spiders do not devour each other, it is also true that this “courtesy” is reserved only for the living: In front of the corpse of a relative, a spider who is hungry does not make any problem to me to me in an hour. Brothers until death, in short, but not beyond.
