These 7 Animals Would Absolutely Crush It at the Winter Olympics

The Olympics are designed to test elite athleticism, at least in the human realm. But what about the animal world? How would Arctic foxes fare in the Winter Olympics, or snowy owls for that matter?

These Arctic animals, and others, are fast flyers and runners, and they hunt prey with deadly accuracy.

Granted, these animals might not follow all the rules (penguins, after all, slide on their bellies, not sleds), but here are seven animals that would excel at the Winter Olympics and likely win a few gold medals while they're at it. [Beasts in Battle: 15 Amazing Animal Recruits in War]

1. Artic fox

The Arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus) would crush any cross-country-skiing competition. This small carnivore has thick fur that helps it survive in weather as cold as minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 45 degrees Celsius), according to the San Diego Zoo. Its lush tail can curl like a scarf around its body, keeping it warm, the San Diego Zoo added.

These foxes don't use skis to get around, but the fur on their feet gives them traction as they run, acating like a natural snowshoe. In fact, their species name, lagopus, means "hare-footed" in Greek, according to the San Diego Zoo.

2. Flattie spider

Whenever the web-less spider notices a potential meal, it keeps one leg anchored and spins around until it catches its target.The flattie spider (Selenopidae) can spin much faster than an Olympic figure skater. To be exact, this arachnid can spin around in one-eighth of a second, which is nearly three times faster than the blink of an eye, according to a study published Feb. 12 in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

Just like figure skaters draw their arms closer to their body to spin faster, flattie spiders pull their remaining legs toward themselves, which allows them to spin up to 40 percent faster and nail a perfect landing, with their mouth positioned next to the prey, according to the researchers who conducted the study. You can watch a video of it below.

During ski jumping, Winter Olympic athletes zoom off a ski jump and lean forward, with their skis in a V-shape as they zoom through the air and land at record distances for their respective countries.

We nominate the Arctic hare (Lepus arcticus) for this event, given that the hare can go airborne, too, as it bounds through the snow at speeds as high as 40 mph (64 km/h), according to National Geographic.

4. Seal

There are few things more intense than speeding down a steep racetrack on a skeleton sled. But a seal probably wouldn't mind. These fin-footed pinnipeds slide all the time on their fat bellies as they enter and exit the water, according to Seals-World.

5. Penguins

Penguins would make world-class bobsledders. That's because they're epic tobogganers.

Bobsledding became a sport in the late 19th century, when Swiss athletes attached two skeleton sleds together and added a steering mechanism to make a toboggan, according to Olympics.org.

Likewise, penguins plop down on their stomachs and then slide around on the ice and snow, using their feet and wings to guide and push them along. Some penguins glide on their bellies for miles at a time, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

6. Crow

Curling is a complex sport rife with rules and tools — including brooms, stones and sliders. It's no leap of the imagination that crows would do exceptionally well … largely because they're so good at making and using tools.

New Caledonian crows, for instance, can fashion hooks from sticks to grab larvae and insects from crevices in logs or branches, Live Science previously reported. The Hawaiian crow is also a medal winner, finding the best sticks to reach food in awkward spots.

We're not sure if these crows would sweep the ice with brooms, but they would certainly sweep the competition if the goal were to use sticks to nab a snack.

7. Snowy owl

The biathlon has roots in Scandinavia, where people hunted on skis with rifles hung over their shoulders, according to Olympics.org.

Snowy owls (Bubo scandiacus) don't ski and shoot, but they do fly with speed and have excellent hearing and vision that help them hunt with lethal accuracy. These owls would stand atop the podium at any animal Olympics, though they'd likely prefer a tasty lemming to a gold medal.

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Chinese scientists discover spider with a tail trapped in 100 million-year-old amber

Two teams of scientists on Monday unveiled a "missing link" species of spider with a scorpion-like tail found perfectly preserved in amber in Southeast Asia's forests after at least 100 million years.

In studies published side-by-side in Nature Ecology and Evolution, one team argued that male sex organs and silk thread-producing teats link the creature to living spiders.

The other team pointed to the long tail and a segmented body to argue that Chimerarachne yingi belongs instead to a far more ancient and extinct lineage at least 380 million years old.

Either way, the researchers agree that C. yingi fills a yawning gap in the evolutionary saga of the nearly 50,000 species of spiders that spin webs and trap prey around the world today.

"It's a missing link between the ancient Uraraneida order, which resemble spiders but have tails and no silk-making spinnerets, and modern spiders, which lack tails," said Bo Wang, a palaeobiologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Nanjing and lead author of the study, suggesting C. yingi has more in common with their present-day, eight-legged cousins.

Remarkably, the previously unknown species was simultaneously discovered by two groups of scientists, each of which unearthed two specimens locked in translucent amber teardrops.

By coincidence, both teams submitted their findings to the same journal, which coordinated the joint release.

With a total body length of about six millimeters (one-fifth of an inch) – half taken up by the tail – C. yingi is, truly, an itsy bitsy spider.

The filaments made by four nipples extruding from the back end of its abdomen were probably not there to spin webs, the researchers speculated.

Venom glands

"Spinnerets are used to produce silk for a whole host of reasons: to wrap eggs, to make burrows, to make sleeping hammocks, or just to leave behind trails," said Paul Selden, Wang's co-author and a professor at the University of Kansas.

C. yingi also boasts pincer-like appendages, called pedipalps, used to transfer sperm to the female during mating, a signature trait of all living spiders.

Its whip-like tail or flagellum, also known as a telson, likely "served a sensory purpose," Wang told AFP.

By contrast, modern spiders use silk spun into webs to monitor changes in their surroundings.

They also have venom secreted from special-purpose glands, but neither of the studies was able to confirm that C. yingi could poison its prey.

Both teams used X-ray computed tomography scanning technology to remotely dissect their specimens.

The new species was discovered in the jungles of Myanmar, which yields nearly 10 tonnes of amber every year.

"It has been coming into China where dealers have been selling to research institutions," Wang said.

Amber has been crucial for tracing the early ancestors of spiders – but only up to a certain point.

"Spiders have soft bodies and no bones, so they don't fossilize very well, so we rely on special conditions – especially amber – to find them," Wang explained.

But working back in time, the trail of animal remains in amber ends about 250 million years ago, making it very difficult to trace the spider's earliest origins.

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Puppy-Sized Spider Surprises Scientist in Rainforest

Piotr Naskrecki- an Entomologist and photographer at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology caught a new Puppy-Sized Spider. This spider is also known as the South American Goliath bird-eater, having scientific name, “Theraphosa blondi”. The specimen was taken to the lab afterwards. It was also found that it’s a female. After further study, it has been deposited in a museum finally.

Piotr Naskrecki/Getty Images/Minden Pictures RM

A Goliath bird-eater tarantula spider surprised scientist Piotr Naskrecki when he looked for insects in the Guyana rainforest.

According the Guinness World Record, “the colossal arachnid is the world’s largest spider”. Naskrecki reporting to Live Science stated that

“I was taking a night-time walk in a rainforest in Guyana, when I heard rustling as if something were creeping underfoot. When I turned on the light, I expected to see a small mammal, such as a possum or a rat but couldn’t quite understand what I was seeing. Later I realized that it is a puppy sized spider.”

Moreover, he reported that the its leg span can reach up to a foot, may be around 30 centimetres, or about the size of “a child’s forearm,” with a body the size of a large fist. On his blog, he wrote that the spider can weigh more than 6 oz. i.e. 170 grams. It is almost equal to the weight of a young puppy.

Pete Oxford/Getty Images/Minden Pictures RM

The Goliath bird-eater can weigh up to 6 oz and have a leg span of almost a foot.

Sources also reported that the size of its leg is bigger than the bird eater but it’s more delicate than bird-eater. Naskrecki suggests that comparing the two would be “like comparing a giraffe to an elephant. Its feet have hardened tips and claws that produce a very distinct, clicking sound, not unlike that of a horse’s hooves hitting the ground”.

Moreover he also observed that the spider used to rub its hind legs against the abdomen. Soon he realized that spider was sending out a cloud of hairs with microscopic barbs on them. And when these hairs get in the eyes or other mucous membranes, they are “extremely painful and itchy and can stay there for days.

The spider's venom is not poisonous to humans.

It has also been reported that the spider is not dangerous to human at all. Even if its bite, it can do no harm to human. The spider basically relies on frogs, insects and earth worms. If it find a nest, it punctures and drink bird’s eggs as well.

Moreover Naskrecki also said,

“Bird-eaters are not very common spiders. I’ve been working in the tropics in South America for many, many years, and in the last 10 to 15 years, I only ran across the spider three times”.

Source: Here

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6 Demonic Animals

They’re not really demonic in the sense that they’re possessed by the devil, but their looks and names are so diabolical, it’ll make you think twice about where these animals originated. From snakes to birds to insects, Mother Nature made a number of devilishly strange and creepy creatures. Below are a few of them.

Satanic Leaf-Tailed Gecko

With tiny horns, a set of piercing red eyes and a mouth that makes it look like it’s always sporting a sinister smile, this gecko is definitely not your average looking lizard. Commonly seen in the forest of Madagascar, these animals are part of the Uroplatus, also known as leaf-tailed family of gecko. They blend in and look like twigs as they cling on trees in the forest.

Anglerfish

From the depths of the ocean, bumping into one of these scary looking fishes will definitely give you nightmares. There have been more than 200 different species of these fishes recorded, and some were just recently documented. Another bizarre feature about this fish, aside from their looks, is the way they mate. Male specimen would latch into females and fuse themselves into her body.

Thorny Devil

Also called the mountain devil, thorny dragon and the moloch, these lizards are native to the dry and hot deserts and scrubland that makes up most of Australia. It was named after moloch, an ancient god that is associated with sacrifice. However, these animals are pretty harmless. Their main source of food are ants.

Long-Horned Beetle

This scary looking beetle isn’t only known for its long whisker-like horns, but they also come with beautiful patterns on their bodies, kind of like wood carvings and tribal art.  They’re native to South America and although there are a number of species, the IUCN has tagged these insects as “vulnerable” in the red list.

California Condor

If a giant black bird swooping down on you sounds horrifying, you might not want to see a California condor in real life. One of the biggest flying birds ever recorded, it has a wing span that can reach 3 meters or 10 feet wide. The indigenous tribes who lives in California has long associated this majestic bird with the dead. Their scary looks may be intimidating, but these birds are actually very gentle and graceful.

Ogre-Faced Spider

One of the most unique spiders around, the ogre-faced spider gets its name from the mythological creature because of its fearful face. Also called net-casting spiders, they spin their webs in a different way. These spiders create a net-like pattern with their silk and then snare their pray from above with it.

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Happy Faced Spider its very cute

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Ants' Corpses help New Spider species Protect Nest

A new species of Spider Wasp has been discovered in Jiangxi Province, South-east China. The discovery was made possible after using a unique method of defending its nest. Deuteragenia ossarium was named the Bone-House wasp, which uses the corpses of ants to ensure their protection from potential predators. The name is for the ossuaries that were used to store bones of the dead.

The details of the new species of Spider Wasp have been published in the journal Plos One. Michael Staab, one of the authors of the paper, left plastic tubes to build their nests in after he collected and opened the nests. He was surprised by the presence of dead ants filling the entrance to the nest. He found the same result in several different trap nests.

Staab noticed after the larvae hatched that all the wasps came from the same species. The species was defined as a new one by taxonomists.

It seems that the ant corpses' pheromones make the nest entrance appear to be the entrance to an ant colony, thereby keeping the wasp larvae safe. Scientists have come across the first instance of this kind of behavior in the animal kingdom.

Seventy three of the 829 nests that were collected by the researchers were containing dead ants within their vestibular cell. "These nests contained between one and six brood cells, each provisioned with a single Agelenidae spider", said scientists.

Source: Here

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Spider Disguises Itself as Bird Droppings

It’s the ultimate crappy disguise: The spider Cyclosa ginnaga hides from predators by looking like a pile of bird feces, a new study says.

Study leader I.-Min Tso, an entomologist at National Chung Hsing University in Taiwan, first made the discovery walking through a research station in central Taiwan.

Tso noticed Jackson Pollack-style splotches of white bird dung, which stood out in stark contrast to the lush green foliage. But when he looked more closely, Tso realized that not all of the blobs were bird droppings: A few were spiders in their webs. (Read about a spider that weaves a mysterious picket fence.)

Tso recognized the spiders as C. ginnaga, a species found in Taiwan, China, Japan, and South Korea.

As the “architects of the spider world,” spiders in the genus Cyclosa are known to create elaborate webs, using their silk to make concentric circles like Saturn’s rings and adding debris such as twigs and leaves that hide young spiders from predators. (Related: “New Spider Weaves Spider-Shaped Web.”)

Now, Tso and colleagues have discovered their defense strategy is even more sophisticated than thought.

Cornell University arachnologist Linda Rayor applauded the study, pointing out that C. ginnaga is not alone in masquerading as bird droppings.

“It’s really not all that uncommon. Several other spiders, like Bolas spiders, also use this disguise,” she said.

Web of Disguises

To find out if the bird dropping-like web confused predators, Tso and colleagues measured the webs that resembled bird feces.

Source: Here

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Lurking in the darkness of Chinese caves five new species of armored spiders come to light

Armored spiders are medium to small species that derive their name from the complex pattern of the plates covering their abdomen strongly resembling body armor. Lurking in the darkness of caves In Southeast China, scientists discover and describe five new species of these exciting group of spiders. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

The common name armored spiders is given to the engaging family Tetrablemmidae. Distinguished by their peculiar armor-like abdominal pattern, these tropical and subtropical spiders are mainly collected from litter and soil, but like the newly described species some live in caves. Some cave species, but also some soil inhabitants, show typical adaptations of cave spiders, such as loss of eyes. The genus Tetrablemma, for example, to which two of the new species belong, is distinguished by having only 4 eyes.

Source: Here

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Largest Spider Fossil has Mate, with a Catch

Scientists previously unearth a fossil of the largest spider known to man, a female of an extinct and unknown species of spider that died buried in volcanic ash when the dinosaurs still walked the Earth.

Today, researchers report to have found a fossilized male spider to match the female behemoth, but the 

discovery comes with a slight hitch, complicating the initial interpretation of the extinct spider species. The newly discovered extinct spider has been given a new genus—Mongolarachne—by the scientists.

On the other hand, when scientists found the extinct female spider in China, it was given the name Nephila jurassica, lumping it in the same genus as the currently living golden silk orb-weavers, spiders large enough to catch and feed upon birds and bats with their large webs.

According to University of Kansas palaeontologist Paul Selden, the female spider was so similar to the modern golden orb weaver that they couldn’t find a reason not to place the extinct critter in the same genus.

Spiders, which have soft bodies are poor candidates for fossilization, but there are instances when they can be preserved in the rock. Volcanic deposits, for example, have turned up hundreds of spiders, such as those found at the Daohugou fossil beds in Inner Mongolia.

It was here that Selden and a team of researchers discovered another extinct spider, this time a male, that looked very alike to Nephila jurassica. However, clues in the newly discovered fossil show that the extinct arachnid just didn’t belong in the genus Nephila.

The first telltale sign was size. In modern golden silk orb-weavers, males are smaller than females. The extinct arachnid on the other hand, was similar in size to Jurassica.

Read the full story on Discovery News. 

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Have you seen a bat-eating spider?

According to animal professionals last March of 2013, bat-eating spiders are common and are found all around the world except for Antarctica. 

This spider specie is known as (Argiope savignyi) and (Poecilotheria rufilata), the latter commonly known as the tarantula, were found to trap small bats in their web to eat them.

According to Discovery, they have found 52 instances of this preying from 100 years of reports and observations. This is particular in the North and South of America.

So, would that give Spiderman an edge over Batman?

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Dancing Animals With Some Serious Moves

So, you think you can dance?

Animals dance, too. They don’t all do it quite the same way we do, but they often shake their stuff for the same reasons (showing off for the opposite sex) and sometimes for vastly more complex ones. See our list of animals with smooth moves.

Source: Here

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New Species of Peacock Spider Dances for You (And Sex)

At the end of a year, a lot of “Best of 2013″ retrospectives are trotted out, filled with lists of new species that were described. Sadly, most of those lists are dominated by things with backbones. Vertebrates–quite boring animals ranging from fish to humans–make up only 3 percent of known species on earth.

Arthropods (insects, spiders, and relatives) make up 80 percent of multicellular species on earth. Over 500 new species of insects and spiders were described last year. This new peacock jumping spider, Maratus avibus, is one of the cutest.

Source: Here

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Some Spiders Can Eat Bats

One night in 1941, G.C. Bhattacharya walked in to a cowshed in Calcutta, India and saw a small figure struggling and twisting against one of the walls. It was a small bat fighting its way out from in between two of the bamboo strips that the shed's walls were made of.

As he got closer, Bhattacharya saw that the crevice was not the only thing the bat was struggling with. A large spider was holding the bat by the neck with its mandibles and biting it. The bat gasped and screamed and struggled against its attacker, but the spider would not let go. When Bhattacharya lit a torch to help him see better, the bat shrieked and flapped its wings, freeing itself from the crevice, but not from the spider.

Source: Here

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Spiders exchange gifts for sex

Female spiders like being courted with gifts from their male counterparts. New research shows that the females store more sperm from males if they bring a gift prior to mating.

It is not only human males who benefit from flattering that special lady with gifts.

In the world of nursery spiders it is normal for males to initiate mating by giving the female a gift – an insect prey wrapped in silk.
Now a new study shows that this courting behaviour actually pays off for the male nursery spider:

Source: Here

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Behold, the MONSTER-CLAWED critter and its terrifying SPIDER BRAIN

The massively clawed beast is an example of a megacheiran, an extinct group of creatures related to modern day chelicerates, which include spiders and scorpions.

This marine spider provides evidence that the ancestors of scorpions and spiders branched off from other arthropods, including insects, crustaceans and millipedes, more than half a billion years ago.

Source: Here

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Spider Venom Reveals New Secret

University of Arizona researchers led a team that has discovered that venom of spiders in the genus Loxosceles, which contains about 100 spider species including the brown recluse, produces a different chemical product in the human body than scientists believed.

The finding has implications for understanding how these spider bites affect humans and for the development of possible treatments for the bites.

Source: Here

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The Barn Spider

The Barn Spider is one of the most common types of spiders encountered by many, defined by its yellow and black-striped or streaked body.

Nocturnal, they usually build their symmetrically designed webs in dark areas, thus the origin of its name since they’re often found building their webs inside the cool interiors of barns located in the Northern areas of the United States and in Canada.

Charlotte’s Web, a children’s novel released in 1952 and authored by EB White, with illustrations by Garth Williams, is hailed for popularizing the barn spider in mainstream media, telling the story of Charlotte, a barn spider, and how she had helped her friend pig, Wilbur.

The story proved to be quite popular as children’s story focusing on the value of friendship, so popular that is had inspired the release of a feature live-action film in 2006.

Though Charlotte’s Web defined Charlotte as a barn spider with friendly inclinations, the thing about real barn spiders is that they’re not exactly the most friendly creatures, known for keeping some distance from other barn spiders in the vicinity.

However, this doesn’t mean that they are likely to attack other spiders or attack anything or anyone that bothers them, as their natural nocturnal inclinations pegs them (somewhat) as loners, creatures who are at their best when left alone.

When talking about keeping them as pets, different exotic pet circles don’t particularly find them all that “interesting”, in the sense that they thrive best outside dedicated enclosures which are typically used in keeping pet spiders, plus the fact that they aren’t as active and exciting to view compared to other known exotic spider pet types.

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Barn Spider Wallpapers

Read more Barn Spider info

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