TIL: There Is A Cool Group Of Spiders That Looks Like Tiny Pelicans & Marijuana Kills Owls (Not)!

While having my morning coffee in my work I came across this press release from this paper that just came out of the oven. My first thought was, that's one freaking cool spider:

This is Eriauchenius workmani, it get's to be about 1 cm long and is the largest known pelican spider. Credit: Nikolaj Scharff

The spider depicted above belongs to the Eriauchenius workmani species and along with some other close-related species is commonly known as the pelican spider. Pelican spiders occur in Australia, South Africa, South America and Madascar. Not surprisingly, they are best known for their long neck and chelicerae (the "equivalent" of jaws for spiders), hence the pelican nickname:

"The carapace is extended and tubular in structure, and encircles the cheliceral bases, giving archaeids the appearance of a ‘‘neck’’ and “head”; the chelicerae are also greatly elongated. " [source]

The most iconic pelican spiders are the ones from Madagascar as they have the longest necks and jaws.

The first pelican spider was found in 1854, in a piece of a 50 million-year-old amber and took a few decades until  the first living ones were found in Madagascar. Even as of today, these fellas have remained quite elusive and there is little we know about them. The paper I linked in my intro, by  Hannah Wood and Nikolaj Scharff, comes to shed some light into them, examining spiders from the Eriauchenius  and Madagascarchaea genera.

These two examined hundreds of Madagascar pelican spiders, obtained both directly in the field and from specimens from museum collections. In total, they described 18 new species, but they believe there are more to be found:

 "I think there's going to be a lot more species that haven't yet been described or documented" said Wood.

So, I bet your main question is what the heck long neck and fangs are for.. They simply use it to impale prey from a distance and keep it there midair until it dies. This effective method of killing prey while staying on the safe side is why they are also known as assasin spiders.

Pelican spider dangling its prey (another spider) upside-down using its chelicerae after capturing it (credit)

Interestingly, they don't make their own webs although they will purposely come in contact with webs from other spiders to get the prey come to them! Furthermore, while most spiders prey on all kinds of insectoids, pelican spiders feed exclusively on other spiders. 

So, enough with the pelican spiders! Feel free to click the various links if you want to learn more about them. Now let's move to the next topic of today...

Marijuana Kills Owls (Not)

Now, here's another story that peaked my interest this morning. So, the title of the story I jus linked is "Owls Dying Near Marijuana Farms (Here's Why)" and definitely sounds like it's gonna be an interesting read. After all, how could marijuana kill owls?

Turns out it's just another shitty click-bait article. So here's the tldr story. Apparently, for the past few years owls have kept dying near un-regulated marijuana farms in California. Researchers from the UC Davis in cooperation with the California Academy of Sciences came to solve the mystery. Turns out owls die because they eat mice and rats that have previously consumed rat poison:

"Seven of the 10 Northern spotted owls collected tested positive for rat poison, while 40 percent of 84 barred owls collected also tested positive for the poison. " [source]

The matter is actually more serious than it sounds, as there are about 4.500 (and up to 15.000) unregulated marijuana farms in Humboldt County alone. And considering how many of these owls belong to threatened species (like the spotted owl) the researchers have urged that further study is needed to better understand the magnitude of the contamination and for measurements to tackle the problem. 

Here's a link to the paper with the not-so-click-baity title of "Exposure to rodenticides in Northern Spotted and Barred Owls on remote forest lands in northwestern California: evidence of food web contamination."

More Strange Animal Stuff  

If you enjoyed reading  this post I am sure you will love some of my previous posts:

• Spirobranchus giganteus: Real Life Christmas Trees!
• 3 Amazing Spiders That Pretend To Be Something Else!
• Giant Isopods - Aliens Of The Deep
• 3 Creepy Critters I Discovered This Week + Baby Bat Burritos
• Clathrus archeri: Weird Alien-Like Eggs Hatch Into Weird Octopus Thing
• The Horseshoe Crab Named After Darth Vader
• Lobster with Pepsi Tattoo Fished In Canada !