Newly discovered spider might have evaded scientists because it's so good at looking like a leaf
A newly discovered spider species might be so good at masquerading as a leaf that scientists simply never noticed it before now, National Geographic reports. Unlike camouflage, which is intended to make an animal look invisible, the newfound orb-weaving spider "masquerades" as a leaf in China's Yunnan rainforest in order to fool animal (and people) brains into thinking it is just a piece of foliage.
"Its disguise is so good that it might explain why so few of these spiders have been collected. Even trained scientists have a hard time spotting them," Matjaz Kuntner of the Smithsonian Institution and the Evolutionary Zoology Laboratory in Slovenia said.
So far, only two leaf-like orb-weaving spiders have been discovered in the world. Kuntner and his colleagues are currently conducting genetic research to understand if the two spiders are in fact separate species.
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