Spider-boarding



Hipsters may consider dogboarding to be way cooler than horseboarding, but both pale in comparizon to "spider-boarding" - a technique that has been used by mantidfly larvae for millions of years.
The larvae of most mantidfly species are fussy diners – they only eat the eggs of spiders. That seems like a dangerous enough strategy, for spiders are formidable hunters. But it gets crazier – some mantidflies find spider egg sacs by hitching a ride on the backs of adults... The “spider-boarders” can’t chew through the egg sacs. Instead, they ensure that they get inside the sac as it is being built. They climb aboard passing females, wrapping themselves around the base of their abdomens so they can’t be caught.

The photo above, by Michael Ohl of Berlin's Museum of Natural History, shows a spider embedded in a 44 million year old piece of amber. "And there, latched onto its underside just as its modern relatives do, is a mantidfly larva... it’s facing to the right and you can clearly see the three legs on its right side."

Additional details (and a photo of an adult mantid-like mantidfly) available at Not Exactly Rocket Science.

Link.

Hipster!

Let's see: if it's stylish: it's hipster.
If it's cool: it's hipster.

Noted.

Thx neatorama, keep it up, with your help I will figure this out.
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What is Neatoramas fascination with the term 'Hipster' lately? Seems like they use the word in every single article, really really off-putting. cut it out.
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Hipster is a popular search term. If you have been with Neatorama a while, you can see that it has changed a lot of late.
As for this item. Not neat.
How about another page called 'Barforama' for legtwiching, parasites, and such?
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Jimbo, I would be the one to blame for not tailoring my submissions to your personal sense of "neatness." I was probably aiming more toward some of the other readers who consider wonders of the natural world to be "neat" (in the sense of "clever"). In the future I will try to avoid the nasty, gross, "icky-poo" realities of the world that seem to offend you.
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For me, websites are like cable channels. Neato spent a long time branding themselves - instilling in me an expectation. Neato has changed (less control of content, more ads, more ads presented as 'neat' story topics). I just need to delete the shortcut as newer visitors do not have these expectations.
Trivial, at best. Please continue sharing; I wish you well.
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The only problem I have with ads on this website is that occasionally as I'm scrolling down I see an ad for Snorgtees and my scroll-wheel stops working.

I used to try spider-boarding, it rained a lot.
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