Hoisting a shell

The world would be a much poorer place without the BBC and David Attenborough. He’s been in Madagascar with his team, filming for a BBC Two series on the myriad and bizarre life forms that have developed on this isolated land mass. Yesterday, readers of BBC’s Earth News were given a teaser of the resulting footage, focusing on the nocturnal activities of an unusual spider. To protect themselves from predators and the searing Madagascar heat, these spiders haul shells up into the shade of overhanging plants — and then take shelter inside them.

The footage revealed the spiders’ fascinating technique, spinning silk to hoist empty snail shells up to 50cm off the ground.

“With almost flawless precision the spider descends on a single line of silk from the branch and attaches its first thread to the shell,” said Mr. Fiely. “This is the critical anchor the spider uses, as it attaches a new thread to the shell, ascends to the branch again, and winches the shell up.”

Click the image above to see a fascinating two-minute excerpt, and to learn the lengths the filming team went to in order to find and record this behavior. Spiders are so cool.