What I Learned Hunting Decoy-Weaving Spiders In The AmazonTAMBOPATA PERU -- In a remote area of the Peruvian Amazon lives a type of spider with a peculiar habit: It  builds a spider-shaped decoy in its  web out of dead insects and other detritus and which resembles an arachnid  much bigger than itself. The idea is that these spider-shaped web additions  scare away predators but nobody knows for sure. Only discovered less than two years ago scientists know little about these marvelously strange web-weavers so when I got an opportunity to go to Peru and learn more about them--amongst other bizarre animals that reside here--I booked a flight from New York  without a second thought.The spiders live near the Tambopata Research Center in Peru's wild Madre de Dios region. To get here you have to fly through Lima to Puerto Maldonado a rambling mining town through whose streets run an anguished torrent of motorbikes with single motos  improbably carrying entire families at a time. Then  it's a 45 minute bus ride to the town of Infierno (translation: hell) followed by a seven hour boat trek up the Rio Tambopata.Once you pass the Malinowski  ranger station where visitors must sign in  civilization drops away for good with caimans and capybara (the world's largest rodent) taking up stations on the banks. Along the way you enter the Tambopata National Reserve which covers more area than the land mass of Rhode Island and is one of  the most biodiverse places on Earth with for example more than 1200 butterfly species alone.  When I arrive at the center more than 60 hours after my flight left the states I meet Lary Reeves a University of Florida entomologist and graduate  student I've come to follow around. Lary wears a white shirt with a smattering of small holes sports heavy stubble  glasses and a head lamp--275 lumens strong enough to spot an Amazon bamboo rat from a football field away easy--who's just returned from a walk to find spiders. His enthusiasm is palpable.  With him is Aaron Pomerantz a graduate student from Florida who has come for 10 days to help gather data on  spiders who is friendly and inclusive. Welcome to the jungle Reeves says. We all share a  Cusquena a ubiquitous Peruvian beer that nevertheless tastes delicious before going to see a  fist-sized tarantula that lives in a nearby hole.  The next day we set out into the forest. A five minute walk away we find the first decoy a relatively well-made one that looks like spider albeit with six legs. Upon getting close the web's inhabitant pulls some strings and makes the spider-like decoy appear to waggle in a kind of dance. The spider is  a puppeteer.During the eight days that I am here Reeves and Pomerantz locate and photograph scores of these spiders and I helped find a few too. To spot one  you walk slowly through the jungle  with your headlamp beam on even at high noon; the canopy darkens the forest more than you'd expect and the light helps pick out the delicate white webs and their salt-and-pepper decoys. Along the way you slog through a chorus of different sucking and slurping mud varietals and if you get too close to the river you can sink knee-deep. Luckily when this happened to me Pomerantz was there to lend a hand. The air is thick with moisture leading to a perpetual but not  unpleasant sense of perspiration real or perceived  but it is not overly hot. Even though it's the beginning of the dry season it rains on and off most of the days of my stay.The decoy-building spider is thought to be a species in the genus Cyclosa and Reeves and colleagues plan to formally describe the species though it remains nameless. This Peruvian  Cyclosa species was found in September 2012 by entomologist Phil Torres. Six months earlier while researching butterfly diversity  Reeves discovered a similar spider in the jungles of the Philippines that  likewise makes spider-shaped decoys in its web albeit of a slightly different shape. The two only found out about each other's discoveries months later and now Reeves has shifted his research to the Peruvian Cyclosa since among other reasons it is easier to get to--all things being relative. Earlier this year filmmakers found another species in Madagascar that appears to make a decoy in its web. And there is another species called  Cyclosa mulmeinensis that makes pseudo-decoys although these blobs are not as convincing or impressive as those of the newfound spiders. The finds are the first of their kind; this behavior hadn't been previously recorded.Why this is going on on separate continents and hasn't been reported until [recently]--I have no idea how people have not done this before says  Reeves who is also a graduate fellow with the National Science Foundation.I've come here with many questions some of which I have a vague idea about having followed the story since its inception; as to others I am clueless. But a good place to begin: Why do the spiders build these decoys in the first place? The working hypothesis is that these spider shapes fool and scare away damselflies which feed on small spiders  but avoid larger ones. These insects in the family  Pseudostigmatidae are the largest damselflies in the world. To  the untrained eye they resemble dragonflies.  Our working hypothesis which we plan on testing is that the Cyclosa makes a decoy spider that is larger than the size of spiders Pseudostigmatids will take thereby gaining some protection from being eaten by these spider specialists says  Ola Fincke a collaborating researcher at the University of Oklahoma  and the world expert on helicopter damselflies as Reeves puts it.  Over the course of my trip and Reeves's month in the jungle he goes about laying the groundwork to test this hypothesis and makes several interesting discoveries. First Reeves devised a method to collect the webs (which he doesn't want to share in detail for proprietary concerns) that  he will use in the future to collect the animals and their silken firmaments and expose them to damselflies.  The idea is to see if the winged creatures pluck more spiders from webs where the decoys have been removed--that would provide evidence that the decoys are indeed meant to scare off the insects.A big part of the trip has also involved the seemingly mundane task of photographing the spiders and their webs. But it is in the painstaking work that discoveries emerge--and hanging out with Reeves and Pomerantz who are mad for understanding the intracices of animal life here especially the infinite strangeness of small beasts like spiders--nothing seems banal. There are also a seemingly  endless variety of animals to spot and identify and distractions provided by visitors like macaws. At one point an ornery curious scarlet macaw  flies onto Reeves's shoulder and begins gnawing at the  tooth of a  Spinosaurus aegyptiacus  (a type of dinosaur) on  his necklace. I can't help but be reminded that these birds are in fact dino descendants and to hear their depraved calls--hauntingly doleful or just as often angrily  strident--one could mistake them for Jurrasic Park velociraptors.  One afternoon Reeves and Pomerantz are photographing the spiders this time back in the lab which isn't really a laboratory but a messy  room full of equipment used by  researchers with the Macaw Project who have been studying the habits and health of the area's macaws and parrots here at the research center for decades. (The lab's  recesses house such treasures as a sloth preserved in a vat of formaldehyde.)Pomerantz empties the contents of a vial containing a Cylcosa and its decoy onto a white Plexiglass sheet placed between two large wooden seats. Beneath it a flash is perfectly positioned sitting atop a tarnished  metal dish to ensure optimal distance from the sheet for best photo quality). Reeves takes aim with his Canon 7D which boasts a powerful macro lens. From time to time Pomerantz gently corrals the spider with the tip of a small paintbrush to prevent it from running off this white plane so Reeves can get a good shot.Wait a second Reeves says as he snaps a photo of a spider and zooms in on the camera's screen. That's a male!This is a surprise. Before Reeves and colleagues had only found females making these decoys. In other members of the family Araneidae  (the taxonomic family that includes orb-weavers) once males are sexually mature they pretty much hang out in the webs of the females and  steal  food rather than making complex webs of their own he adds. And sometimes they become the females food.  They are also usually much smaller than females. These male  Cyclosa which can be spotted by their hairy punching bags or pedipalps are not much smaller than females. The largest females are just under 1 centimeter in length.  There's another discovery when the pair photographs what they'd thought were spider eggs laying within the decoy.Those aren't eggs Reeves says  as he zooms in on the photo he's just taken. They're spiderlings.I was going to say--that looks oddly like a spider for an egg Pomerantz says.While it's not unusual for spiders in this family to lay eggs in their stabilimenta the technical name for these web decorations the spiderlings usually make a break for it shortly after hatching. These appear to have hung around for a while longer.To learn more about the web-building activities of this species Reeves and Pomerantz place a couple in two  newly-devised observation boxes that force  the spiders to build webs parallel to the  clear plastic sides perfect for  viewing by humans. Much to their surprise one of the Cyclosa spiders builds a spiral P shape when the decoy is removed from its web that looks shockingly like the Peruvian P that adorns much of the country's tourist paraphernalia (and also resembles the tail of this monkey geoglyph found amongst the Nazca Lines). Why they do this remains unknown. Perhaps the spiders are just patriotic.Reeves has also found out that the spiders don't tolerate artificial stuff in their webs. Just to see what would happen he puts glitter (colored blue and orange representing the University of Florida) into the animals silken home--but the crafty spinster cut out all of that garbage.When it was  first reported in late 2012 the story received a fair amount of attention and Reeves thinks that's because of the romanticized idea behind it that people are thinking these spiders are so clever [that] they're building these structures that look like larger spiders.But it's not like the spiders are looking at another spider and designing it based on that--this design is just what has been selected for--in that way it's ingrained into their DNA and which translates into their behavior he says. Spiders that have these more spider-like-looking decoys  are more successful than those who don't. It's not the spider itself it's evolution--that's the amazing thing.The spiders are dummies Reeves continues using  term he often applies to his beloved arachnids  with bemused  affection but at the same time they are smart enough to make the decision to know what should and shouldn't go into that structure. Like when we offered them glitter he adds.Soon my time in the jungle is drawing to a close. On the last night that we are both there Reeves is still up photographing insects after the electricity in the center has turned off. I'm going to take a photo alright? I say as to not freak him out by approaching in the dark. He consents and laughs his attention trained on his insect photo subject. Earlier he'd been photographing  a brightly-colored fungus beetle for  project called Meet Your Neighbors that's dedicated to reconnecting people with the wildlife on their own doorsteps--and enriching their lives in the process according to the group's mission statement.It will be awhile before Reeves and co. will be able to sort through all of the data and photographs they have collected. When he returns to the jungle before long he will  explore the eating habits of damselflies to see if and how much  Cyclosa's decoys protect them. There is always the possibility that the decoys have another function for example to lure parasites/predators of larger spiders all the better to eat. But Reeves thinks that's unlikely.  Only the future will tell. As is often the case with fieldwork obstacles are an everyday occurrence (for example  time and circumstance didn't allow for  studying silk-henge small webby towers built by an as-yet-unknown type of spider perhaps to defend eggs against wasps).  The team doesn't yet have a permit to collect the spiders but is working to get one. If we had a lab specimen it would go a long way  Reeves says.  Until then the jungle is an open book albeit not one that provides easy reading. Reeves--and Pomerantz--will be back.