#Funnel-web Spiders: Families, Bites & Other Facts Funnel-web spiders are spiders that build funnel-shaped webs
which they use as burrows or to trap prey. Three distinct spider families are known popularly as funnel-web spiders.
Spiders in the Agelenidae Dipluridae and Hexathelidae families all build funnel-shaped webs but that is where their similarities end.
Agelenidae spiders also called funnel weavers live throughout the world including North america. They build funnel-shaped webs between two braces such as branches or grass blades.
In general their bites are not harmful to humans. A possible exception is the hobo spider
but scientists are extremely unsure if this species is poisonous or not. Hexathelidae spiders live in Australia
and their funnel webs are lined really burrows with silk These spiders have a dangerous bite. Two well-known species of Hexathelidae are the Sydney funnel spider and the northern tree funnel spider;
both are shortlisted often for the Most Deadly Spider in the World title. Spiders in the Dipluridae family are commonly known as funnel-web tarantulas.
Their funnel webs are rather messy. Most of these spiders live in the tropics of Central and South america but they are found worldwide including Australia Africa and Central asia.
There are more than 1200 species of agelenids found worldwide. About 100 are in North america. Members of one North american genus Agelenopsis are referred commonly to as grass spiders.
Appearance Agelenids are sized medium for arachnids about 4 to 20 millimeters long. They are usually grey or brown with spots on their backs and banded legs.
Their eight eyes are arranged in two rows. Behavior Like most species of spiders funnel weavers are nocturnal.
They are known to flee from light. They typically live for less than a year dying in the cold weather.
In warmer places they can live for two years. Males spend most of their time wandering in search of a mate
though they usually die after they mate a few times. Females rarely leave their webs. They typically lay several egg sacs and cover them in webbing for protection.
Funnel spiders lay eggs in the fall and the spiderlings hatch in the spring. Dead female spiders are often found clinging to the egg sac.
Web Residents of grassy areas will recognize the funnel webs scattered in the grass during the summer and early fall.
Webs are seen also often in the corners of porches or in the cracks of shingles (anywhere there is a crevice for them to build a funnel web inside).
Prey don t get caught in the funnel which functions as a retreat for the spider to hide in
while it waits for prey to come. Instead prey gets caught in a large sheet web that surrounds the funnel s entrance.
Depending on the species the sheet web may or may not be sticky but either way prey gets caught in its slippery or sticky surface.
The spider calmly waits calmly in its funnel until it feels the sheet web vibrate as prey gets caught in it.
The spider which has no problem walking on the web then runs out and bites its victim.
In Europe and North america in the 17th and 18th centuries their webs were used often for bandages.
These spiders typically eat insects though they have been known to eat other spiders. There are about 40 species of hexathelidae in Australia
and while not all of them are poisonous the Sydney funnel spider and the tree-dwelling venomous biters have garnered deadly reputations in the Land Down Under.
Appearance These funnel spiders are sized medium getting up to about one inch and are typically black or brown.
They are distinguished by their shiny carapace (hard covering over the front of the body) which is haired lightly.
Males are smaller than females. Behavior These mostly nocturnal spiders can be found at any time of the year.
They prefer humid climates as they are susceptible to drying out. During the summer males leave their burrows
and go wandering for females. The two spiders spar until the female accepts the male.
To mate they rear up on their hind legs and press their bodies together. They also assume this rearing position when threatened.
The female spider lays her eggs in her burrow. Once they hatch the young spiders stay in the burrow until they are big enough to leave.
Males only live for a few months after mating but females can live for several years (some reports say up to 20).
Burrowers Funnel spiders pick moist and sheltered places to build their burrows like under rocks or logs or in shrubbery.
The entrance to the burrow is surrounded by irregular strands of silk which act as trip wires alerting the spider hiding in the burrow that prey is present.
The spider then goes out and attacks. These spiders usually eat insects or small vertebrates like lizards or frogs.
Tree dwellers While most funnel spiders live on the ground a few species on the eastern coast of Australia live in wet forest trees.
which are called sometimes cat monkeys because they look like house cats with long tails. But the orange-brown olinguito eluded classification by scientists for more than 100 years
despite being observed in the wild ending up in museum collections and even being exhibited at the Louisville Zoo the National Zoo and The bronx Zoo in the 1960s and 1970s according to a statement from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural history.
The olinguitos occasionally also eat birds mice and other small animals. Cloud forests are tropical moist forests with persistent fog or cloud cover.
The word gerenuk appropriately means giraffe-necked in the Somali language. These long-necked creatures which are native to eastern Africa can weigh between 60 to 100 pounds (27 to 45 kilograms) and stand about 3. 5 feet (1 meter) tall on four legs.
He took his lessons to former slaves turned sharecroppers by inventing the Jessup Wagon a horse-drawn classroom
Follow Denise Chow on Twitter@denisechow. Follow Ouramazingplanetâ@OAPLANET Facebookâ and Google+.+Original article at Livescience's Ouramazingplanet l
#Giant panda Cub Celebrates 1st Birthday Xiao Liwu the charismatic panda cub born at the San diego Zoo last year celebrated his first birthday today with a towering three-tiered cake made from ice and bamboo
The giant panda cub whose name means little gift was born on July 29 2102 the sixth offspring for mother Bai Yun.
There are thought to be only 1600 giant pandas left in the wild and their natural habitat is restricted to mountainous forests of China.
because pandas have a very narrow mating window. So far this year U s. zoos have welcomed two new baby pandas:
twins born at Zoo Atlanta two weeks ago. All pandas in the United states technically belong to China
which loans the fuzzy creatures to foreign zoos. Follow Megan Gannon on Twitterand Google+.+Follow us@livescience Facebook& Google+.
#Giant pandas May be threatened by Forest Reform There are thought to be fewer than 1600 giant pandas in the wild today
and the beloved bears'home in the mountains of China is threatened increasingly by climate change and human activity.
While China has made achievements in saving the pandas in recent years a group of conservations says the government's plans to free up forests for commercial use could be a blow to the endangered species. This change puts these vital habitats potentially under threat from commercial
 Pandas roam in part of this area and Mittermeier warned the plans could disturb up to 15 percent of the species remaining habitat.
The reform contradicts the great steps the Chinese government has taken to conserve the giant panda in recent decades added Li Zhang a scientist with Conservation International's branch in China.
instead consider an eco compensation program in which it would buy back development rights from local communities to preserve the pandas'home They pointed out that China has spent already more than $100 billion (U s. dollars) on eco-compensation
and they argue that another $240 million in effective payments could prevent a 15 percent drop in the giant panda population.
Evidence also suggested the people in eastern town were trading with people in workers'town for hippo-tusk fragments.
when I was interviewed about GMOS on CNN's The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzerâ asâ they reported that Chipotle the fast-food restaurant chain
A study in the American Journal of Physiology showed that female rats ate more rat chow
At the time when Christopher Columbus landed in The americas it's said that squirrels could travel from tree to tree from the Northeast to the Mississippi without ever having to touch the ground Chris Roddick chief arborist at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New york told Livescience in 2009.
but unable to find a horse? No it is a response to a supposed Billy goat curse that dates back to 1945
Psychology of the Curse There are countless superstitions involving everything from spilled salt to black cats to nailing horseshoes over doors
We are descendants of the primates who most successfully employed patternicity. So is the Billy goat curse real?
#Grizzlies Should Stay on Endangered Species List, Scientists Say Yellowstone national park grizzly bears could be removed from the Endangered Species list after a new federal report revealed that the bears are threatened not by the loss of one of their main foods whitebark pine nuts.
But outside scientists are criticizing the report calling it incomplete politically motivated and flawed. It does not take into account the situation the realities of the conditions on the ground in whitebark pine forests said Jesse Logan the retired head of the U s. Forest Service's bark beetle research unit.
Bear battle The fight over the delisting of the Yellowstone grizzly population is a years-long saga.
The bears were removed temporarily from the Endangered Species list in 2007 after the U s. Fish
In 2009 a federal district court in Montana overturned the delisting bumping the grizzlies back to protected status. The judge cited concerns that the USFWS had failed to consider the decline in whitebark pine in its decision.
Trapping Yellowstone's Grizzlies In recent years the growth of Yellowstone's grizzly population has slowed
because bears are crowded so in their habitat that older bears are killing cubs or if the slow down is related to food scarcity.
 Bears rely on four major food sources in the Yellowstone region said David Mattson a visiting senior research scientist
and lecturer at Yale university who studied the grizzlies for more than a decade as a U s. Geological Survey scientist.
One is calorie-rich whitebark pine nuts. Yellowstone bears also eat cutthroat trout meat from elk
and bison and a fatty high-elevation insect called the army cutworm moth. Pine nuts in particular are linked to birth
When female bears in particular eat more pine seeds they give birth to more cubs and they die at a lesser rate Mattson said.
The new recommendations to delist come to the USFWS from the Yellowstone Ecosystem Subcommittee of the Interagency Grizzly bear Committee.
According to a new federal report presented to the committee this week bear health is linked not to the availability of whitebark pine nuts.
The report downplays a published decline in grizzly bear fat composition dating to about 2006
When the agency first delisted the grizzly bear from the Endangered Species list in 2007 it estimated that 16 percent of the whitebark pine in the habitat had been affected by beetles.
The central habitat of the grizzlies is among the hardest-hit in the beetle epidemic he said.
Habitat trouble Mattson and Logan further criticized the bear report for downplaying the links between pine nuts and grizzly health.
Evidence suggests that bears especially females are eating more meat to compensate for the loss of whitebark pine nuts.
Cubs and yearlings at a kill site are more likely to be killed by wolves or older bears than are cubs
and yearlings snuffling for pine nuts. And meat-eating puts adult bears into closer contact with human hunters and ranchers should they go after livestock. 8 Ways Global Warming is Already Changing the World The result has been an increase both in total number
of bear deaths and in the proportion of bears killed by humans Mattson said. Meanwhile cutthroat trout are in decline because of predation by a nonnative fish.
There is not a single positive trend afoot in Yellowstone's grizzly bear habitat Mattson said. Compounding the problem Mattson said is the fact that many of the studies in the federal report recommending delisting have not undergone review by outside scientists
or have not been published in scientific journals a crucial step in validating scientific research. What's next for grizzlies Keeping the grizzly bear on the endangered species list would provide one ray of hope in a bad situation Mattson said:
It would keep states from opening up hunting season on the bear. One of the first things the states are going to do is in fact institute a sports hunt Mattson said.
They've said so. Delisting grizzlies would also allow states more freely to kill bears that became a nuisance to livestock a real concern in a time
when bears and ranchers are clashing more frequently. Federal protection makes it more likely that bears can continue to spread out into areas we know are suitable for bears Mattson said.
A wider range could bring the Yellowstone population in contact with other grizzly populations making all of the populations less vulnerable in the long haul.
The USFWS is mandated not to follow the committee recommendations but it is likely to do so said Kristin Carden an attorney with Earthjustice an environmental advocacy group.
The next step in the process is for the agency to draft a delisting plan with input from the Department of the interior and the Department of justice.
Next the plan would be open to public comment. Review of the studies used in the report
or public outcry could alter the trajectory toward delisting Carden told reporters. The final option is for organizations such as Earthjustice to file a lawsuit against the USFWS to prevent the delisting.
Whatever happens Yellowstone grizzlies face extraordinary challenges as climate change drives the loss of habitat and food sources.
#H7n9 Bird flu Virus Capable of Airborne Transmission One strain of the H7n9 bird flu virus appears to spread easily through the air between ferrets which are a good model for how the virus may spread in humans a new study from China says.
Researchers tested transmission of five strains of H7n9 all taken from people who got sick with the virus. Some ferrets were infected directly with the virus
 All five strains of H7n9 were able to spread through the air between ferrets
However one strain was able to spread very well it infected 100 percent of the ferrets who were exposed to it through the air.
Researchers know that a flu virus that transmits well between humans will transmit well between ferrets Webby said.
But ferrets aren't a perfect model. For example they don't take into account preexisting immunity in the human population Webby said.
The researchers called the one H7n9 strain that spread in their study highly transmissible between ferrets.
However Webby disagreed pointing out that a highly transmissible virus would spread between ferrets within a short period
  In the new study researchers infected six ferrets with the H7n9 virus all of whom developed flu symptoms.
Ferrets are considered a good model to study human flu transmission because efficient spread of the flu in ferrets tends to predict efficient spread in people.
Several of the infected ferrets were placed in the same cage as uninfected ferrets. In addition several uninfected ferrets were placed in cages a short distance away from uninfected ferrets to see
if the virus could spread through the air. All of the uninfected ferrets who were in the same cage as the infected ferrets caught the virus suggesting the virus can spread through direct contact.
The flu virus also spread through the air but less efficiently. Just one of three ferrets caged a short distance from infected ferrets caught the virus. The findings mostly mirror
what health officials have seen in people Webby said. For sustained person-to-person transmission to occur the virus would likely have to transmit efficiently by both the airborne and direct contact routes Webby said.
Because H7n9 doesn't transmit very well through the air it doesn't look like it has the capacity to cause a pandemic
When researchers infect ferrets with H5n1 they usually do not see transmission through airborne or direct contact Webby said.
Bekoff's latest book is Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed (New world Library 2013).
He slides far too fast between the problems deer and other animals supposedly pose with the problems predators purportedly present.
Wolves lions and bears are known to attack livestock and even pets. On rare occasions they have killed humans.
and the black bears of New jersey and elsewhere were restored instantly to their paleo diet. Slow starvation is no happier a way for a bear to die than by a hunter's bullet or arrow.
And in the process of starving animals cut off from their human feed are likely to become increasingly desperate and brazen.
In May a woman in Altadena Calif. a suburb of Los angeles near Pasadena entered her kitchen to find a bear already there munching on peaches she had left on the counter.
When she screamed the bear reluctantly left the kitchen ambling outside and flopping on the pool deck for a postprandial snooze.
stop increasing the population of deer for no reason other than to kill them. The last sentence of Von Drehle's essay says it all:
The title of Von Drehle's essay as it appears on the cover of Time (with a picture of a lone deer) is American's Pest Problem:
There are about 1200 species of bats in the world 20 percent of all known mammal species. The largest bat is the flying fox with a wingspan of six feet the smallest is the bumblebee bat that weighs less than a penny.
Two-thirds of bat species feed on insects and other small prey. Many bats are on nighttime pest patrol.
One Mexican free-tailed bat can eat about 1000 mosquitoes per hour. The large colony of 30 million bats in Bracken Cave in Texas consumes about 250 tons of insects every night.
Just 150 big brown bats can eat 33 million root worm pests. Without bats there would be more pests
Other bat species feed on flowers and fruits acting act as pollinators and seed dispersers especially in deserts and rain forests.
There also would be no tequila the agave plant from which tequila is made depends on the Mexican long-tongued bat to pollinate it.
and maybe building a bat house for your yard. Bats also are vulnerable to being killed by wind turbines.
That risk can be reduced through careful siting of wind-power developments away from important bat roosts
Another nefarious threat is white-nose syndrome a disease that is wiping out many bat populations in North america.
Bat-Killing Fungus Likely Invaded from Europe For more on the challenges facing bats see a video with Hoekstra here.
These rules include providing access to the outdoors including to pasture for ruminants. Marion Nestle a professor of nutrition and public health at New york University said the results came as no surprise.
and cadaver dogs to sniff out buried bodies based on the compounds released during decomposition. The new geophysical methods are in the early stage of development.
The Mongols relied heavily on horses which would have needed lots of grass to eat. Putnam and his team think the wetting of the desert allowed grasslands to expand enabling the Mongols to spread throughout Asia. 10 Surprising Ways Weather Changed History Atop The himalayas Next Putnam
it took 25 horses and mules to carry all of the supplies from the deep jungles up to the icy peaks.
This included running wrestling discus and javelin throwing. oethey also learned how to manage horses;
and at the Hyacinthia a festival of Apollo and Hyacinthus they raced in two-horse chariots.
and their excellent horses much exercised in recent wars quickly routed the Spartan cavalry and drove them back into the phalanx confusing its order.
And of course black cats need not have any association with witchcraft to be considered evil simply crossing their path is considered bad luck any time of year.
Even though venison (deer) is the only meat confirmed to have been present at the Pilgrims'harvest feast in 1621 turkey gradually became the centerpiece of the new holiday thanks in part to Hale Bertelsen told Livescience.
As the climate changed the very large mammals that had adapted to extreme cold like mammoth and wooly rhinoceros became extinct.
Humans once dependent on these oemega mammals for much of their food switched to smaller game
instead by raising animals said Hendrik Bruins a landscape archaeologist at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
But new research suggests people in this area the Negev highlands practiced agriculture as long ago as 5000 B c. Bruins told Livescience.
A great surprise Bruins'findings come from radiocarbon dating of bones and organic materials in various soil layers in an ancient field in southern Israel.
A Glimpse of the Past I found a wonderful radiocarbon sequence of ages Bruins said. And it was for me a great surprise.
and other books of the Bible Bruins said. The site where Bruins conducted his research south of Beersheba is likely to the south
and east of where historians place the Israelites during this time period he said. But it could possibly have been home to tribes associated with the Amalekites a group living in the area at the time that was hostile to the Israelites Bruins said.
The third layer corresponds to the late Byzantine and early Islamic period when people were known to practice agriculture in this area he added.
Bruins is currently submitting his research to a peer-reviewed scientific journal it hasn't yet been published.
when it comes to agriculture Bruins said. There is widespread evidence of ancient floodwater farming in the southern Levant in the form of drystone walls across
and run a thriving trade route through the area before the arrival of the Romans who eventually displaced the Nabataeans Bruins said.
A chimera is the name of a creature from Greek mythology that mixed together features of a lion a goat and a snake.
#How Bomb Tests Could Date Elephant Ivory Bomb tests generations ago could indirectly help fight illegal poaching of African elephants new research shows.
and then deposited in the bodies of herbivores like African elephants. By looking at the levels of this carbon isotope known as carbon-14 in elephant tusks and ivory researchers can find out how old they are.
In the United states for example ivory taken prior to a 1989 worldwide ban on African elephant tusks may be traded legally
while new ivory is illegal to traffic said Kevin Uno a researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New york. I don't necessarily think this will save the elephants
but it's a critical tool to fight poaching of elephants said Uno co-author of a study detailing the technique published today (July 1) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The best way to stop the killing of elephants is to identify the major poaching hotspots
Elephant Images: The Biggest Beasts On land Poaching getting worse Poaching of African elephants is as bad as it's ever been
and getting worse Uno said. There were an estimated 46.5 tons (42200 kilograms) of ivory seized in 2011 with even higher numbers suspected in 2012 Wasser said.
That suggests as many as 50000 elephants were killed to provide the ivory seized in 2011. With a total population of 400000 elephants this is a very serious situation Wasser said.
In other words if the rate of poaching isn't slowed African elephants could be gone mostly within 10 years.
Trafficking is carried out in part by large criminal networks and is a multibillion-dollar industry. It's driven largely by demand in China for ivory and rhino horns
which are valued for the supposed medicinal benefits. The United states also is a destination for illegal ivory according to the study.
Two things must be done to stop poaching said Richard Ruggiero an expert on elephant poaching with the U s. Fish
Secondly we need to be much better at providing security for elephants to assure detection apprehension
#How Deadly H7n9 Flu Could Jump from Birds to Mammals Chinese researchers have found new clues to the origins of the deadly H7n9 flu virus
and also found a new flu virus lurking in birds that could potentially infect mammals.
In laboratory tests this H7n7 virus infected ferrets which are used often a model for human flu transmission.
Follow Denise Chow on Twitter@denisechow. Follow Livescience@livescience Facebookâ & Google+.+Original article on Livescience L
#How You Can Help Save Threatened Russian Tigers: Op-Ed Linda Walkerâ is manager of the Global Forest
Your diningroom table may be one of the reasons why Russian tiger forests are being pushed to the brink of destruction.
And without realizing it you may be stepping on tiger habitat each time you walk on your hardwood floor.
The idea that flooring or a piece of furniture you purchased could be endangering the survival of the endangered Amur tiger is as troubling as it is surprising.
and flooring and shipping it to the United states and Europe where it is purchased by consumers who are unaware that the wood in their furniture was stolen from tiger habitat.
Illegal logging degrades vital habitat for Amur tigers and their prey. Scientists estimate around 450 Amur tigers remain in the wild.
Overharvesting limits the supply of pine nuts and acorns a main food source for Amur tigers prey.
And as timber supplies dwindle ecologically sensitive forests like wildlife reserves are threatened increasingly. Tiger Summit:
What Will It Take to Save Iconic Cat? It s more critical than ever to get these crimes under control.
WWF has been working for more than a decade in the region seeking solutions. We are tackling the problem from several angles in Russia:
As one of the largest importers of flooring and furniture from China U s. consumers and businesses can play a role in helping combat illegal logging and save this crucial tiger habitat.
Iconic Cats Album: All 9 Species of Tiger Businesses: As Russian plant species can be mislabeled purposely as originating from other countries importers of Chinese
or Russian hardwood furniture and flooring must confirm the species and country of wood origin.
if we are to conserve this crucial habitat for the Amur tiger and its prey.
How can you be sure you re not contributing to the destruction of Amur tiger forests
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