So it looks like you made it through another great week of animal facts. We are going to end this particular week off with a rather interesting spider that will probably make you jump. The Portia Spider is part of the Jumping Spider family and has to be one of the most intriguing spiders out there. The Portia Spider can be found throughout a variety of locations including Africa, China, Australia, Vietnam, Philippines, India, Sri Lanka among other places. Needless to say, they shouldn’t be too difficult to find. I just hope they don’t outsmart us!

Smartest Spider on Earth

The Portia Spider appears to be incredibly intelligent. In fact, they may just be the smartest spider on the face of the planet. What makes these spiders so smart? It all has to do with their creative, problem-solving abilities. Wait?! What kind of problems could a spider possibly have? Well, they need to successfully capture prey so they don’t starve to death. The Portia Spider seems to take pride in finding different ways to catch their prey. Oh and in case you were wondering, they feed on other spiders and don’t usually use a web to catch them.

A Diabolical Villain

This deadly spider could easily rival The Joker and Lex Luther for the worlds most evil villain. You see, the Portia will design a specialized tactic for every spider they plan to eat. For example, if they are in the mood for a Spitting Spider, they will sneak up behind it so they don’t have to deal with the venomous spit.

Some other hunting strategies include:

• Pretending to be a fly caught in a web;
• Pretending to be an inanimate object such as a leaf;
• Imitate the mating ritual of a specific spider species;
• Attaching their own web to the web of their prey – basically making a trap out of the other spider’s trap (that is just mean!);
• Catching a fly and putting it in the spiders web – while the spider is eating the fly, the Portia sneaks up and eats the spider.

Do you see how diabolical these incredible spiders are? I have just mentioned a few of their cunning hunting strategies but their ingenuity is quite impressive and I am glad they don’t like the taste of humans.

That does it for this week of Wild Facts. I hope you enjoyed learning about the Evil Villain of the Spider world. Have a great weekend and  I will see you on Monday.