I Spent 7 Years Photographing These Pretty Disgusting Animals

For many years, I’ve been staring hard at little pieces of shit in the forest, learning not to casually dismiss any piles of excrement as they could turn out to be devious little dung spiders, sometimes also known as bird dropping spiders.

Living its life as a pile of poop may sound shitty, but the facade is an ingenious predatory and defensive tactic.

** Predatory tactic

Excrement from birds, lizards, and other vertebrates is an excellent source of food and nutrients for some insects, especially flies and bugs. Dung spiders capitalize on this attraction with their crap-like exterior and reinforce their deception by remaining motionless for hours, just like a true piece of poop.

It had been popularly spread on the internet that these bird dung spiders not only looked like shit but also smelt like shit. A human may not easily detect the scent, and there has not been any objective evidence of such a notion.

Hence, in 2015, a group of scientists from Hubei University, China, performed a series of experiments to prove that volatile chemical cues helped the spider repel predators and attract prey.

** Defence tactic

The crappy disguise also protects the spider from birds and other predators that generally would not consider eating its poop.

In this photo series, I have consolidated some of the common, poop-like genera of spiders from Southeast Asia (primarily Singapore): Pasilobus and Phrynarachne. Cyrtarachne had traditionally been called bird-dropping spiders, so there would be a brief mention at the end of the post. Spiders from these genera are mimics of poop / faeces / dung / excrement / shit / bird dropping to various degrees.

More info: nickybay.com