ABSTRACT
The butterfly has scales that protect it from ant bites, so it crawls out of the colony-sometimes being carried by the ants-and makes a quick getaway without ever being charged with its year-long identity fraud. A newly discovered spider in the Amazon builds a fake spider in its web that is five times larger than itself. Interestingly, it was the decoy spider that caught the scientists' attention in the fi st place. They initially thought the decoy was a dead spider in the web, until they looked closer to see a much tinier spider assembling this giant spider clone. It uses leaves, sticks, and dead parts of prey to build the elaborate decoy, which has a head, body, and legs, just like a real spider. Scientists aren't exactly sure why these spiders build a decoy at all, but it most likely helps them to avoid predators, possibly damselflies, which feast on small spiders but tend to avoid large ones.
