High-speed footage of a net-casting spider’s hunting technique has been recorded by a film crew.  This video reveals the rarely-seen, split-second technique of the species as it snatches an unsuspecting cricket in a Central American forest. The team believe this is the first slow-motion footage to show a net-casting spider hunting in the wild. Although the same event minus the trigger scene was seen on BBC’s Life in the Undergrowth before.

Expert, Dr George McGavin, who witnessed the event said: “I would compare it to watching a big cat kill. It’s as exciting as that.”

As ambush hunters, the spiders are known to use a combination of touch and well-developed sight to sense prey. The crew waited for five hours to capture this amazing scene.

“The spider did not move a muscle until the antenna of that prey item, the cricket touched the thread. As soon as it touched it, [the spider] was on it in a thousandth of a second,” said Dr McGavin, “if we hadn’t had that camera, you wouldn’t have seen a thing.”

“It’s like a trip wire,” said Craig Walker, deputy team leader for invertebrates at the Zoological Society of London. “It’ll send a vibration to the spider.”

Net-casting spiders are found across the world in tropical and sub-tropical regions and are also known as ogre-faced spiders because of their distinctive big eyes, which help them to see prey during nighttime hunts.

But on this occasion, the team also captured the important moment that triggers the spider’s trap.

When the cricket touched one of the net’s anchoring threads with its antenna, it caused the spider to strike.

Browse towards http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/18990161 for the video.

N.