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GRUESOME!!
Tarantulas are very strong spiders. They pounce on their prey and hold it still with their legs while their fangs inject poison. The poison paralyzes the prey and a special fluid from the spider's stomach digests the soft parts. The spider then sucks up the insides of its victim's body.


Ant fever


Ant fever
Crazy ants, named for their frantic movements, are destroying a unique rainforest habitat. On Australia's Christmas Island, there are few seedlings and shrubs due to the delicate equilibrium maintained by red land crabs. However, in the past 18 months, the crazy ants have gone berserk, attacking and eating the land crabs. They are also creating havoc in the forest canopy. Feeding on a sugary secretion produced by sap-sucking scale insects, they protect this source of food from its natural predators. As a result, scale insects are booming in numbers and causing many patches of the forest canopy to die back. The ants have been living peacefully on Christmas Island since the 1930s and scientists are puzzled as to why they have suddenly become a menace.
27 MARCH 1999, P. 12
New Scientist
27 MARCH 1999, P. 12

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