Newly discovered spider looks just like a dried-up leaf

In the animal kingdom, sometimes the best survival strategy is to pretend to be something you’re not — either to ambush unsuspecting prey or to convince predators that you’re not very tasty.

And scientists recently discovered a spider that uses a unique masquerade to hide in plain sight. It is the only known spider to have a body that bears an uncanny resemblance to a dangling, partly dried-up leaf.

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The find was reported in a new study, though the spider is yet to be described and assigned a species name.

The newfound costumed arachnid is in the Poltys genus in the orb spider family, which contains more than 3,000 species and one spider celebrity from children’s fiction — an Araneus cavaticus was the barn spider Charlotte from the classic story “Charlotte’s Web” (Harper and Brothers, 1952). …

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Newly discovered spider looks just like a dried-up leaf