This strange looking ‘pelican spider’ has a birdlike jaw—and a taste for other spiders

Spiders don’t often resemble birds, but pelican spiders—which use beaklike mouthparts to spear other arachnids—are a notable exception. The group of rice-size animals were first discovered in a 50-million-year-old slab of amber and were thought to be extinct until live pelican spiders were spotted in Madagascar in 1881. Only 19 species were known to occur on the African island, but that number has doubled with the discovery of 18 new species, researchers report today in ZooKeys.

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