You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hello, Shortwaveers, it's Maria Gadoi here.

The sight of spiders makes a lot of people jump.

I was once in a park car with a friend who hit the gas and drove into a parking meter

in front of her because she panicked after she saw a teeny tiny spider in her car.

But the Naila Rosler loves spiders.

All spiders are pretty fascinating from biological and ecological standpoint.

So there really is no reason to be afraid of any spider.

But in particular, jumping spiders are absolutely amazing because they have this incredible eyesight.

So they have really, really good eyes and they can see almost as good as we do.

So they have their page attention to detail.

They're really great at hunting.

They basically hunt like little cats.

She says they love to hunt mosquitoes for one thing, which is pretty helpful for us humans.

Generally, spiders in every ecosystem are really top predators in the tiny world.

So they do eat a lot of things like small bugs and other spiders and insects.

So especially jumping spiders, they usually would often find them praying on something that

is just as loud as they are.

Huh.

They're not afraid to take on the big guys.

No, they're absolutely not.

That's the thing.

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