DON’T CALL ME FOUR-EYES: Jumping spiders have four pairs of eyes that work in concert to help them sense and capture prey.IMAGE COURTESY OF GIL MENDA
Gil Menda was bored. It was 2012, and his research on facial recognition in wasps was going nowhere. The Cornell University graduate student turned to his advisor, neurophysiologist Ron Hoy, as the professor was running out the door to teach a class. There were jumping spiders in the lab already, so Menda asked for permission to attempt the impossible: to tap into the central nervous system of an arachnid that was far more liable to depressurize and die than sit still for brain surgery. Hoy assented.
It was a problem that had vexed biologists for decades, says Paul Shamble, an arachnologist who was then a fellow Cornell graduate student. The jumping spider is unusual among arachnids, most of which have relatively poor vision compared to ...
