While on a recent expedition in the thick of the rainforest, wildlife biologist Phil Torres and his team stumbled across an interesting-looking spider perched atop its web. But upon closer examination, they noticed that the eight-legged figure was, in fact, not an arachnid at all -- but rather just a bit of debris sculpted to look exactly like a spider.
The artist behind the work, as the team discovered, was literally hiding behind it. A crafty little spider, just five-millimeter-long, appears to have fashioned that larger decoy to ward off any predators that might consider it an easy meal. With what appears to be eight legs, a head, and a thorax, no one could quite believe how that little spider could create such an anatomically correct, slightly more intimidating, self-portait.
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