Caption:
As the flock of monarchs, in a silent burst of black and gold, rose from the puddle’s edge, a sudden “crack” knifed through the still morning air. A spider’s shotgun had found its mark.
Alt text:
All Right!
That spider won’t be cheering for long.
Monarch butterflies taste terrible due to toxins built up in their bodies from feeding on milkweed as caterpillars.
https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Invertebrates/Monarch-Butterfly under “Diet”
Huh. I was wondering if spiders would still eat them, and apparently some spiders are known to avoid them:
An invasive species of spider from Asia doesn’t eat them, and even frees them when caught, but native spiders don’t mind at all:
So it turns out that our native North American spiders will gladly eat monarchs, but yet the invasive spider from east Asia will not? Hmm…This is certainly a head-scratcher. It’s almost as if the native spiders have somehow learned “how” to eat the toxic monarchs, perhaps in the same way that some birds have - i.e. by only eating the body parts that don’t have the cardenolides. Just guessing here.
One other cool thing we learned is that the jorō spiders seem to have the ability to detect the monarchs’ distastefulness even without physically tasting them!
