A Spider That Dressed Up as a Zombie. The Costume Is Working.

A field researcher in the Ecuadorian Amazon reached out to poke what looked like a leaf covered in cordyceps fungus — the flesh-colonizing killer you know from The Last of Us — and it recoiled. The fungus was a spider. The spider was fine.

Researchers have formally described the new species, Taczanowskia waska, from the Ecuadorian Amazon, and it represents the first documented case of a spider mimicking the appearance of a parasitic fungus. T. waska has evolved paired abdominal prolongations — long, slender tubercles — that closely replicate the fruiting bodies of Gibellula, a genus of parasitic fungi in the same family as cordyceps. Those horn-like structures, combined with dense white hairs across the abdomen, create a convincing illusion of a spider already killed and colonized by fungus.

The disguise appears to pull double duty. Researchers theorize two possible explanations. The first is aggressive: the Taczanowskia genus doesn't trap prey with webs, instead using two enlarged claws on its forelimbs to strike. By looking like a fungus casualty, the spider may stay invisible to prey until it's too late. The second is defensive: an animal that looks diseased and dead holds little interest for predators.

The discovery was made in the Llanganates-Sangay Corridor during a nighttime expedition. After scouring citizen-science photos, the research team found spiders displaying similar fungal mimicry across Vietnam, Uganda, Madagascar and coastal Brazil — all from the Araneidae family, though representing entirely different genera.

Not everyone is convinced the structures are mimicry at all. Andrew Swafford, an associate professor of biology at Middlebury College, noted the abdominal structures look similar to cordyceps stalks "to us humans" and said further research is needed before ruling out other functions.

If the mimicry hypothesis holds, it would be the first case of a spider or insect mimicking late-stage cordyceps on record. The Amazon has been running this experiment in secret for a long time.

Read the full story at Discover Magazine, April 14, 2026

Hot Take: The spider evolved to look dead so thoroughly that a trained field scientist reached down and poked it — which means natural selection has now officially cleared the bar for fooling scientists on purpose.