Meet the Pink Floyd Spider: It's Tiny and Lives in Your Walls
A spider three to four millimeters long is regularly taking down prey six times its own size. It builds its web next to streetlights, where insects congregate in the dark, and waits. Scientists named it Pikelinia floydmuraria after Pink Floyd. It lives in walls and hunts from walls. The band would probably approve.
The spider is synanthropic, meaning it has evolved alongside humans and specifically adapted to urban environments. Columbian scientists, whose study was published in Zoosystematics and Evolution, say this spider is a new species of crevice weaver. True to its nature of living on walls, the team spotted one hanging out on a painted mural in Quindío, Colombia.
Pink's hunting strategy is simple and effective: build a web near a light source, and let the insects come to you. Flies, mosquitoes, ants and beetles are all regular prey. And all potentially much larger than the spider. Size, it turns out, is less important than positioning.
Researchers also found that its closest relative is a species from the Galápagos Islands — over a thousand miles away, separated by ocean and mountain range. How they're related remains an open question.
Read the full story at Popular Science, April 14, 2026
Hot Take: Three millimeters. Streetlight web placement. Prey six times its size. Pikelinia floydmuraria figured out urban hunting before urban hunting was a thing. Another brick in the wall, indeed.
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