A tiny spider with a bright red smile on its back has surprised scientists by turning up thousands of miles from where they thought its famous relatives lived. For more than 100 years, the Happy Face spider was believed to exist only in Hawaii, making it one of the world's most recognizable and unusual arachnids.
Now, researchers from the Forest Research Institute and the Regional Museum of Natural History have identified a new species in the mountains of Uttarakhand, India. Because of its striking resemblance to the Hawaiian species, they named it Theridion himalayana, or the Himalayan Happy Face Spider.
An Accidental Spider Discovery
"The discovery was accidental because our survey was [originally] on ants," said Devi Priyadarshini, a scientist at the Regional Museum of Natural History and coauthor of the study.
"But my co-author [Ashirwad Tripathy] kept sending me spiders from high altitude regions for identification. So, one fine day, when he shared this image from the underside of a Daphniphyllum leaf, I froze in shock because I had seen the Hawaiian spider during my master's program itself, and I knew instantly we had a jackpot because of its striking resemblance. I asked him to send all morphs that he found, and that led to the discovery in the next few months, from October 2023 onwards."
