Spiders prefer malaria-infested mosquitoes

Scientists say East African spiders could help control lethal disease

A jumping spider in East Africa is known to crave mosquitoes engorged with blood. Now scientists find the spider prefers a particular type of them—mosquitoes infested with the deadly malaria parasite.

These predatory spiders could help control the lethal disease, scientists say. Malaria leads to more than one million deaths per year worldwide, mostly children.

"My dream would be that people could be educated to recognize this little animal and not kill it when found inside houses, as it often is, apparently in search of food," behavioral ecologist Ximena Nelson at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, told LiveScience. "If these spiders are left in these houses, they may diminish the number of blood-fed mosquitoes leaving the house, and thus prevent someone else from becoming infected."