New research led by the University of Portsmouth has revealed that African social spiders—dubbed "hippie spiders" for their cooperative lifestyle—may not have distinct personalities after all.

The spiders that lost their personalities: assessing long-term behavioural individuality in social Stegodyphus dumicola. Animal Behaviour , 2025; 123167 DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123167 Cite ...

Spiders are normally solitary creatures but a few species have evolved to be social and live in groups, known as colonies. While these spiders have evolved socially similar behaviours -- living in ...

Spiders are not usually social animals, but those that do live collectively have genetic and neural similarities to other social species that give us a fuller picture of collectivity. CLOSE Thank you!

A spider species eat their siblings as soon as they die but tolerate each other when they are alive, ... which could be a key piece to understanding the evolution of rare social spiders. ...

image: Individually colour-coded Stegodyphus spiders. view more . Credit: Dr Virginia Settepani. Study raises the question of whether social ‘hippie’ spiders truly have personalities at all ...