In Kenya, a vampire spider is hunting down its prey by tracking the smell of human feet. If that sounds nightmarish, don’t panic – the spider Evarcha culicivora is only an indirect vampire. It’s not interested in attacking humans; it’s after mosquitoes that have fed on mammal blood. If anything, the spider is our ally – it kills female Anopheles mosquitoes that spread malaria.

Robert Jackson from the University of Canterbury discovered the spider in 2003. He quickly showed that it likes to target malarial mosquitoes, especially those that had just fed on blood, and it can recognise them based on either appearance or smell. And in 2009, Jackson, together with his colleague Fiona Cross, showed that the