With their (largely undeserved) reputation as creepy creatures of the night, spiders have long been symbols of Halloween.
But one species lurking in the forests of Australia, South Africa and Madagascar merits the spine-chilling status more than most: the assassin.
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How does the assassin spider catch its prey?
This aptly named arachnid stalks its prey (other spiders) for days on end by following their silken drag lines, then walks undetected in their webs, luring them to certain death by plucking seductively at the threads.
And then there's those long, fang-tipped jaws, which the predator uses not only to impale its quarry from afar but also to hold the victim at arm's length, as it were, so that it cannot bite back before the assassin's venom kicks in.
The spider then transfers its prize to its mouth, which would be impossible were its jaws not mounted atop a tall, turret-like head, with its mouth at the base ready to suck the victim dry.
But, though the assassin certainly sounds scary. arachnophobes can sleep easy. What these spiders boast in weirdness, they lack in size - most are just a few millimetres long.
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Main image: Raven's Assassin Spider. Credit: Ethan Yeoman, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons