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Jumping spiders seem to be able to tell each other apart, putting them among just a few other invertebrates that are thought to have this skill.

Recognising individuals within your species is important for social animals, such as primates, but just a handful of invertebrates have been observed to have this recognition, (Polistes fuscatus). This is thought to help with social cohesion within the insects鈥� colonies.

Now, at the University of Neuchatel in Switzerland and Yaling Cheng at Taipei Medical University in Taiwan have discovered that a species of jumping spider known as the regal jumper (Phidippus regius) may also have this ability.

Previous studies suggest that black widow spiders can remember stolen prey, while some .

But the ability of a spider to recognise individuals within its species hadn鈥檛 been studied. Focusing on regal jumpers, Dahl and Cheng dividied 20 of the spiders into different pairs that were placed on either side of a container. The pairs were separated by a transparent panel, so the spiders could see each other but not make physical contact.

The spiders seemed to approach each other, a sign that they were interested upon their initial encounter.

After 7 minutes, Dahl and Cheng replaced the transparent panel with an opaque one, visually separating the spiders. A further 3 minutes later, they swapped the opaque panel back with the transparent one.

In a following series of experiments, different pairs of spiders were placed in the container, some of which were strangers and some of which had seen each other before.

When the spiders saw an individual they had already seen, they tended to stay further apart, compared with their first meeting. 鈥淭hey showed a little bit less interest to each other,鈥� says Dahl. But if they were exposed to an individual that was new to them, they approached each other.

As the spiders consistently showed less interest in those they had seen before, they seem to have some form of memory and recognition for individuals, says Dahl.

But these appeared to deteriorate over time, as the reduced interest the spiders had in individuals they had encountered before bounced back slightly after an hour.