Smiley spider discovered in India

Now, you might usually be scared of them...But what if they had a smiley face?

We are talking about spiders because a new species has been discovered - the Himalayan happy-face spider.

As it name suggests, it is recognisable by its cheery looking patterns.

Before now, spiders with smiley shaped patterns were thought to only be found in the Hawaiian Islands.

But now researchers have discovered a new spider, with the same smile pattern in Uttarakhand, a mountainous region of India.

Scientists have christened it Theridion himalayana, meaning the Himalayan happy-face spider.

"The discovery was accidental because our survey was [originally] on ants..." says Devi Priyadarshini, one of the authors of a new study published in the journal Evolutionary Systematics.

However, co-author Ashirwad Tripathy kept sending pictures of spiders from the region to his colleague for identification.

"When he shared this image from the underside of a Daphniphyllum leaf, I froze in shock because I had seen the Hawaiian spider during my master's programme itself, and I knew instantly we had a jackpot because of its striking resemblance," said Dr Priyadarshini.

Since then the scientists have identified 32 different colour variations, or "morphs", of the new species collected from three locations in Uttarakhand, India.