Just another of my daily updates. They grow up so fast!
Not shown here is that I have 3 other sets of hatchlings that are eating fruit flies as fast as I can make them — I’m going to have to ramp up Drosophila production.
Especially since I have four other egg sacs incubating in the wings. These are fecund little critters.
Oh, hey, also: I’ve been noticing that YouTube demonetizes these spider videos very quickly. Does YouTube have arachnophobia, or am I doing something wrong? Not too worried about it — I don’t expect to make a fortune from home movies of spiders — but it’s just a curious thing.
It’s really nice seeing the startup of a series of experiments instead of the polished final results. This is when the fun stuff happens!
I thought all spiders from the same eggsack should show the same developmental growthspeed. Any idea where the difference in the size/color comes from?
IANA biologist or arachnologist, but just like puppies from a litter, presumably each baby spider is from a different sperm/egg combination, so there’s probably plenty of genetic variation in one eggsack’s worth of spiders (including sexual dimorphism, since a quick google suggests that sex is controlled by chromosome in (some?) spiders). Plus, each spider probably gets a different amount to eat. PZ appears to make sure there’s enough for everyone to eat, but that doesn’t guarantee that some spiders aren’t hogging all the fat flies and growing faster because of that.
Is there a word for that feeling, where you’re both completely squicked out by something, yet endlessly fascinated by it?
@3 I think the word you are looking for is ‘politics.’
Morbid curiosity.
Magnifique under magnification.
“My army is growing”.
Take the hint humanity, before it is too late…!