Friday Cephalopod: Let’s play a game — everyone, pretend to be a siphonophore! » « Harris’s devious rhetoric dissected

Breeding spiders

My lab schedule is now settled on feeding on Monday and Thursday, and on Friday I shuffle males into tubes with females and put them to work making more spiderlings. Some days, the males are kind of eager, and I caught a few in the act.

Friday Cephalopod: Let’s play a game — everyone, pretend to be a siphonophore! » « Harris’s devious rhetoric dissected

Comments

  1. jrkrideau says

    X – rated spider movies, what next!

    Actually some great footage but the flat-sided vials do sound like a good idea.

    How many spiders do you have now? It sounds like the colony is growing by leaps and bounds.

  2. eliza422 says

    All these videos you’ve been posting have made me appreciate my spiders even more. I just saw a pretty large one in my bathroom the other day and I left her alone. She hadn’t broken the golden rule of don’t get on me, but she was within striking range and before this I would have taken her out.
    I look forward to the next video.

  3. says

    I always take spiders out. I keep a cardboard tube from a roll of paper towels, and when one of my loved ones reports an arachnid, I open the window a little, maneuver the tube onto the spider and slide it a little to encourage it to climb into the tube. Then I take a quick peek to see if it’s in the tube, extend the tube out the window, and blow the spider out with a gust of air. If it’s winter, I quietly lose it in the laundry room. Don’t tell my daughter. I did once, but she might have forgotten by now.

    I really hope I’m not killing the spiders with my breath. They run off. If I’m putting them into an environment they can’t live in, I regret that. Spiders are neat. This one lived in my garage and had a long and prosperous career based upon a web that covered the inside of the garage window, and things flew into it all the time. Look at that jewel-crusted body!

    https://flic.kr/p/gNH13o

    I liked it so much I based a print on it. This is a cardboard print: the web was incised on cardboard and printed white, while the spider was drawn freehand in Elmer’s Glue-All and printed black. If I ever redo it, I won’t have the spider so centered.

  5. vucodlak says

    Not even a picture of the awesome Rachnera Arachnera (that’s who is in the preview image) is enough to get me to watch a video full of actual spiders. The text posts about spiders are interesting reading, though.

  6. jrkrideau says

    @ 5 vucodlak
    I feel the same way about snakes. Years ago when I went to see “The Raiders of the Lost Ark” I spent much of the time clutching my girlfriend’s hand and asking if it was safe to open my eyes.