I would not change my commute to avoid Main Street, I’d explicitly go down Main Street every day, and bring large animals with me. A diet of cars would be very bad for any spider, there’s not much nutrition there. What does it do? Bite through the outer shell, flood the interior with enzymes, and drink back the liquified upholstery? Yuck.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
You forget the high-energy gasoline and oil! And passengers!
Hmph. If a spider can mutate to the size of a small building, it can mutate to gain nutrition from upholstery. Mutant=mutant.
Still, if your alternate nutritional offerings work, maybe it will parthenogenetically spawn an egg case the size of a shipping container. No doubt that will make you happy.
I think you’re being closed-minded, here.
That’s true. I personally have never even tried liquified upholstery in spider saliva. Maybe it’s delicious.
I suppose that actually the spider would be eating people from inside the cars. Don’t spiders usually only target moving prey, so it wouldn’t make mistakes with empty parked cars? Maybe even pedestrians would be too slow-moving to register as prey?
“These running beetles have a tough shell and very little meat inside, but I can’t find any other food”
Well, hydrocarbons are hydrocarbons, right? ;)
Well, until one adds a couple of halogens, then things can get loud…
Still, I’m partially with PZ on not changing my commute. I’d just drive a small tanker with one of a few organophosphorus compounds. Something that’d require pralidoxime and atropine if one were exposed to it.
With the hand-lettering, “Main Street” looks like “Maw Street” if you just squint a bit.
I bet you haven’t even sampled liquified mealworm guts in spider saliva. You have every opportunity to expand your gustatory horizons, but nooooooo.
Say, I wonder if maybe the giant spider is actually some sort of robot replica, and that’s why it’s been eating cars. What would biologists know, given that they admit that they have just been avoiding it?
Well,if the spider ever meets a certain model of Alfa Romeo, what are the odds of them breeding?
I tried liquefied upholstery in spider saliva once. Can’t say I liked it much, but it seems to sell well in McDonald’s thick shakes.
Re. the virus and animals: “Dogs, cats can’t pass on coronavirus, but can test positive” https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-03-dogs-cats-coronavirus-positive.html
Thank Ctulhu for that. If pets had been carriers life would not be worth living.
I doubt anyone has tested spiders for COVID-19 but it seems unlikely they would get mammalian pathogens.