I miss working in a lab with a wall of fish tanks, the water gurgling, the little fishies darting about. It was rather soothing. Spiders have their charms, but they don’t dart, or flash, or move in swirling schools, they mainly just lurk. My lab is much quieter and dryer now.

I switched to spiders because I wanted an animal to study in their natural habitat, looking for interactions with other species. As it turns out, there was an alternative: I could have moved to the Bengal region of India, which is a magical place where the experimental animals frolic in great numbers in shallow ponds, and where I could be wading knee deep in warm waters while Danio rerio nibbles at my toes, like the Jutfelt lab is doing.

I was mesmerized by this video this morning, just lying in bed watching the lovely schools of zebrafish zipping around.

Spiders don’t frolic, either. They do murder small arthropods, though, in a vicious and personal way, which might better fit my mood nowadays.