Started a big project today — we have a fate in mind for all these spiders my lab is churning out. It will be an interesting fate for me, but alas, not at all healthy for the spiders. I’ll be keeping my Patreon followers informed, the rest of you will have to wait until the Fall.
I’m going to be redoubling my spider farming efforts for a while. I literally had baby spiders nesting in my beard this morning, and I just now had one crawl out of my shirt cuff. It’s a good thing I like the little fellas. Which makes it sad that this kind of a meatgrinder project. I’m going to be the Cruella DeVille of spiders.
larpar says
I foresee the entire town of Morris engulfed in a giant spiderweb.
Snidely W says
That coat is going to take a lot of spiders.
René says
I call SLAVERY.
René says
Forgot to italicize the full stop as well. Sorry bout that.
feralboy12 says
Getting some Willard vibes here.
Jaws says
So you’ll be culling the spiders looking for just the right conformation of spots?
birgerjohansson says
OT
Breakthrough research could bring stem cell therapy to the masses
https://phys.org/news/2023-05-breakthrough-stem-cell-therapy-masses.html
And now back to spiders.
hemidactylus says
Will it lead to you finally publishing your long awaited evo-devo book from when you went on sabbatical and got hooked on spiders instead? Hemi never forgets.
hemidactylus says
Also it’s refreshing to see your level of blog(1) output has increased perhaps due to the semester ending.
(1)- Intentional trigger for that other blogger who likes to use you as an Emmanuel Goldstein for his rabid “website”commentariat to project their collective hate. Wink wink!
laurian says
Be careful PZ
bcw bcw says
Interesting evolution article: “De novo evolution of macroscopic multicellularity”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/10/science/yeast-evolution-cells-snowflakes.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06052-1
G. Ozan Bozdag, Seyed Alireza Zamani-Dahaj, Thomas C. Day, Penelope C. Kahn, Anthony J. Burnetti, Dung T. Lac, Kai Tong, Peter L. Conlin, Aishwarya H. Balwani, Eva L. Dyer, Peter J. Yunker & William C. Ratcliff