Comments

  1. charley says

    That was interesting and well done. And yea, anything that’s not completely predictable qualifies as “insane” on YouTube.

  2. robro says

    “Insane” is one of those “internet science communicator” words used to grab attention. The opening line exhibits another typical things done in internet science stuff…dramatic-sounding superlatives: “Spiders are some of the most diverse and unique predators on Earth.” Note that there’s no basis given for making the claims of diversity or uniqueness, and there would be other ways to say something similar about spiders that doesn’t get into superlatives, but that’s counter to the style.

    Here’s another tactic I hear regularly: “Hang on to your seats…astronomers just made the greatest discovery that’s going to change everything you know about our world…” So be it.

    I see quite a bit of this kind of thing and sometimes find the subjects interesting so the algorithm funnels them to me…I’m sure. In fact, I might finish watching the spider video later today after I’m done working.

  3. Reginald Selkirk says

    We Might Have Been Wrong About Where Spiders Came From

    A new study published today in Current Biology challenges the popular conception that spiders first emerged on land, instead suggesting that these arachnids and their relatives originated and evolved in the ocean. The team reached this conclusion by investigating the fossilized central nervous system of Mollisonia symmetrica, a long-extinct animal from the Cambrian era (between 540 and 485 million years ago), thought to be the ancestor of horseshoe crabs. Mollisonia’s brain structure closely resembled that of modern spiders and their relatives, not their supposed crab descendants…

  4. StevoR says

    @ ^ Reginald Selkirk : All life began in the sea of course and then spread to land. If memory serves* Arachnids include or are at least related to the Horseshoe crabs, hmm.. lessee :

    Horseshoe crabs are arthropods of the family Limulidae and the only surviving xiphosurans. Despite their name, they are not true crabs or even crustaceans; they are chelicerates, more closely related to arachnids like spiders, ticks, and scorpions.

    Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_crab

    With the ancient now extinct Eurypterid “sea scorpions” also being related to the later Arachnids .. :

    With approximately 250 species, the Eurypterida is the most diverse Paleozoic chelicerate order.

    Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurypterid

    (Huh most dverse!? Still? Really! That seems.. improbable.)

    With the Chelicerata including ..

    .. the sea spiders, horseshoe crabs, and arachnids (including harvestmen, scorpions, spiders, solifuges, ticks, and mites, among many others), as well as a number of extinct lineages, such as the eurypterids (sea scorpions) and chasmataspidids.

    Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelicerata

    So I would imagine – perhaps wrongly – that the Archnids generally and spiders in particular evolved from those ocean going ancestors once they came ashore and adapted to a terrestrial environment – or maybe before.

    (Haven’t yet seen the video here FWIW.)

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