A new species of funnel web spider has been discovered in Australia — the largest of its kind, and possibly the most venomous, most deadly spider in the world. The news reports, though, aren’t full of scary stories and people going “ooh eek, kill it with fire” stuff. The words you’ll hear in this short report are “happy” and “proud”.
I’m beginning to think I might have been born in the wrong country.
These black widows always take my breath away with how gorgeous they are. Why doesn’t everyone keep these as pets?
I’ve been having a grand time with the family in Madison, but I’m dreading the long drive home. Then, suddenly, in the newspaper, I get a wonderful suggestion for a better way to travel.
It doesn’t include a phone number for reservations. Does anyone know what it is?
We all had something tasty for lunch
I spent some time with the spiders this afternoon, who were all extremely appreciative of the plump mealworms I gave them, devouring them immediately. I also learned something: I’ve often noticed that they will back away from their prey and then scurry back to their meal, as if they’d briefly entertained second thoughts. No, that’s not what they are doing. When I looked closely, I saw that they were attaching a thick webbing cable, practically a ribbon, and then attaching it to another strong cable in their existing web. It’s all part of securing a strong prey animal. I have a short video clip of this behavior on Patreon. These mealworms are strong — I saw one getting wrapped and bucking so hard it was lifting up the whole cobweb, which was attached to a wooden frame.
Then I came home for a fabulous Christmas lunch, a peanut butter and honey sandwich, the honey a gift from Karl and Ariela Haro von Mogel, of Biofortified. Thanks, guys!
I beg to differ about spider sex — it’s perfectly normally weird, but then I have been spending a fair amount of time trying to encourage spiders to have sex. Mainly what I’m concerned about is that it’s too infrequent, and they seem to have seasonal depression. But OK, it is interesting, as this video demonstrates.
You know what’s kinky, though? The video mentions that “some flies have a female who penetrates the male to collect sperm”. Not spiders, but barklice (Neotrogla), which aren’t flies and aren’t lice, but a kind of true bug, have completely reversed sex roles.
The female has a penis-like protrusion called a gynosome, which is erectile and curved. The male has no such organ; he has an internal chamber instead. When she penetrates him during sex, he delivers sperm into a duct in her gynosome, which leads to a storage organ. He still ejaculates, but he does so inside his own body, not hers.
Neotrogla sex can last for days, so it’s important for the duo to stabilise themselves. The female does it by inflating the base of her gynosome inside the male. It’s covered in patches of tiny spines, which help to anchor her in place for her sexual marathon. You can find similar spines on the penises of many male animals where they provide extra stimulation during sex (as in cats, mice and chimps) or inflict horrendous wounds on the females (as in the seed beetle).
In Neotrogla, the spines are such good anchors that it’s impossible to separate a mating pair without killing the male. As Yoshizawa writes, “Pulling apart coupled specimens (N. curvata; n = 1) led to separation of the male abdomen from the thorax without breaking the genital coupling.” In other words: We tried yanking one pair apart; it didn’t work and the male kinda broke.
See? Spiders are perfectly ordinary, mundane, familiar little creatures. No pegging involved.
This is a female Latrodectus mactans.
This is a male Latrodectus mactans.
I brought them together this morning. The female is plump and mature. The male has large, engorged palps. This is what they look like together.
They did not mate today, although the male spent a lot of time scurrying around and tentatively plucking at the web. At least she didn’t eat him. I put a video of the anxious, fruitless male on my Patreon.
I left them to honeymoon overnight. I’ll check on them tomorrow.
This spider has a neat trick. It builds a typical orb web, but then it gets behind it and draws it back, like a slingshot…and when it hears a bug buzzing by, it releases it to spring forward and entangle it’s prey.
A) Untensed web shown from front view. (B) Tensed web shown from side view.
It can hear mosquitos and are triggered when on buzzes within range.
As for the web kinematics, Han and Blackledge determined that they can accelerate up to 504 m/s2, reaching speeds as high as 1 m/s, and hence can catch mosquitos in 38 milliseconds or less. Even the speediest mosquitoes might struggle to outrun that.
I haven’t seen any, but their range is basically holarctic — I would like to encourage them to move in around my house.
Argiope are epic spiders — they’re big, spectacularly colorful, voracious, and if you witness them, you’d be impressed at how quickly they can trap and kill their prey. But now we learn they also use sex appeal to capture dinner.
Predators and prey have direct interactions that influence their short-term behaviors, including resource allocation and strategies for moving through habitats. However, the presently observed behaviors are the products of coevolutionary interactions, posited to be a history of measures and countermeasures between the predator and prey. We found that Argiope (orb-weaver) spiders in the continental USA appear to use a pheromone lure that mimics the mating pheromone of the day-flying Hemileuca moth (buck moth) to entice male moths into their webs. We found evidence that different phylogenetic groups of Hemileuca moths respond to the Argiope pheromone lure with a broad range of responses, ranging from indifferent to acutely strongly attracted, suggesting a coevolutionary history of predator–prey countermeasures. One of these countermeasures may be the potential evolution of moth developmental timing (adult emergence) to avoid Argiope predation in areas where the ranges of the moths and spiders overlap.
I’ve seen fields filled with tens of thousands of Argiope, with a web every few steps. Oddly, I didn’t see any moths nearby, even though this should have been a giant invitation to an orgy. No moths, period. I wonder why?
This one might be a bit much for some people, so skip it if you don’t want to see a spider having lunch.
You know what that means: I am welcoming all the spiders to come in from the cold and find a cozy place to stay in my house, like this Pholcus in my shower.
