Your date has bright green teeth, and there’s a bug caught in them. What do you do?

I study spiders in the family Theridiidae, which you’ve probably seen many times. Sometimes they’re called cupboard spiders, or cobweb spiders, or combfooted spiders after specialized limb structures they use to tease the silk they spin. They are also somewhat specialized to capture ground insects, making something called a gumfoot web, which is a sticky line under tension that is attached to the ground. Prey that contact the gumfoot line get snared, break the tension, and then get yanked up into the air. It’s a brilliant innovation.

Some theridiidae have taken this to an extreme: Propostira, the ballista spider, has reinforced the gumfoot line to such a degree that it snaps prey up into it’s tangle web.

Propostira sp. (Theridiidae) was found on trees close to the foraging trails of O. smaragdina, a locally abundant, arboreal, highly aggressive and territorial species5. On trees occupied by these ants, the ballista spider took refuge during the day on the underside of leaves and ventured out from their refuge 30 minutes after sunset. Upon leaving its refuge, the spider began an exploratory phase during which it descended on a silk line to substrates up to 50 cm away. When it landed on a suitable substrate, it laid down an anchor point and returned to the core web by laying a tension line. Repetition of this process resulted in a fan shaped array of 15–60 tension lines that were bundled close to the substrate (Figure 1B and Video 1 at https://bit.ly/4cKtVGT) where the lines were laid out in a scaffold in the shape of a small cone. In the final phase, the cone scaffold was densely wrapped with a thinner type of silk . The spider then retreated to a position several centimeters above the cone. Very soon after the cone was wrapped (5–55 seconds; n = 12), O. smaragdina ants were attracted to it. Within milliseconds after probing the cone with its antennae, the ant displayed aggressive behavior, elevated its gaster, and bit the silk cone. The ant’s aggressive behavior is similar to that exhibited towards non-nestmates. The biting destabilized the cone and detached it from the substrate within 42.12 ± 16.09 ms (n = 5), leading to a rapid contraction of the tension lines. While still holding the cone with its mandibles, the ant was pulled off the substrate and propelled into the core web, reaching distances of up to 28.19 cm from the substrate (mean ± s.d. = 13.37 ± 8.57 cm, n = 5), with peak accelerations of 1367 m/s2 (mean ± s.d. = 1108.96 ± 166.14 m/s2; n = 5) and maximum velocities of 4.36 m/s (mean ± s.d. = 3.83 ± 0.68 m/s, n = 5, Video 3 at https://bit.ly/4cKtVGT). The spider moved only after the ant had been hauled up and was no longer in contact with the substrate. The spider then moved upwards on the web and waited until the ant was fully entangled before approaching to wrap it in silk. In one of 12 instances, the ant triggered the snare but was not hauled up; without the added mass of the ant, the snare accelerated at 4732.89 m/s2 and reached a maximal velocity of 13.47 m/s.

That’s amazing.

But you know what else is amazing? This is plainly an evolutionary adaptation, an extension of known, familiar behavior of related species that you don’t have to live in Sri Lanka or the Cape York peninsula to witness; black widows and false widows do the same thing, with less extraordinary power. But that power is a product of combining more strands to amplify the force. It’s analogous to an actual ballista, where multiple strands of fiber are twisted to make great tension that can propel boulders, rather than ants, great distances with great force.

It’s a real evolutionary success story, in that we can see a continuum of small variations that accumulate to produce this one remarkable innovation. The ballista spider is a product of its evolutionary history.

So why is Ken Ham trumpeting this story?

But spiders spinning intricate webs to snag other insects for dinner and ants blasting formic acid at their enemies brings up a question, “Why is God’s creation filled with creatures who look designed to kill or avoid being killed?” Genesis gives us the answer!

God graciously provided for his creation, giving them what they would need to survive and thrive in a world broken because of sin.
God’s original creation was “very good” (Genesis 1:31), and humans and animals were created to be vegetarian (Genesis 1:30), though it’s unclear if insects fall into the animal category. (See this article on nephesh life and whether insects were on the menu prior to the fall. Interestingly, there’s even a vegetarian spider in today’s fallen world!) But when Adam and Eve sinned, creation fell, and now all of creation groans from the effects of sin. Some animals now eat other animals, and everything tries to avoid being eaten, and even insects are now a source of pain, difficulty, and even death for humans. It’s not the way it was designed to be—slingshot spiders and aggressive ants remind us that it’s a fallen world. God graciously provided for his creation, giving animals and even insects what they would need to survive and thrive in a world broken because of sin.

Genesis gives us no answer. He claims his god arbitrarily conjured this spider ability in response to an ape eating fruit in his garden, which is no explanation at all, while biologists see this as a consequence of natural evolutionary processes that don’t require extraordinary magical events. Ham is simply stealing scientific explanations to paper over the superstitious nonsense he peddles.

An Amazing Wolf Spider Man!

So, last night I went out to the movies and left poor Mary home alone — it was a creepy movie, she doesn’t like that sort of thing — and she found her own entertainment. She found a spider in the garden! When I got home around 9 she had to send me out to take a picture of it and identify it.

That’s the Eastern Long-Legged Cobweaver, Theridion frondeum, that I’ve seen many times around here, but they’re very pretty.

I found a cute little orb web in the midst of the shrubbery in my yard, and it also had a teeny tiny spider in the middle of it. I have no idea what species this is — it’s hard to find out what these juvenile orb weavers are. But it’s green!

This little orbweaver was just sitting innocently in her web, and I don’t know how they do it.

The thing is, when they’re on that web and the wind is blowing, they’re just vibrating all over the place. You’d think they’d be hopelessly motion-sick.

I couldn’t stand it so I let her take a break from the gale on my finger.

Don’t worry, I returned her to the same branch.

A new species of spider has been identified.

We present a morphological description of a recently discovered species of spider in the family Trogloraptoridae from the Columbia River Gorge in northwestern Oregon. The family was previously monotypic (Trogloraptor marchingtoni) and only known from populations near the southwestern Oregon—northern California border. Trogloraptor tulishpun sp. nov. retains the key family synapomorphy, distinctive subsegmented raptorial tarsi, and an oblique membranous division of the basal segment of the anterior lateral spinnerets. Trogloraptor tulishpun is distinguished from T. marchingtoni by its color pattern, clypeal height, vulvar and palp structure. We have found T. tulishpun in four localities in the Columbia River Gorge, which show little mitochondrial sequence divergence from one another, but are highly genetically distinct from T. marchingtoni. Trogloraptor tulishpun is found in basalt features, including lava tubes and shallow talus caves, and has been observed to eat arachnids and moths, making them top predators in these environments.

First, that’s a truly awesome name, Trogloraptor, for a cave spider. Somebody hit a home run with that name.

Naming a new species isn’t a trivial thing, but the lab that found this one went above and beyond to come up with the name Trogloraptor tulishpun. They consulted the local people of the Yakama nation, and got the name “tulishpun” from them. And then they had a formal naming ceremony, as reported on NPR.

ANTHONY WASHINES: At this time, we’ll open this ground, the sacred ground that we’re standing on, and then we’ll begin.

PRICHEP: Naming ceremonies are usually, unsurprisingly, for people. It’s a formal introduction of the name, but it’s also a way to sort of welcome that individual and mark their place in the community.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

WASHINES: You’re being a witness to this brother being acknowledged.

PRICHEP: Anthony Washines is the Yakima elder who came up with the spider’s name.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

WASHINES: And so, from this day forward, we will call them by the name tulishpun. Repeat after me – tulishpun.

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Tulishpun.

PRICHEP: Gifts and food were shared, and a traditional naming song was sung. A few spiders were gathered to receive their name and then returned back to the nearby caves. Washines knows people will see tulishpun as a small thing. But he says every creature has its place, and this little spider has been in this place even when his people were not.

WASHINES: We were literally herded to a reservation up in the high-desert plateau, which was not our land. But he stayed here and remained. He still took care of this land.

PRICHEP: Usually, the discovery of a new species is celebrated with a pizza party in the lab, maybe a nod from the dean. It’s an academic milestone. But for tulishpun, it’s a community event, a gathering of scientists and citizens, of human and animal, to name all of those who make up this land and honor the connections between them.

How lovely. I’ll keep that in mind if I ever discover a novel species, which is extremely unlikely. In my background, we didn’t go looking for new species — new mutations and new molecules, sure, and we had ceremonies, usually involving popping a champagne bottle, when a paper was published, but we lack a connection to the community, the people, and the land. A species, though, is something people may have interacted with before, and that interacts with other levels of its biome, and it is appropriate to add a scientific context to a known part of our world.

I appreciate the message that most spiders are harmless, but it’s still too much to claim that 2 are dangerous. They’re not.

I haven’t had any opportunity to work with recluses, but widows are shy little sweethearts. They have a potent venom, but they’re seriously reluctant to use it. I let mine scurry all over my bare hands and arms, and have never been bitten, because I treat them gently and with respect.

I’d say of 3,000 species, there are 3,000 to be cautious about, and none to be afraid of. Save the fear for dogs and cats, which are much more dangerous.