Bronze pipework

This big skinny beast is living right over an electrical outlet in my dining room, and I needed to plug something in…I decided not to. I didn’t think it worthwhile to disturb them right away, I’ll give them a chance to move later.

It’s Pholcus, either phalangioides or manueli but they didn’t turn to look at me so I could tell. Maybe I’ll get a look at their face later.

I do like the long lean legs that look like bronze or copper piping, though.

Spider season has come early

We are experiencing unseasonably warm winter weather here in Minnesota — it’s been above freezing for a week, the snow is all melting, I can go outside without a coat, all that stuff you might take for granted in tropical states, like Kansas. But you know what that means? The spiders are coming out! We’re finding little adorable jumping spiders all over the place, like this one:

Attulus fasciger

It’s not all delightful news, though. I don’t trust the weather. We could get another arctic blast in February, and then these early risers are going to get a rude shock.

They better all come into my house to stay warm.

A tragic day

My lovely young black widow spider died overnight. I am heartbroken. She was so full of life and deliciousness!


You can leave memorial donations on PayPal or you can join my Patreon. All donations should be given in the name of Lolth, and will be used to purchase a replacement…or a few replacements, so I can breed a mighty army in her name.

Code 415

“Ma’am, is that your husband in the sack of kitchen scraps and half-digested body parts?”

Not a happy morning — that Steatoda borealis I paired up earlier is no longer a pair. I guess she got a hungry.

Well, this is a bother. That was my last adult male — I’ve got about two dozen juvenies growing up in the incubator — and this has been a chronic problem. Every winter, all the spiders start eating less, lose all interest in sex, and stop laying eggs, despite my efforts at fooling them with temperature and a July-like light schedule. Last summer I’d come in an find fresh egg sacs every day; this winter, they dry up and even start dying.
I guess this just means I really have to do the bulk of my research in the summer…or maybe I’ll have to spend the winter trying to figure out how wild spiders survive the cold.

A sexy tangle of limbs

These are two Steatoda borealis, happily coupling: male is on the left, female on the right.

Steatoda borealis!

If you’re confused about what’s going on, it helps to know that spiders are acrobatic, they don’t care much about up or down. Also, every time I catch S. borealis in the act, they mate face-to-face, with the male sliding his long palps equipped with multiple hooks underneath her jaws to lock onto her abdominal genital opening. Now you can tell what’s going on, right?

Happy Spiderday!

I know it’s Saturday, barely. I’m on break. Time is beginning to lose all meaning, except for the fact that I’m aware that classes start up again in ten more days — I’ve got a doomsday clock ticking down to my doom in front of me. I have recieved a note from the administration informing me that they want my syllabuses submitted now, which is a bit daunting, since one class doesn’t have one (it’s all independent study and writing), another is a totally stock course we’ve team-taught for years (mainly, it’s going to be a ton of grading for me), and the final course is a big one that is still coagulating in my head.

That one is going to scramble my brains and confuse all the students. It’s an eco-devo course and I’m going to make it radically interactive, with the students doing a lot of the work within a loose structure I provide. What students look for in a syllabus is “how many exams?” and “when are the exams?” and “is there a term paper?”, and I’m seriously considering answering those with “there are no exams” and “exams don’t exist at any time in this classroom” and “you’ll be too busy reading all the papers I throw at you to write”, and making the grade entirely dependent on participation. Show me that you can engage with the subject and ask good questions, and that’s how you’ll get an A.

Is this too weird? Am I being too creative for a stodgy old STEM class? Will I get in trouble if I write this down in a syllabus and let an administrator read it? In my defense, Socrates didn’t give midterms, so I’m simply returning to a conservative style of teaching. (Socrates was also poisoned by his critics, I know.)

Anyway, that’s been my source of anxiety lately, looming deadlines and course design. You don’t want to hear about that, you want spiders, and spiders I will deliver.

I got a link to this video on our discord server. I’m not too keen on the particularly morbid YouTube channel — it’s by a guy who travels around visiting the locations where celebrities died, a kind of post-mortem paparazzi, but in this case he’s visiting an abandoned mansion and swimming pool in Hollywood. He succeeds in making it creepy, of course, because he has to talk about all the starlets who were tricked into appearing topless by the icky owner of the place. But the one redeeming feature is the cool, semi-legendary spider painting that’s still there, and apparently appeared in a lot of old cheesecake photos from the 40s and 50s.

OK, bear with me, this next one is really, really gross. It features Laura Ingraham. Also she looks thoroughly disgusted throughout. It’s about immigrants, in particular, those immigrants “who almost always come from Asia.”

It’s about Joro spiders. Joro spiders are awesome.

One more, and fortunately, there’s absolutely nothing horrible about this one: no yucky ghouls, just one particularly glorious spider. This is a video lots of people have been sending me, about the largest funnel web spider found in Australia. It does dwell a bit too much on how dangerous it is, but that’s what we always get from the popular press.

I’ll just say if anyone wants to send me funnel web eggs or a Joro egg sac, I’d be thrilled and would raise them to cuddly adulthood.

Do not send me more Laura Ingraham, or Laura Ingraham videos. She’s revolting.

The problem with photographing black widows is…

That they’re black, and they hang out in dark corners in dark places.

That’s Lolth, my Northern Black Widow (Latrodectus variolus). She grew very rapidly and is now blimped up to a gigantic size. She (definitely a she at this point) desperately needs to get laid because, well, look at her.

I’ll probably go shopping for a male in the spring.

Good parenting

We’re raising Steatoda borealis in the house, and one couple has produced two egg sacs recently. The male and female coexist just fine, and here you can see the male has the job of guarding his progeny.

This is part of Mary’s collection of spider friends, and she was a little worried about what to do when these hatch out. No problem — I’ll take over then.

Are spiders attracted to Sephora cosmetics?

I’m suddenly reading a viral anecdote all over the place — the claim that a “body butter” (whatever that is) called “Delícia Drench” and marketed by the cosmetics company, Sephora, attracts wolf spiders.

SCENT ATTRACTS WOLF SPIDERS
If you’re scared of wolf spiders- watch out for these lotions lol. I wanted to love them sooo bad, but one of the ingredients is like kryptonite to wolf spiders! When I put it on instantly one will come out. Normally I’ll see one every like 3 years, used this and it was every day. I stopped using it and haven’t seen one since…. oh and one time, the spider wanted to eat whatever ingredient it is so bad that it chased me. I swear on everything. I’d run left, it ran left, I ran right, it ran right. Like it was legit following the scent. And no, the scent isn’t that good, nothing a $5 vanilla cream can’t match. So yeah, do be careful if you’re frightened of spiders, especially the big wolf ones. Also, plz don’t hurt them if you do wear this & they appear. Use a cup and put them outside. Sorry for a disappointing review.

There are a few red flags here. It’s a negative review written by someone who apparently wants to discourage purchase of the product. It’s an account that says little more than that the writer noticed lots of spiders. I hate to tell you this, but I don’t use “body butter” and I can see swarms of wolf spiders in season — they’re ubiquitous and common. Wolf spiders scamper all over the place, they’re very active animals, so telling me that one seemed to be chasing you is unimpressive.

And that’s it. One anecdote. Why would anyone think it’s particularly interesting?

OK, then someone came up with a reasonable explanation for a particularly unsupported and unrepeated observation.

Hello. I just did a little dive into chemicals that attract spiders because I really don’t like bugs. Ao according to studies? There is a two component female produced pheromone of spider. It basically signals for sexual communication. The chemical analysis reveals that “farnesyl acetate, diisobutyl phthalate and hexadecyl acetate of the spider webs exhibited higher relative abundance in sexually receptive females” also, “Two choice behavioral essays verified that the blend of farnesyl acetate and hexadecyl acetate attracted males”.

Farnesyl acetate is primarily used in skincare for fragrance and same for Hexadecyl Acetate (cetyl acetate) for fruity smell and waxy appearance. Cetyle acetate is commonly used as a thickening agent for body cream and lotion.

Marchingkoala

Vaguely interesting. Spiders do a lot of chemical signaling, so finding that two common chemical signals are also present in the ingredient list of a beauty product does add the faintest patina of plausibility to the anecdote, which, I must add, has not been validated at all. I’m also dubious that a spider would find the the exact combination of these two chemicals on a surface at all appealing, and also not be thoroughly put off by all the other goop found in a product called “Delicia Drench.” It’s like suggesting that a dab of androstadienone, a putative human hormone, would make a compost heap irresistible to passing women.

I would need to see some actual empirical testing before I’d believe any of this. It’s possible but unlikely, and there’s no verified phenomenon that needs explanation. If I had some Delicia Drench in the house, I might test it in the spring — it would be easy, put a drop of the stuff in a cup at the bottom of a pit trap, and measure the frequency of wolf spiders caught relative to traps without the stuff. I’m just not interested enough to buy some Sephora gunk to see if it does anything.

Also, there’s no point: Sephora has rushed to claim that they have removed farnesyl acetate and hexadecyl acetate from their products!

I do not know if wolf spiders are actually sensitive to Delicia Drench, but I can at least say that capitalist corporations are extremely sensitive to rumors that might compromise profitability.

Please, everyone, learn to question tenuous claims that lack any empirical support!