This is one of those case-dependent scenarios, I think.
Also, if I tried it as a gambit and it did work, I’d probably disappoint myself that there was no spider.
It needs a soundtrack, though.
No, no, no, this cartoon is wildly inappropriate, unless tomorrow’s follow-up is a bloody scene of vengeance as Lio turns his giant spider (with three body segments? Come on, Mr Tatulli) loose upon the exterminators.
It’s something of a peeve of mine when exterminators try to advertise in something like #spidertwitter, for instance, especially when they frequently categorize spiders as pests. I don’t even like to see insecticides sprayed on other arthropod targets — leave the bugs alone, they have a right to live, too.
At 9pm Central on Saturday, 30 October, I’m going to start up a livestream on YouTube to just talk about spiders, and spider movies, and whatever scary things I can think of about spiders. It’s Hallowe’en! I get to indulge.
If anyone else wants to jump in the stream, just send me a note and maybe I’ll let you on. Or even commenters on that evening — if I trust you to tell us all cool creepy stuff, I’ll send you a link then.
Maybe I’ll try to convince Mrs Spiders to make a brief appearance, since she has to live with the abominable Dr Spiders and probably has the scariest stories of them all.
My wife was just sitting there, quietly reading, when she noticed this little friend descending from the ceiling to sit down beside her, and instead of being frightened away, she yelled for me to come see it. I was mildly surprised — it’s a male Steatoda triangulosa, which have been rather scarce this past summer (it’s generally been a poor summer for all spiders this year).
People are always going on and on about the itsie-bitsie cutesy-wootsy toe beans that cats have. I don’t get it — those are the ends of the limbs a predator uses to kill its prey, and they aren’t particularly interesting structurally.
Far better are the complex sticky hairs spiders use to climb. Not only are they cute, but they’ve been written up in a mechanical engineering journal. Point: spiders.
Don’t believe me? Look at these adorable little tootsies!
Enhance!
See? Cute!
This is a daily mundane scene in my lab — a little country spider having a light lunch — but it’s the music and sound effects that make it fun.
That’s probably Steatoda. David Lynch needs a macro lens, though.
(via Great American Satan)
My fly colony has expanded a great deal, although it experienced an abrupt decline today. My baby spiders have been fed!
It was so rewarding. They’ve been anxiously awaiting this day, so all the tubes have been thoroughly criss-crossed with spider silk. I’d flick a fly in, and they’d never get to the bottom, they’d be instantly snared, and within seconds a hungry baby spider would eagerly rush in and bite and weave and entangle it so more. Their joy (the spider’s, not the fly’s) was palpable, and you could tell they’d been famished.
I will have more flies by Monday. Production is back on track.
The spiders told me that it had better be. Failure will not be tolerated.
In case you were wondering what spider language sounds like, it involves a lot of plucking and sawing of silk, with some clicking of chelicerae and salivary slavering. Imagine the shower scene from Psycho with a bit more pizzicato and some glutinous drooling. You usually won’t want to encourage conversation.
It is not arachnocide season.
It’s officially arachnicide season in the Northern Hemisphere. Millions of spiders have appeared in our homes – and they’d better be on their guard. Why do we kill them so casually?
Don’t worry, the article gets better after that opening blurb, and is illustrated with lots of lovely photos of beautiful spiders. It’s an easily explained phenomenon about why spiders are coming into our homes. The weather is changing, it’s getting colder. Human houses are warm. It’s only natural that animals would look for more comfortable environments, even when those environments are full of dangerous, hostile, callous bipedal brutes. The same phenomenon is at work every fall when we get the annual influx of mice fleeing the first frost. I can’t blame them, but I still put out traps and kill them.
The difference is that mice leave droppings everywhere, gnaw on stuff, and try to invade our pantry to eat our food. Spiders do none of that. They are polite, beneficial, harmless, and to some eyes, quite pretty. Yet people murder them. The article tries to answer why.
Unfortunately, it also gives creedence to the idea that fear of spiders is natural. No it’s not, I don’t buy that for a minute — maybe because I’m biased, completely lacking in that antipathy, so I don’t relate to arachnophobia, but I also think people use arachnophobia to rationalize their dislike.
Perhaps the most obvious reason we view spiders as fair game for crushing is our pathological fear of things with eight legs, which makes empathy particularly challenging.
Human infants as young as just five months old tend to be more threatened by images of spiders than those of other organisms, suggesting that our aversion to them is partly innate, perhaps having evolved to prevent us from casually picking up ones that are venomous.
This natural wariness is then thought to be compounded by cultural factors, such as having parents who describe them as frightening as we grow up. Alarmist news articles and other depictions are likely to add an extra frisson of panic – some experts have linked the irrational fear many people have for sharks to the 1975 film Jaws, and it’s possible that the villainous spider trope is also having an impact.
Yes! Cultural factors! Here’s another example: my granddaughter loves owls, her favorite toy is Gray Owl, a rather floppy much man-handled stuffed animal. Can you blame her? Big forward-facing eyes are a “natural” feature for humans to like. But we learned that some Indian cultures (but not all!) regard owls as harbingers of doom, as embodied spirits, or shape-shifters. Out of respect, we had to tuck the owl taxonomic specimens at my university out of sight, because some visitors found them offensive.
It’s really not fair. It’s more of a fear of difference.
This is potentially problematic, because the more we have in common with others – or the more closely related we are – the more compassion we have for them. One 2019 study found that participants’ empathy for animals decreased in line with the amount of time since our evolutionary paths diverged.
Even scientists are heavily biased towards studying more charismatic, relatable animals. One 2010 study found that, for every research paper published about a threatened amphibian, there were 500 about an endangered large mammal.
It’s also the tragedy of not conforming to our expections of what babies should look like — you know, flabby, potato-shaped lumps with wet lips shrieking out unintelligible noises and eyes lost in a doughy blob of a face. Because that is so attractive.
Apart from their menacing fangs and scampering legs, spiders face another challenge in the looks department, at least from a human perspective: they don’t look like human babies.
The “babyface effect” is a hugely influential hidden bias among humans, which means that we accidentally treat people – and animals – with naturally “neotenous”, or child-like features as though they are actual babies. For example, oversized eyes, large foreheads, small noses and chins, and cherubic little lips can trigger powerful feelings of empathy, compassion and affection in humans.
However, the effect can also lead us into a number of well-documented blunders. In environmental conservation, it’s often observed that “cute” species receive significantly more attention and funding, while “uglier” animals under the care of humans – in zoos and laboratories, for example – may have a lower quality of life, because we find it harder to identify their suffering.
That’s why those darned jumping spiders are so popular. There’s nothing wrong with a jumping spider, but why can’t we also learn to love a nice spiky, bristly orbweaver? Or a quiet, demure, black cobweb spider? I guess I’ll just have to use Attulus as a gateway organism for now.
See? It’s not too distressing. It’s pretty, even! We’ll just ease you into the holiday and by Halloween you’ll be dancing with the spiders.
