Otherwise, I’d visit this place. I bet it’s better than Disney World!
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Otherwise, I’d visit this place. I bet it’s better than Disney World!
On the recommendation of catherwood on Discord, I had to watch this movie last night, Infested.
Eight tarsal claws up! Unless you’re arachnophobic, in which case you don’t want to get anywhere near this.
It’s pretty much the same plot as Arachnophobia: venomous spider is brought back to a city (Paris, in this case), it escapes, breeds, area is overrun with swarms of deadly spiders that require extreme measures to eradicate. The difference is that Infested has a much larger horror-fantasy element: the spiders spawn impossibly rapidly — like, catch one, next moment it erupts into a horde of tiny spiders — and the spiders grow at an impossible rate to an impossible size, so that within a day you’ve got millions of spiders, some the size of large dogs. I’ve measure spider growth rates, and generally we’re talking a few tenths of a millimeter per week, so my rational brain rejected much of the premise, but my irrational brain that tuned in to a horror movie about monster spiders was saying, “YES! Eat all the people!”
It also has a sympathetic protagonist who loves small invertebrates while hustling to keep his friends and family out of poverty, and huge host of victims living in a Parisian apartment building. There had to be a lot of them to fuel the explosion of arachnid biomass!
Sadly, it looks like the only place to catch it right now is on Shudder, but it’s worth it for the entertainment value.
Now, though, no more entertainment. I have to go sequester myself to work through a mountain of end-of-semester papers. If only I could solve that problem with a lot of precisely placed explosives…
I’ve mentioned my crazy evil cat before, but here’s another of my little friends, my greenbottle blue tarantula, Blue.
They are just coming down off a massive threat posture, which is a change. For a long time, they’ve been skittish and timid. I turn on the lights in the lab, they run and hide. I rattle the door a little bit when I go to feed them, they run and hide. A shadow moves across their container, they run and hide. I figured I’d adopted a cowardly spider.
Lately, though, as they mature — I can tell by how their pigment is darkening to a deep blue from the prior orange — they’ve gotten aggressive. Now they boldly stand in the middle of their space and turn to face me when I walk up to them, but not in a friendly way. When I put a mealworm in their face, no more fleeing, but instead, they rear up on their 4 hindlegs and threaten with their forelimbs, and flash their fangs at me. I’m feeding them! Calm down!
It’s becoming a trend that any animal I take care of gets psycho hostile.
Whoa, wait…could it be me?
I was walking into work this morning, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, the wolf spiders were underfoot, and I saw all these delicate lines of silk draped over everything (once your eye is attuned to spotting silk lines, you discover that they are everywhere, on every fence post and bush.) I stopped by the lab and saw that the temperature in the spider incubators was a comfortable 27°C, and the humidity is rising at last to about 35%, so I checked the colony. Nobody is laying eggs yet, but they are looking plump and healthy and ready for a season of fecundity.
Steatoda triangulosa
Once the semester is truly over, in about a week and a half, I’m going to be doing some matchmaking, and that lovely virgin is going to take a lover.
These little guys, wolf spiders of the genus Pardosa, are everywhere right now. Mary brought this one home from work because apparently she thinks we don’t have enough of them here.
No worries, it scurried away shortly after I took this photo, and now owns our living room.
I don’t think my local theater is planning to book this one, so I’ll probably have to wait until it’s streaming. It looks like a hit to me!
When did a dog or cat do so much for you?
I am, of course, giving our cat some side-eye right now.
The cat was looking over my shoulder and reading this as I posted it. Now she’s jumped on my lap, keeping me from my work and forcing me to type one-handed.
I’ve got to be more careful about letting her read the internet.
Everyone loves seafood surprise!
Those look like Dolomedes, the fishing spider. They probably got scooped up with the crayfish (these spiders will hunt and kill crayfish, by the way) and cooked along with everything else. I don’t think they’d provide much flavor, but do make for a charming garnish.
You know how the secret to getting rich in a gold rush is to sell shovels? Well, I’m going to be ready when this alpha male plan takes off.
I am going to have to ramp up production by a lot.
