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Spiders are much smarter than you think

knowablemagazine.org

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Re: Spiders are much smarter than you think

#31

Post by bryans »

tomerv wrote: post #25
bryans wrote: post #18

A couple years ago I had an experience with a spider that entirely changed my perspective on them and most insects, and now I make a conscious effort to help them as much as possible, instead of kill or even repel them. This particular spider kept running back and forth between my monitor and a window, and when it'd get to my monitor, it would wave its front legs at me. If I moved to the left, it would run across to…

I used to let spiders live freely in my house, until one time I wanted to go to bed at night and noticed dozens of black spots on the bed cover. I looked up and saw hundreds of tiny spider babies on the ceiling. From then on, whenever I see a spider in the house I get rid of it. Sorry...

Don't get me wrong, I still find families of baby spiders to be absolutely terrifying in every way, and it takes every bit of my willpower to fight the urge to remove them from existence. But at the end of the day, the key word is family. It's a group of living things, with parents that apparently have the emotional capacity to care about them.

Hopefully when you say "get rid of it," that means gently coaxing them into a box and putting them outside.

Re: Spiders are much smarter than you think

#32

Post by imiric »

tdrdt wrote: post #26

I get tired of reading from webpages like this. - Spiders are much smarter than you think - SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER - some text - YOU MAY ALSO LIKE - some text - Shutterstock image with a big description - ... Context switching is hard for the brain. Even in readabilty mode I get substracted by the image descriptions. It's a pitty because it's a nice article.

Agreed, but be grateful it doesn't have an obnoxious and hostile cookie consent form, or is full of ads mixed with the content. This is actually a relatively enjoyable website compared to similar ones in this category.

Re: Spiders are much smarter than you think

#33

Post by Cybiote »

javajosh wrote: post #11
hermitcrab wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you enjoyed "My octopus teacher" you might also find this book interesting: "OTHER MINDS: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life" Godfrey-Smith The last common ancestor between humans and octopus was a flatworm. So their intelligence has evolved comletely separately from ours in a totally different environment. So they are truly an alien intelligence, here on earth.

Does anyone know what the theory is about octupuses being solitary? It seems like a strange place to end up for highly intelligent creatures. (Although, now that I think about it being smart and specializing in/in charge of your own private hunting ground doesn't really sound like such a bad way to live.)

Sociality is not the only (and probably not an initial) driver of the evolution of intelligence in animals. Ecological and particularly foraging competency in less predictable environments is another and likely more primary stimulator for intelligence.

Coordinating complex movements is another one that appears to drive intelligence.

Vulnerability in a hostile environment. Together with foraging and coordinating complex movement plans, it is hypothesized that predation pressure when combined with the loss of their shell drove cephalopod intelligence. Trading defense for agility and int would also have provided a competitive advantage when competing for prey.

Re: Spiders are much smarter than you think

#34

Post by mkl »

johnyzee wrote: post #30
mellavora wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get rid of them, too. By gently escorting them out a window. And, like you, I apologize to them and wish them well.

A tip if you are scared of spiders: Trap them in a glass, then slide some hard surface underneath. You can now move the spider (like out a window) while holding it trapped with the lid. This has actually eliminated much of my arachnophobia, since I find myself studying the spider, safely confined inside the glass before letting it out. (This is actually one way they treat phobias clinically, a kind of desensitization…

Much quicker and more convenient is a spider catcher like this: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001356203377.html

With that I can easily pick them up and drop them out the window or whatever. You can do it at well over arms' length too. It doesn't seem to harm them, as there's a space within the grabbing cage that they get directed to. Small spiders can crawl out between the cage bits but usually stay on the end long enough to move them elsewhere. Big spiders are fully caught.

Re: Spiders are much smarter than you think

#35

Post by sylens »

Klaster_1 wrote: post #4

Talking about Portias, I recommend reading "Children of Time" by Adrian Tchaikovsky, it's about the process of uplifting spiders and how humans re-establish contacts with them. Another great book about smart "spiders" is "A Deepness in the Sky" by Vernor Vinge, my favorite in the "Zones of Thought" series.

Children of Time is fantastic, a really unique take on sci-fi

Re: Spiders are much smarter than you think

#36

Post by prawn »

dekken_ wrote: post #21

I have a rule, if they're too big, or in a bad position, they go outside, otherwise I leave them, I prefer spiders to mosquitoes

I leave daddy-long legs in the house because they are no issue to humans (just leave unsightly webs) and can prey on spiders I'd rather not have around - red backs, huntsman, etc. Not sure if they eat white-tailed spiders too, but hopefully - we get a few of them.

Anything roaming near the kids' bedrooms gets treated more harshly.

Re: Spiders are much smarter than you think

#37

Post by mewpmewp2 »

What do we consider smarts?

For example, with some examples there, like pretending to do a mating ritual for another group of spiders in order to lure the female out, this seems like it's something built in to their neural networks through thousands of years of evolution. It doesn't seem significantly smarter than the other group of species doing mating rituals themselves. They just have a neural network that reacts to certain input with this output that evolution created and honed through all this time of them being around such input and this output causing a better survival performance.

I didn't see anything specific that could've indicated they could learn new things in new situations, so it seems like built in neural networks that come to them rather than them having special smarts to learn new things like humans have.

> Although spiders can’t literally count one-two-three, the research suggests some jumping spiders have a sense of numbers roughly equivalent to that of 1-year-old humans.

I wonder about conclusions like these. I don't know about 1-year-old humans, but it's understandable that they can measure strength levels depending on the amount of whatever they are observing and if situations change they should recalculate their new decision. I just don't think it's a sense of numbers, it would be more like some sort of amount of input (pheromones, image, whatever) that makes them pay attention that something has changed.

And all in all it seems odd conclusion to compare sense of numbers based on that to 1-year-old humans. Trying to compare it to something, but the way they use those "skills" doesn't really make comparative sense.

Re: Spiders are much smarter than you think

#39

Post by poisonarena »

bryans wrote: post #31
tomerv wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to let spiders live freely in my house, until one time I wanted to go to bed at night and noticed dozens of black spots on the bed cover. I looked up and saw hundreds of tiny spider babies on the ceiling. From then on, whenever I see a spider in the house I get rid of it. Sorry...

Don't get me wrong, I still find families of baby spiders to be absolutely terrifying in every way, and it takes every bit of my willpower to fight the urge to remove them from existence. But at the end of the day, the key word is family. It's a group of living things, with parents that apparently have the emotional capacity to care about them. Hopefully when you say "get rid of it," that means gently coaxing them in…

You are assuming very human or even mammalian qualities and constructs like "parents/family/emotion" to invertebrates that have no problem cannibalizing their offspring and mates. If they were big enough they would kill you and your family without any hesitation or emotion.

Re: Spiders are much smarter than you think

#40

Post by vector_spaces »

johnyzee wrote: post #30
mellavora wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get rid of them, too. By gently escorting them out a window. And, like you, I apologize to them and wish them well.

A tip if you are scared of spiders: Trap them in a glass, then slide some hard surface underneath. You can now move the spider (like out a window) while holding it trapped with the lid. This has actually eliminated much of my arachnophobia, since I find myself studying the spider, safely confined inside the glass before letting it out. (This is actually one way they treat phobias clinically, a kind of desensitization…

I used to have extreme arachnophobia, like strip-naked-run-screaming-if-I-found-a-spider-on-me level arachnophobia. A long time ago I was prescribed propranolol for PTSD by a psychiatrist specializing in trauma. I hadn't even mentioned my arachnophobia to her or any clinician I had seen at that point. It helped me a lot of social situations, but the effect was pretty subtle.

Anyway, one day, I was hiking with friends, and someone pointed out I had a bug on me. I picked it up and realized it was a spider -- and then it dawned on me that I wasn't afraid of it at all. It was one of the most thrilling moments of my life to hold a spider without any fear at all. I started seeking out spiders to handle them. Even after I stopped taking that medication, the effects lasted. Nowadays I love spiders.

I learned years after stopping taking it that this medication has been studied both for PTSD and phobias -- specifically arachnophobia.

Your comment made me think to tell this story because I pretty much always attempted to bring spiders outside rather than kill them despite my fear. My rational side knew that most spiders are harmless, sensitive, and highly beneficial creatures. Plus I always hated killing anything and still do. But the exposure didn't actually reduce my fear of them noticably. And that experience is borne out in the research -- exposure therapy doesn't seem to be enough for most people

Apparently propranolol is effective because it works on memory consolidation -- more or less it helps with overwriting old negative memories (more specifically the emotional charge that accompanies the memory) with newer positive ones.

https://youtu.be/uO8pXtvxAA0?t=1893

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/opinion/sunday/a-drug-to-...

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