41–50 of 220 posts
I'm not sure I would consider them "smart", but they are definitely exhibit an awareness of their surroundings that is not as obvious in other arachnids or arthropods. It's fun to watch them explore their terrain, stalk and catch prey much larger than they are, and of course jump relatively large distances like pros.
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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.
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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.
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…
There is so much to learn from other species on our own planet.
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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.
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.
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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…
So - he had a tarantula. I had never seen or met a thing like that and I was fascinated. It was very shy at first - it spent all day everyday hiding, possibly because of fear of drug addicts. But eventually it got a bit more confident. The thing was, it recognised and remembered individual humans. When it first met you or saw you it would hide. If you were calm and Kit (the paramedic) was calm with you it would come out and allow you to stroke it. This might take a few visits. But, once you had won it's confidence it would come right out and say hi as soon as you were in the room.
I came to believe that it was self aware, and that it had a mental model that included social interactions and trust. It was just a belief, as it's really hard to see the anecdote and experience I have as data, but that's what interacting with it made me think. I thought it was as smart as a cat, or maybe even a dog.
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.
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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.
No species can come even close to humans in killing others without any hesitation. Have you even seen the documentary Earthlings? http://www.nationearth.com/
Nature is beautiful but let's not pretend it's caring or loving. Cats play with their food. Spiders liquefy their preys, melting them from the inside out. Crabs eat their newborn offspring. Do any of these feel bad at all about it? No.
Find me an animal who went vegan because of empathy.