Speaking of clever animals, I just recently learned about the Australian birds that cause wildfires to drive out small game that they can catch.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/wildfires...
Newly discovered spider builds spring loaded snare to catch ants
61–68 of 68 posts
Re: Newly discovered spider builds spring loaded snare to catch ants
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Children of Time is one of the best books I've ever read, it's honestly amazing. It might be my all-time favorite. Seconding this recommendation!
I don't think I've been disappointed by anything from Adrian Tchaikovsky, tbh. Alien Clay and Service Model are also great.
The only thing I've read of him is Elder Race, which was meh. I'll try Children of Time.
Re: Newly discovered spider builds spring loaded snare to catch ants
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
that's a good question -- the paper describes it triggering aggression in the ant within milliseconds of it probing the snare with its antenna. I don't know the basis for it, but that's some down-to-the-metal ant programming right there
You should read up on manipulative parasites too! Things like wasp larvae developing inside an insect and changing its behavior through chemical manipulation of neural pathways. Some really remarkable specialization!
Yep, I love that stuff .. just crazy to think how it all came about.
Re: Newly discovered spider builds spring loaded snare to catch ants
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
It might be more helpful to think of it as small changes in “genome-vector” taking place across generations of the species with the filter of it being not bad enough to cause extinction of the bespoke variation, as opposed to evolving towards more fitness as an optimisation objective. When thought of like this, one can imagine how high-dimensional the “feature”-space becomes, which leads to such intricate engineering…
There's also typically a ton of standing genetic variation that is relatively fitness-neutral, but can then lead to more rapid or directional evolution if conditions change. For example, standing variation in silk elasticity may have been more fitness neutral when capturing other prey, but after encountering this ant species, spiders with more elastic silk were more successful and had a fitness advantage.
> standing genetic variation
An interesting illustration of this might be variety seen in dogs, which are still one species that can reproduce together.
Presumably there was some ur-mutt, where almost all the variations we see today were already there, latent, until humans nudged the balances and blends.
Attempts to systematically domesticate foxes [0] suggest that certain packages of physical traits come along with selecting for calm or friendly behavior.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/domesticated-foxes-gene...
Re: Newly discovered spider builds spring loaded snare to catch ants
#65It is truly fascinating, I wonder how it evolved like that. Before becoming a spring as it is today how was it hunting in the past? What constraints made it need such a mechanism instead of a typical web?
most HN would not like this answer, but here it is: god
Re: Newly discovered spider builds spring loaded snare to catch ants
#66Re: Newly discovered spider builds spring loaded snare to catch ants
#67Some spiders seem to think, recognize people and take immediate evasive action. Contrast that with a beetle, or ant. They just keep walking along like I'm not even there.
I turned the kitchen light on once and saw a spider in the middle of the floor. It ran straight under the fridge. It would peek out occasionally to see if I was still there.
That's why spiders scare me.
Re: Newly discovered spider builds spring loaded snare to catch ants
#68Some spiders seem to think, recognize people and take immediate evasive action. Contrast that with a beetle, or ant. They just keep walking along like I'm not even there. I turned the kitchen light on once and saw a spider in the middle of the floor. It ran straight under the fridge. It would peek out occasionally to see if I was still there. That's why spiders scare me.
Spiders are insectivores and have little to no interest in you. That's why I love them. When you have spiders, you don't have pesty insects, in the same way that when you have cats you don't have rodents.