I'm old enough to know I'd be the first firefly in there and probably would take a friend down with me.
Spider Uses a Light Show to Trick Eager Male Fireflies into Its Web
11–20 of 36 posts
Re: Spider Uses a Light Show to Trick Eager Male Fireflies into Its Web
#12I always found these types of things particularly creepy. Scaled up to human level, imagine a creature that trolls around luring you with visually-convincing mates only to eat you. Bram Stoker's Dracula had a particularly good bodyhorror version of this in the multi-bodied "Woman".
There's a great movie called Under the Skin about this very topic. Featuring Scarlett Johansson no less. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Skin_(2013_film) When I saw it I also thought of the Australian beetles that hump beer bottles until they die, because the size, color, and texture of the beer bottle resemble a particularly sexy female beetle and they just can't help themselves.
there are many human males that turn to the bottle instead of women. Don't be so mean to the beetles!
Re: Spider Uses a Light Show to Trick Eager Male Fireflies into Its Web
#13I always found these types of things particularly creepy. Scaled up to human level, imagine a creature that trolls around luring you with visually-convincing mates only to eat you. Bram Stoker's Dracula had a particularly good bodyhorror version of this in the multi-bodied "Woman".
> Scaled up to human level, imagine a creature that trolls around luring you with visually-convincing mates only to eat you. You mean like television ads showing scantily clad women to get you to spend all your income on ? Looks like the spider learned from us. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJWEJuKXZyk
If a spider is doing anything, there’s a safe bet that it’s been doing that thing for thousands or millions of years. Spiders are extremely successful and they’ve occupied countless niches as they’ve been around for 380 million years.
Re: Spider Uses a Light Show to Trick Eager Male Fireflies into Its Web
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Scaled up to human level, imagine a creature that trolls around luring you with visually-convincing mates only to eat you. You mean like television ads showing scantily clad women to get you to spend all your income on ? Looks like the spider learned from us. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJWEJuKXZyk
If a spider is doing anything, there’s a safe bet that it’s been doing that thing for thousands or millions of years. Spiders are extremely successful and they’ve occupied countless niches as they’ve been around for 380 million years.
It was a joke. I don’t really believe (nor did I expect anyone to think that) spiders have been observing humans watching adverts on TV, following them around to understand the socio-economic ramifications of that, then hatching a plan to catch other insects based on observations.
Re: Spider Uses a Light Show to Trick Eager Male Fireflies into Its Web
#15I always found these types of things particularly creepy. Scaled up to human level, imagine a creature that trolls around luring you with visually-convincing mates only to eat you. Bram Stoker's Dracula had a particularly good bodyhorror version of this in the multi-bodied "Woman".
There's a great movie called Under the Skin about this very topic. Featuring Scarlett Johansson no less. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Skin_(2013_film) When I saw it I also thought of the Australian beetles that hump beer bottles until they die, because the size, color, and texture of the beer bottle resemble a particularly sexy female beetle and they just can't help themselves.
>When I saw it I also thought of the Australian beetles that hump beer bottles until they die,
The human equivalent might be an AI generated image of woman(or man) so attractive they cant exist.
Re: Spider Uses a Light Show to Trick Eager Male Fireflies into Its Web
#16This reminds me of this sci-fi book called Children of Ruin where in a terraformed world, a genetics experiment goes wrong and the whole place is now overrun with super-intelligent giant spiders, who were infected with the uplift virus and have built their own civilization in the meantime — and who are protected from orbit by the immortal computer intelligence of Avrana Kern, who has determined in the intervening centuries, that she likes the spiders better than people... Nice reading! Recommended!
Re: Spider Uses a Light Show to Trick Eager Male Fireflies into Its Web
#17I always found these types of things particularly creepy. Scaled up to human level, imagine a creature that trolls around luring you with visually-convincing mates only to eat you. Bram Stoker's Dracula had a particularly good bodyhorror version of this in the multi-bodied "Woman".
There's a great movie called Under the Skin about this very topic. Featuring Scarlett Johansson no less. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Skin_(2013_film) When I saw it I also thought of the Australian beetles that hump beer bottles until they die, because the size, color, and texture of the beer bottle resemble a particularly sexy female beetle and they just can't help themselves.
It's called a "superstimulus" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus
Re: Spider Uses a Light Show to Trick Eager Male Fireflies into Its Web
#18I love spiders!
Just kidding.
I block them by putting a transparent cup over them, slide an open book cover beneath where they stand, so that they must enter on top of it, close the book, and off we go - I, the book, the cup that I press with all my force, and the spider trapped inside - to the nearest opening in the building, wishing them the very best on their new way of life, outside, and for me to live and thrive.
In my apartment, and I swear this is not a joke, most of the time I use "NoSQL - A Brief Guide to the Emerging World of Polyglot Persistence - Distilled", as my main transport mechanism.
Anyway, to the point. Similarly interesting behaviors of spiders include using web vibrations for communication and sensing, apparently even including tuning. You can easily google (is this still a cool way of saying "search"?) related articles, just ignore the web apps Vibrations API article on the MDN.
Re: Spider Uses a Light Show to Trick Eager Male Fireflies into Its Web
#19This seems like a lot of complexity dedicated to a reward otherwise obtainable with less complexity.
In some universe somewhere there is a spider thinking the same thing watching a human use a microwave to prepare their food.
Re: Spider Uses a Light Show to Trick Eager Male Fireflies into Its Web
#20This reminds me of this sci-fi book called Children of Ruin where in a terraformed world, a genetics experiment goes wrong and the whole place is now overrun with super-intelligent giant spiders, who were infected with the uplift virus and have built their own civilization in the meantime — and who are protected from orbit by the immortal computer intelligence of Avrana Kern, who has determined in the intervening cen…
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Imagining the psychology of aliens evolved from ambush predators
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/16a9m2h/ima...