Researchers find signs of intelligence among jumping spiders

Post by Espressosaurus » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 8:36 AM UTC

nomel wrote: post #10

jcims wrote: post #5

Next time you see a jumping spider, interact with it. Try to coax it to you with slow repetitive movements. Get close to it. Tap and wiggle your fingers gently. You'll likely find that they come to you. They seem to be curious on a different level than any other spider that I've interacted with (which are all garden-variety spiders in north america). They do tend to freak out if you try to take their picture with a m…

They're one of the only insects that show hunting behavior, as in pattern recognition and path planning [1], with brains so large that their esophagus has to go through it, to fit, with one of the largest brain to body rations of any animal. And, they dance [2]! Easily my favorite little critter. 1. https://roundglasssustain.com/species/portia-spiders 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qkzwG2lLPc

Post by gpderetta » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 8:49 AM UTC

shoo wrote: post #71

previously: science fiction author Peter Watts' 2009 post musing about spider intelligence vs Turing machines: https://rifters.com/real/2009/01/iterating-towards-bethlehem... > Here's the thumbnail sketch: we have here a spider who eats other spiders, who changes her foraging strategy on the fly, who resorts to trial and error techniques to lure prey into range. She will brave a full frontal assault against prey carr…

Post by hailt » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 9:05 AM UTC

rukuu001 wrote: post #123

shoo wrote: post #71

previously: science fiction author Peter Watts' 2009 post musing about spider intelligence vs Turing machines: https://rifters.com/real/2009/01/iterating-towards-bethlehem... > Here's the thumbnail sketch: we have here a spider who eats other spiders, who changes her foraging strategy on the fly, who resorts to trial and error techniques to lure prey into range. She will brave a full frontal assault against prey carr…

Also see Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky for more smart-spider science fiction

Post by Kinrany » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 9:20 AM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #120

dinkleberg wrote: post #27

One of the craziest things to me when looking at a jumping spider is the unbelievable size and mass difference between us. An 80kg person is ~6,000,000x heavier than the average jumping spider. Whereas a blue whale is only like 2,000-3,000x heavier than that 80kg person (if I'm doing my math right). They are obviously tiny, but I wouldn't have imagined what titans we must be from their perspective.

A thought I've sometimes had is that if we had evolved to be as tiny as something like these spiders, but still at our current level of intelligence and society, chimps or elephants or whales would still be almost insurmountable threats to us even with today's level of technology. It'd take entire nations years of effort to build a gun or rocket that could even hurt something that much bigger than us.

Post by ConorSheehan1 » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 9:47 AM UTC

ianstormtaylor wrote: post #25

This is really interesting research. It’s fascinating to hear about how these experiments are designed in the first place. If anyone is interested in this topic, I highly, highly recommend the book “Ways of Being” by James Bridle. [0] It covers such a diverse range of ideas about intelligence, including neural network–style intelligences, that I think pretty much everyone would find something of interest. One of the…