141–150 of 220 posts
David Attenborough covered Portias in one of the documentaries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDtlvZGmHYk -- It's fascinating that they can strategize their attack.
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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…
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Carson-Quick-Release-Catching-Magnifi...
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…
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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.
Just because you can't readily see the emotion, does not mean it is not there.
True to say that 'we don't know if they regret having to eat their young/mates', but saying they don't care is just as much making assumptions as saying they do regret it, merely switching the polarity.
It is also possible that eating the mate/being eaten is the most loving thing it can do, giving not only the DNA but also their entire stored energy for the good of the offspring. Or, they might be terrified. Or, they might not be sufficiently sentient to notice. Either way, what we know is that we don't know (tho there may be someone who's studied it enough, IDK).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguayan_Air_Force_Flight_571...
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Oh please. Animals don't even have the empathy to outright kill a prey before eating it and will have it dismembered, bleeding out and alive no problem. 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 vega…
Human industrial slaughter where animals are trussed up and dismembered and skinned while still conscious (granted due to failures in the stun mechanism, but there isn't much push to monitor assembly line failures) would beg to differ. Or how about male chicks being liquefied and fed back to the chickens? Add to that the kosher/halal slaughter. This idea that all humanity is 'above' base animal behavior is as ridicul…
I would completely support requiring direct expert supervision of every single animal slaughtered. This is the norm at the smaller operations, but something like 80% of US cattle are slaughtered at giant Chinese owned factory stockyards.
As soon as I opened that article, I pressed CTRL+F and searched for "jumping spider". I knew it had to be about them! 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 dist…
Here in AZ we get a fairly big jumping spider with a red on the top abdomen, we call 'em red butt spiders. No one harms the red butt spiders! If one is down at person level I like to gently interact with it. If you slowly move a finger near it, it will rotate and examine, and then scoot an inch away. Not too fearful. Usually a single one wins out, and will live with us until fall. A familiar housemate. We also get fairly big tarantulas, maybe 4" across the span. (Outside) They don't strike me as intelligent, not like jumping spiders. I always stop and scoot them off the road when I'm biking. I have seen a tarantula hawk hauling one much bigger than itself in my yard, off to its doom.
Like you, on reading the title of the article, I thought, I bet it's about jumping spiders!
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It's worth mentioning to check the species first before putting them back out. Some spiders are house spiders, and can't really survive outdoors. I generally put them into my garden shed or, if possible, into the loft instead, but most of the time, I just leave them alone.
I've always wondered about that, did they evolve after the invention of houses?
[Edit: I googled around, and this was an interesting article from Rod Crawford, the curator of arachnid collections at the Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture, Seattle talking about house spiders being traced back to Roman times. https://www.burkemuseum.org/collections-and-research/biology... ]
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It's worth mentioning to check the species first before putting them back out. Some spiders are house spiders, and can't really survive outdoors. I generally put them into my garden shed or, if possible, into the loft instead, but most of the time, I just leave them alone.
I've always wondered about that, did they evolve after the invention of houses?
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It's worth mentioning to check the species first before putting them back out. Some spiders are house spiders, and can't really survive outdoors. I generally put them into my garden shed or, if possible, into the loft instead, but most of the time, I just leave them alone.
I've always wondered about that, did they evolve after the invention of houses?
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There's something that gets to me anytime I see animals with their offsprings. A documentary about octopuses last moments in life, really shook me. It might be interpretation/anthropomorphism but anyway, apparently after laying eggs, the octo mom will breath out water (warmed by her body) around them. The process lasts a while and when she's exhausted she spends the remaining energy to swim as far as possible and die…
You’ll also love this radiolab episode then: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/octom... I don’t want to spoil it but it’s quite a story.
And on topic, I hate small house insects. They bother the hell out of me. So, spiders I treat very well and while not welcoming them in, when discovered I'll find them a new home outside rather than kill them. But then, I don't live in Australia..