spiders will pull their own legs clean off if they get damaged because most of them can regrow legs during molting, which explains why you often see spiders missing a leg but never any missing half a leg?
some remarkably distressing scientists proved this by getting a spider to pull off all of its legs and then feeding its limbless torso for months until it sprouted a full complement of legs again and then hopefully used them to get the fuck out of dodge
baby spiders don’t get lenses until their first molt and before that they just have baby eyes and while this ought not to be any weirder than the concept of baby teeth, welp,
there are so many spiders floating around thousands of metres up in the air that they’re described as “aerial plankton”
The Sky Is Full Of Spiders
there are spider-parasitising spiders but instead of laying eggs in organs or stealing blood or anything like that they just ride on top of bigger spiders and steal snacks when their mighty steed is eating
there are ant-mimicking spiders that use their disguises to raid ant nests and w/e but there are also ant mimics that just. hang out. they make fake ant colonies full of fake ants. sometimes the actual ants that they’re mimicking find their house and live with them. stealth 100
some mother spiders live in communal family nests, where multiple mothers can work together to bring down bigger prey while all their collected babies are cared for by the babysitters
some mother spiders feed their babies mouth to mouth like birds
some mother spiders carry their babies around and i was aware of this but not the fact that if you steal their eggsac they’ll freak out and search for it for hours and sometimes end up adopting anything that’s vaguely the right size, they will carry around empty snail shells for weeks and lovingly dote on them…
guys i am literally about to cry over spider moms
i borrowed the book op cites from the library (biology of spiders by rainer f. foelix) because of this post and my two favourite new spider facts are
-they don’t just have an exoskeleton – they also have a secret partial inside skeleton
and
-you know the guy who gave spiders drugs and took pictures of their fucked up webs? he ended up studying them because his buddy was studying garden spiders and they spin webs at 2-5 am and his buddy was like, Ugh, fuck this, i want to sleep in, do you have anything i can give these spiders to make them spin webs at not two in the morning -and this guy, A Pharmacologist, was like, hell yea, here are some amphetamines for your spiders -and all those did was make the spiders spin some exceptionally weird webs at 2-5am -and i guess his buddy gave up in disgust at these spiders who wouldn’t let him sleep but mr. spider amphetamines was like, you know what, this is cool, i’m gonna keep going with this
How would you feel about a blog series that teaches about different kinds of spiders but only uses illustrations of them as weird little goblin thingies
Would you even be interested in knowing cool things that spiders do or would this only be read by the kinds of people who would rather have photographs??
for those of you who remember, i said a long time ago i would eventually post this. basically one night on skype with other mod we asked ourselves, if we created a tv show together, what would it be. this is the answer. our show that will never happen
SHEILAH’S WORLD
Sheilah is a socially reclusive lesbian tax-evading spider monster who lives illegally in a two-story log on the property of the local power plant. Her deranged views and stance as a self proclaimed libertarian have made her known and feared in her small Canadian town. Sheilah puts all of her money into her beloved basement stash of gold and funnels what little money she has left into her paint-by-numbers boat art collection. Sheilah is a compulsive hoarder who lives in squalor. Without graduating high school (she does not believe in public schooling) she has no job and only recieves income from her deceased father’s wealth as a spider silk textile owner.
Trying to live off-grid, Sheilah only has one set of neighbours, the nuclear middle-class human Mr and Mrs Biped family with their two perfect children. When she’s not smoking cigars or hiding, Sheilah will spend time with her close friend Janet Paulson, and avian bird monster and travel agent who insists Sheilah leave her log to see the world. The two met accidentally years ago when Janet was driving to a camping ground and hit Sheilah with her car, who was trying to live alone in the forest. The collision left Sheilah without her eighth leg and Janet has stayed close with her since out of pity. Sheilah now keeps the leg at home in a jar and is convinced that upon completing a dubious 6 month online surgeon degree, she can successfully reattach the foot herself (she does not believe in doctors).
Sheilah is a burden to the to her local town and government. She resents all forms of government and control but will gladly take any position of power that may be offered to her. Sheilah also keeps a phonebook sized journal of local conspiracies. The police are constantly called to her house and reptilian mayor Chad Branson has had to block Sheilah’s number from the town office. The mayor has even made it a recent platform for his election campain to evict Sheilah from her log which is on illegal property. Sheilah however remains fearless and has a backup plan that if anything goes wrong, she will build a ship and sail to international waters to protect her gold.
reoccuring jokes include:
whenever the human family talks, there is a laugh track
the family has a pet named Scout, every episode it is a different animal because they keep accidentally killing it
sheilah has affairs with everyone, including the wife, the police officer, and janet
the reason Sheilah became a libertarian is because as a child she wanted to become a librarian, but her absent mother accidentally sent her to a libertarian workshop instead. this is why she dresses like a librarian.
I like how these don’t change spiders completely to “make them” cute but just exaggerate what is already cute about them like we do other animals
so the thing about bees and spiders is, i love them, and i know that with very rare exceptions they will not harm me. they are my friends and they only want to coexist with me. but that is all logic. if i’m eating outside and suddenly there is a bee in my face, or if i’m in the shower and suddenly there’s a spider crawling next to the soap, it all goes out the window. i’m gonna go AUGH and recoil in horror and look like a goddamn idiot until i come to my senses.
my question is, do you think superman ever gets startled by a bee and flies like five feet away in a half second even though it’s physically impossible for a bee to sting him
So for centuries we’ve thought that all spiders – except for just one recently discovered species – were 100% carnivorous with zero interest in or ability to digest anything else.
We JUST NOW suddenly figure out that many spiders, maybe even most or all spiders, will supplement their diet with leaf matter, pollen, nectar, sap or seeds.
Just like that our perception of an everyday animal is turned completely on its head.
It seems to be jumping spiders that enjoy snacking on vegetables the most!
This Is a Backup Blog 