[HN Gopher] Spiders are much smarter than you think
___________________________________________________________________
Spiders are much smarter than you think
Author : samizdis
Score : 309 points
Date : 2021-11-07 09:22 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (knowablemagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (knowablemagazine.org)
| WalterBright wrote:
| I once had a huge spider problem. Spiders all over the deck, etc.
|
| Called an exterminator, and he laughed. He said you don't have a
| spider problem, you have an _ant_ problem. The ants inhabited the
| wood interior of the deck, and the spiders were eating them.
|
| The ants completely hollowed out the deck, though they left the
| paint alone, so it looked fine. I was horrified that I could just
| push a screwdriver through it. It had to be completely replaced.
|
| When I sawed it off of the house, it collapsed into a heap of
| wood chips and sawdust. I didn't load the lumber into a truck, I
| _shoveled_ it in. I 'm amazed the deck never collapsed under my
| weight.
|
| My deck is now iron and concrete. No more spiders.
|
| I also had yellowjackets everywhere. In the house, around the
| house, everywhere. The exterminator told me the problem was the
| wood roof shingles, as yellowjackets liked to nest in them.
| Replaced the shingles with asphalt ones, no more yellowjackets.
|
| I tend to leave the spiders alone because they eat the other
| annoying insects.
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _Researchers are discovering surprising capabilities among a
| group of arachnids_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29066064 - Nov 2021 (24
| comments)
|
| _Spiders are much smarter than you think_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29048443 - Oct 2021 (1
| comment)
| dekken_ wrote:
| I have a rule, if they're too big, or in a bad position, they go
| outside, otherwise I leave them, I prefer spiders to mosquitoes
| prawn wrote:
| I leave daddy-long legs in the house because they are no issue
| to humans (just leave unsightly webs) and can prey on spiders
| I'd rather not have around - red backs, huntsman, etc. Not sure
| if they eat white-tailed spiders too, but hopefully - we get a
| few of them.
|
| Anything roaming near the kids' bedrooms gets treated more
| harshly.
| interfixus wrote:
| Yes, I have noticed this too. Despite my best intentions and
| full knowledge that we have none here which can hurt me, I am
| still shit phobic about spiders. The daddy longlegs are a
| protected species in my household since I first realized
| their stunning efficiency as resident security corps.
| koheripbal wrote:
| I once had a basement full of cellar spiders and killed them
| all. Literally the next day the basement was FILLED with much
| more annoying more mobile spiders. One crawled into my water
| bottle and I didn't realize until I pulled off my tongue.
|
| Cellar spiders are now my best friends. I didn't realize
| until then, but you can actually pick them up by hand and
| they don't bite if you're gentle.
|
| I thought my kids not to be afraid of them and they handle
| them regularly. My wife is another matter and she has a very
| distinctive spider scream that I can hear from anywhere in
| the house.
| totorovirus wrote:
| Reminds me of an observation that humans developed
| imagination(seeing that is unseen) from avoiding threats of
| snakes which were the most dangerous predator to early primates.
| It required sharp visual skills to distinguish snakes from its
| ambush, and also imagination (second vision) of snake's potential
| ambush.
| wruza wrote:
| I've also seen the video/gif of quickly changed pictures, where
| after viewing you're asked to estimate the percentage of
| spiders and snakes in it. People tend to 50%+, overestimating
| by an order of magnitude. We are evolutionarily aware of these
| little fuckers and that trait didn't come for free.
|
| ps. Can't find it anywhere, sorry.
| [deleted]
| Klaster_1 wrote:
| Talking about Portias, I recommend reading "Children of Time" by
| Adrian Tchaikovsky, it's about the process of uplifting spiders
| and how humans re-establish contacts with them. Another great
| book about smart "spiders" is "A Deepness in the Sky" by Vernor
| Vinge, my favorite in the "Zones of Thought" series.
| dkobia wrote:
| One of my favorite books and highly recommend.
| fho wrote:
| Somebody had to mention Children of Time. It's a really good
| book
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| A Deepness in the Sky is so good. The spiders are all
| experienced through the radio, which makes them more relatable
| in a way.
| sylens wrote:
| Children of Time is fantastic, a really unique take on sci-fi
| peatmoss wrote:
| I saw it as a really fantastic riff on David Brin's "uplift"
| series. In fact, Tchaikovsky calls this out explicitly in
| naming one of the (IIRC) habitat orbiters Brin.
| gpderetta wrote:
| Portias are also talked about in Echopraxia, the Blindsight
| sequel by Peter Watts.
| wruza wrote:
| Idk how it compares to the aforementioned books, but there is
| also a series of fiction by Colin Wilson "Spider World: ..."
| (1987+). It was a great read when I was a teenager.
|
| _The Tower is a novel in which humankind has been reduced to
| slavery and outlawry by giant spiders in the far future._
| malobre wrote:
| I can also recommend "Children of time", it's a really good
| sci-fi book. There's a sequel called "Children of Ruin", but I
| can't comment on it as I haven't finished reading it.
| buzzwordninja wrote:
| Then, allow me to recommend it :)
| dd444fgdfg wrote:
| One of my favourite books is about how spiders evolve over a very
| long time to gain superior intelligence to humans, Children of
| Time, read it!
| snshn wrote:
| I knew it!
| Indy9000 wrote:
| This article and the magazine seems to be well designed and put
| together. Nice!
| samizdis wrote:
| Well said. I have the sharp-eyed HN mods to thank for
| introducing me to Knowable Magazine: the link I posted was to
| the article as syndicated in The Atlantic [1]; I'd not spotted
| the credit at the bottom of the page (usually I'd change to
| that, as long as the original wasn't paywalled).
|
| I noticed about 10 mins after posting that the originating site
| in HN's list had changed from The Atlantic to Knowable, so I've
| been exploring its content, and like it.
|
| Thanks to whichever mod is responsible for swapping the link.
| Also, the credit in The Atlantic was merely a link to
| Knowable's home page (which seems odd, really), so kudos to HN
| for thoroughness.
|
| [1]
| https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/11/spiders-...
| dncornholio wrote:
| Jumping spiders are amazingly fun creatures! Even the smallest
| ones have personalities and most are curious. Very good eyes that
| see everything. They catch flies with blazing speed.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| It is probably just as well that spiders don't work in groups. A
| colony of thousands of venomous spiders working together is a
| terrifying thought (cf the novel "Children of time").
| forgotmyoldname wrote:
| Some spiders do.[1] They protect their own and viciously attack
| outsiders. People are terrified when they see a single massive
| huntsman spider--imagine 300 angry ones coming at you because
| you offended one of their friends.
|
| And related to the main topic, I've sat bored at work and
| watched a jumping spider prowl around the office. It was
| initial terrified of me, and would face directly towards my
| face and follow my head around to see what I was doing. When it
| eventually realized I wasn't a threat, it continued prowling. I
| watched it often stop, gauge a distance, and squat a few times
| trying to find the perfect angle and location from which it
| could successfully make a jump. Sometimes getting it perfect,
| and sometimes failing, pulling itself up by its web, and trying
| again. Learning through trial and error seems to definitely
| cross the bar of intelligent life for me.
|
| It also later directly approached me (after having earlier
| avoided me) and started crawling on my hands as I typed.
|
| Felt almost like meeting a thumbnail sized cat.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delena_cancerides
| fignews wrote:
| Thumbnail sized cat indeed. They also chase laser pointers
| pvaldes wrote:
| Meanwhile in Texas, Tetragnata guatemaltensis is having a lot
| of fun in the "burning fly's" international cross-stitch
| knitters meeting...
|
| https://texashillcountry.com/wp-content/uploads/nature-1-660...
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Spiders are often evil in cartoons so children usually do not
| like them. My children did not watch tv much but still were vary
| (sometimes afraid) of spiders.
|
| I had them look at them when they work, in forests or sometimes
| at home and told how useful they are. And suddenly they were
| happy when a spider lived in they room.
|
| They even managed to convert their friends and recently, some 10
| years later, I witnessed how one of said friends noticed a spider
| on the ceiling and smiled.
|
| If the stereotypes of spiders change, so will their level of
| acceptance.
| rob_c wrote:
| Cool I do wonder how much overlap there is between say nervous
| systems of insects and evolutionary far away species such as
| mammals.
|
| Spiders on drugs gives interesting results too, although when I
| was in school these were being used as part of a "drugs will
| destroy your life" message... (sun link I know, but worth a
| google): https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/6818187/nasa-spider-webs-
| drugs...
| crocal wrote:
| The behaviour described in the article makes me think of a goal-
| oriented AI. It does not require a lot of complexity and can
| exhibit very advanced and quite surprising behaviour.
| civilized wrote:
| But I already thought spiders were pretty smart. What is it now,
| they can do calculus too?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| They're pretty good at web development.
| yuuu wrote:
| If they're so smart, then why aren't _they_ smashing _me_?
| [deleted]
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| What do we consider smarts?
|
| For example, with some examples there, like pretending to do a
| mating ritual for another group of spiders in order to lure the
| female out, this seems like it's something built in to their
| neural networks through thousands of years of evolution. It
| doesn't seem significantly smarter than the other group of
| species doing mating rituals themselves. They just have a neural
| network that reacts to certain input with this output that
| evolution created and honed through all this time of them being
| around such input and this output causing a better survival
| performance.
|
| I didn't see anything specific that could've indicated they could
| learn new things in new situations, so it seems like built in
| neural networks that come to them rather than them having special
| smarts to learn new things like humans have.
|
| > Although spiders can't literally count one-two-three, the
| research suggests some jumping spiders have a sense of numbers
| roughly equivalent to that of 1-year-old humans.
|
| I wonder about conclusions like these. I don't know about 1-year-
| old humans, but it's understandable that they can measure
| strength levels depending on the amount of whatever they are
| observing and if situations change they should recalculate their
| new decision. I just don't think it's a sense of numbers, it
| would be more like some sort of amount of input (pheromones,
| image, whatever) that makes them pay attention that something has
| changed.
|
| And all in all it seems odd conclusion to compare sense of
| numbers based on that to 1-year-old humans. Trying to compare it
| to something, but the way they use those "skills" doesn't really
| make comparative sense.
| pjmlp wrote:
| The issue is that we have millions of evolution for living
| beings, and even us in 2021 aren't the same that were running
| from Dinosaurs, so it is only natural that other species also
| enjoy some kind of intelligence, naturally they aren't writing
| books, however it is a scale from DNA programmed behaviours to
| some level of self conscience, ability to learn or even develop
| some kind of culture that is passed across generations.
|
| There is so much to learn from other species on our own planet.
| falsaberN1 wrote:
| We never ran from dinousaurs, but it'd have been kind of
| cool.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| "We" as in "mammals", I guess.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Right, was more to put it perspective actually.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| While neural networks themselves are fantastic, are those
| species anything smarter than that? There's so much to learn
| from them yes, but I don't think based on this article that
| spiders would be "smarter than you think".
|
| I don't think they are necessary self-conscious in an
| intelligent way. I think all of this behaviour can be
| explained from evolution honing them to have some sort of
| biases and weights towards this input causing that output.
|
| And it's absolutely fascinating to learn to understand how
| they became to be the way they are. How environment affected,
| how all of it was stored in DNA so it can't be reproduced
| continuously and continuously.
|
| I think level of spider's intelligence doesn't differ that
| much from what Tesla FSD is for example. Tesla FSD needs
| quite a bit of honing still of course.
| gpderetta wrote:
| > What do we consider smarts?
|
| I read one of the papers were they experiment with Portia
| spiders (it might have been shared here on HN months ago). The
| paper actually went in great details to catalogue the kinds of
| intelligence being studied (it didn't invent anything, it was a
| good recap of the literature) and to design experiments to fit
| the portias in this hierarchy. It was quite good.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Human social interaction is also something built into their
| neural networks through thousands of years of evolution too.
| They have a neural network that reacts to certain input with
| this output that evolution created as well.
|
| Of course, biological neural networks are self learning too, so
| the output gets tuned and optimized in situ just a little. But
| there's really no difference in that sense.
|
| Sure: you shouldn't anthropomorphize lest you end up drawing
| completely wrong conclusions; this was drilled into me as well.
|
| However, a strictly mechanistic view of something that is
| clearly software++ (biological neuroplasticity) might be
| overcompensating a bit too far in the other direction again.
|
| I guess what I'm trying to say is try to treat each organism as
| their own thing. Don't overestimate or anthropomorphize; but
| don't take an over-linearized super-mechanistic view either,
| since that can lead you astray just as much.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Yeah, agreed, but I think one of the highest differentiations
| for whether someone or something is intelligent is how it
| learns about new unseen concepts and can use intelligence to
| adapt to a completely new environment.
|
| E.g. if that spider species was put to a completely different
| environment and during its lifetime it could learn to adapt
| to some new species mating ritual and fake out their female
| as well.
|
| This would make me consider the title to be valid "spiders
| are much smarter than you think".
| Cybiote wrote:
| Portia spiders do demonstrate trial and error learning,
| quoting the abstract of [1]:
|
| > All species from the jumping spider genus Portia appear
| to be predators that specialize at preying on other spiders
| by invading webs and, through aggressive mimicry gaining
| dynamic fine control over the resident spider's behavior.
| There is evidence that P. fimbriata, P. labiata and P.
| schultzi derive signals by trial and error. Here, we
| demonstrate that P. africana is another species that uses a
| trial and error, or generate and test, algorithm when
| deriving the aggressive-mimicry signals that will be
| appropriate in different predator-prey encounters.
|
| It turns out that the species with more variation in
| encountered prey types are more likely to rely on search,
| varying over possible patterns until a response is
| received. Other papers show their ability to learn
| generalizes beyond mimicry of vibrational patterns. They
| are also capable of deriving and maintaining situation
| specific attack routes and plans.
|
| I'll also argue that a fully instinctual repertoire, even
| without learning, should count as intelligence if flexibly
| deployed. Consider: despite an inability to learn or
| adjust, a Nash equilibrium approximating poker bot or an
| Alpha Zero neural network can be described as encompassing
| a deep instinct of the game that enables intelligent action
| selection.
|
| [1]
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10164-010-0258-5
| murat124 wrote:
| Spiders are amazing. Of course you should stay away from some of
| them, like blackwidow, the brown recluse, or the brazilian
| wandering spider but for the most part, house spiders (unless
| you're in Australia), and jumping spiders are usually friendly.
|
| 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.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Not spiders but crows in our area have cars open nuts for them by
| dropping them onto the busier roads and coming back every few
| hours to collect the goods.
| randomcarbloke wrote:
| Spiders play, give a tarantula a pingpong ball.
| smortaz wrote:
| they are! once i found a baby spider in the jacuzzi and just let
| it stay there out of laziness. it set up shop in one of the water
| jet holes. it gradually grew and started catching the real enemy,
| the mosquitoes.
|
| as a "thank you", once every couple of days i'd catch a fly and
| feed it to him. i'd tap the electric fly swatter on the jacuzzi
| wall to drop the fly. this tapping sound quickly became sort of a
| pavlovian affair. as soon as i'd tap the fly swatter, he would
| rush out of the hole and grab its treat!
|
| here's the video
|
| https://share.icloud.com/photos/0SkC9zuEe9JKh4t2M4DEz2A1w
| [deleted]
| an9n wrote:
| > "Jumping spiders are remarkably clever animals," says visual
| ecologist Nathan Morehouse, who studies the spiders at the
| University of Cincinnati. "I always find it delightful when
| something like a humble jumping spider punctures our sense of
| biological superiority."
|
| I just find this notion bizarre, like we're all overblown
| ignoramuses strutting around thinking: 'I'm soooo much better
| than x pathetic creature!', and deserve to be taken down a peg or
| two. A really odd way to see things, most people I know are
| fascinated by nature.
| neuronic wrote:
| As long as these spiders don't develop ICBMs I am sure a lot of
| people wont take thems seriously at all. It has always saddened
| me how many people just treat animals like lesser beings ready
| to be killed, tortured and controlled.
|
| Reading about animal cruelty makes me sick - we should be more
| like guardians than overlords. I suppose this will never sit
| well with a majority of people, especially if they have other
| things to worry about...
| EmilioMartinez wrote:
| Agreed, and then there are titles like the article's with a
| similar over-assuming sentiment. I always read them like eg
| "Spiders are much smarter than the writer of this piece
| thought"
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This reminds me of the Canadian spider documentary:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc
| sgt101 wrote:
| One of my school friends walked a different path from me and
| became a paramedic. He used to have to go to homes in
| "socioeconomically challenged areas" in order to revive people
| who had taken substances that they should not have taken - and
| also other things which were even less good. On one of these
| trips in a drug hell hole he saw a tank with a spider in it, and
| he realised that these people were likely mistreating it. So he
| asked if they wanted it and after a short conversation bought it
| off them for a nominal amount.
|
| So - he had a tarantula. I had never seen or met a thing like
| that and I was fascinated. It was very shy at first - it spent
| all day everyday hiding, possibly because of fear of drug
| addicts. But eventually it got a bit more confident. The thing
| was, it recognised and remembered individual humans. When it
| first met you or saw you it would hide. If you were calm and Kit
| (the paramedic) was calm with you it would come out and allow you
| to stroke it. This might take a few visits. But, once you had won
| it's confidence it would come right out and say hi as soon as you
| were in the room.
|
| I came to believe that it was self aware, and that it had a
| mental model that included social interactions and trust. It was
| just a belief, as it's really hard to see the anecdote and
| experience I have as data, but that's what interacting with it
| made me think. I thought it was as smart as a cat, or maybe even
| a dog.
| goldenkey wrote:
| I've seen similar behavior from garden spiders that I've taken
| inside before winter. They are afraid at first but eventually
| warm up to me and let me pet them. Spiders are very cool
| creatures. An analog of human intelligence, as unique as
| octopi.
| mkwarman wrote:
| How do you care for a garden spider over winter? The yellow
| garden spider (argiope aurantia) is probably my favorite
| spider and I love when one takes up residence in my garden
| throughout the warmer months. I never considered caring for
| one when it gets too cold outside and then releasing it when
| it warms up.
| jakear wrote:
| Not just spiders. I've a caterpillar solve puzzles I would have
| thought impossible via long running search with clear indications
| of evolving understanding of the environment and refinements to
| physical technique.
|
| I was hoping to keep it around to see if it'd remember me when it
| became a moth, but after being kept in captivity for a couple
| days it showed signs of depression and I let it return to the
| wild. I hope to some day create an interesting enough enclosure
| to keep them mentally occupied for a full development cycle.
|
| Shoutout to Ojo. Gone but not forgotten.
| meerita wrote:
| The portia genus are incredibly smart. I believe it is because
| its vision system, comparing to other spiders. Watch some videos
| on youtube and it chills how calculated the hunt is.
| jcims wrote:
| They seem to be in a class entirely unto themselves. There is
| something about the way they move and observe the world that
| gives them an apparent intellect beyond any other 'bug' I've
| seen. I used to keep bees and they are amazing in both their
| individual and collective ability, but it's hard to interact
| with them. Portia and other in the Salticidae family are almost
| like little dogs or something. They watch you, seem to make eye
| contact even, and generally are tolerant of handling and
| attention. Really cool little critters.
|
| Predictably, the BBC and David Attenborough have some amazing
| videos about them:
|
| Hunting a spider - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDtlvZGmHYk
|
| Hunting a mantid (you have to watch the end) -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wKu13wmHog
|
| Crazy mating ritual -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_udvnFCl7s
|
| Another intense mating ritual -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQbScg3r1oQ
|
| They let you pet them -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPo8MG1pJ8w
|
| All of this with a brain of approximately 100,000 neurons.
| drblah wrote:
| Huh, interesting. That "Hunting of a spider" clip almost
| follows part of the intro sections in Children of Time
| 1-to-1. Feels like someone took 'inspiration' in someone
| else's homework. I wonder if it was BBC or Adrian Tchaikovsky
| who came first.
|
| Oh, well. It is a really cool clip nonetheless.
| mellavora wrote:
| hint: BBC
| bryans wrote:
| 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 the left side of the monitor and waves it legs again.
| If I stood up and moved closer to it, it would run back to the
| window, turn around, and waves its legs at me. From watching
| YouTube too much, I was always under the impression that this was
| either a sign of aggression or a defensive stance.
|
| But after a few times of going back and forth like this, I
| realized there were approximately 50 baby spiders around a light
| by the window, which had been closed since the previous day.
| Normally this would be a nightmare for me (I've always had a fear
| of spiders), but after a while, I had this crazy notion that the
| spider was trying to get me to open the window. So I did, and it
| immediately ran to the babies, wrapped a single strand of silk
| around the old webbing, and started dragging swaths of the
| babies' webbing toward the window.
|
| I have no idea if the room was just dry and they needed some
| humidity, or if the food had been too scarce for too long.
| Whatever it was, that parent spider was in full blown panic mode,
| and managed to effectively communicate their problem to a human.
| I haven't killed any spiders or insects since (aside from a few
| particularly asshole-ish mosquitos), and actually keep small
| water dishes in my bathroom for two spiders who've now lived with
| me for nearly a year. If any babies hatch inside and get close to
| me, I use my phone's flash to guide them back to a corner with a
| light on -- they are seemingly always drawn to the brightest
| light source.
|
| Spiders are incredible creatures, and I deeply regret not
| realizing that sooner.
| mellavora wrote:
| Mothers love is the primal force of the universe. Not just
| mammals (including humans, of course but read up on other
| vertebrates such as crocodiles and birds). Another poster
| mentions gastropods (octopus).
|
| You see it in plants. Trees preferentially share of resources
| with their offspring.
|
| Thanks for sharing an amazing story. I'm not surprised to see
| motherly love in spiders.
| culi wrote:
| mother trees not only pass resources but also, what can only
| be described as, "chemical memories"
|
| https://www.wsl.ch/en/2020/02/trees-pass-on-environmental-
| me...
| whalesalad wrote:
| It's SO cool when you have one of these experiences with a wild
| animal. A tiny little moment of true connection and
| communication. Thanks for the story.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| We have an influx of Joro spiders in our area (N/Central GA),
| and they are absolute nightmare fuel. I can't have them in my
| porch or where people are going to be; their webs are big and
| sticky, but I'm having a hard time bringing myself to killing
| them.
| fignews wrote:
| It's amazing how they are all over now with the first
| spotting being around 2015.. They look crazy but as far as I
| know they aren't harmful to humans.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| Everything I've read says they are not harmful; they can
| bite, and will if they need to, but will get away if they
| can.
|
| I've killed a few, but I think I won't any more. Not
| necessarily because of this article, I just hate killing
| things.
|
| I never knew of them before this fall until a friend of
| mine went on "removal" spree at his place, and now I've
| seen a lot more of them in my own yard.
|
| One issue is we also have migrating hummingbirds, and the
| webs are big enough to foul them up. The spiders won't eat
| them of course, but I also can't have our hummingbirds
| dying over getting caught so I'll be knocking down webs in
| their area if I have to.
| culi wrote:
| Interestingly the Joro spider is invasive to Georgia now, but
| their ecological impact is not known. They eat an invasive
| species of stinkbug however that the native spiders do not
| eat so they may actually end up having a net positive impact
| on the environment despite being invasive
| bugzz wrote:
| I keep several tarantulas and a few other spiders, and they are
| absolutely fascinating! Your description of the spider waving
| its arms and running from side to side makes me think it was
| likely a jumping spider. This group of spiders have large eyes
| and don't build webs to catch prey, and are really cute!
| malshe wrote:
| This is such an incredible story! It also made me emotional.
| Thanks for sharing it.
| stoned wrote:
| There is a Russian (Eastern European? Slavic?) superstition
| against kill spiders. You can kill insects all day, but you
| don't kill spiders. You just leave them be.
| chayleaf wrote:
| I'm Russian and I don't remember anything like that, so even
| if it is Russian it's fairly obscure
| stoned wrote:
| Thanks I've been wondering.
| 2ion wrote:
| This is a bit more elaborate behaviour than what I have
| observed from our (small) spiders here, but as a general rule,
| I don't do anything to spiders in my apartment as well. They
| keep their territory clean of other insects and do not get into
| my way, so I like keeping them. Unless the spider is really
| large, aggressive or poisonous, I do not get why so many people
| are afraid of them either. Perhaps that the Australian
| Exception :)
| iab wrote:
| Just don't eat them, you should be good
| culi wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachnids_as_food
| agumonkey wrote:
| 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. The theory being she'd
| rather not attract predators with her corpse. A final step in
| sacrifice.
|
| I too now try to redirect life forms to where they can live
| better. I used to seriously arachnophobic but nowadays I can
| manage grabbing a box or a long piece of paper to move insects
| around or outside if needs be.
| uggwar wrote:
| The Octopus Teacher on netflix is highly recommended, if you
| haven't watched it yet. Octopuses are amazing creatures!
| jwdunne wrote:
| I was thinking of this exact documentary when reading the
| comment above.
|
| It was fascinating how the octopus seemed to have trust and
| opened up to him.
|
| Disagreed with his reasoning when she was being attacked -
| if she's a friend, help her. Sitting back and recording her
| getting hurt because he didn't want to "interfere with the
| natural processes" didn't make much sense.
| agumonkey wrote:
| oh yeah, for programmers, their neural structure is
| obviously fascinating
| culi wrote:
| A lot of spiders have spread with humans and, depending on
| your environment, would probably not be able to survive
| outside. I usually ignore spiders I see in my house. I figure
| for every spider that's probably at least 3 less other bugs.
| One time we even let a daddy long legs care for its babies
| and watched as the hundred little eggs finally matured and
| hatched. Most of those babies probably died, but those that
| survived have probably helped keep the population of many
| other bugs down
| yumraj wrote:
| I'm generally very lenient with DLLs but others freak me
| out, especially when one drops suddenly from the top.
| iscrewyou wrote:
| You'll also love this radiolab episode then: https://www.wnyc
| studios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/octom...
|
| I don't want to spoil it but it's quite a story.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Thanks, I'll probably fetch it tonight.
| telesilla wrote:
| Fascinating. Thank you. I'll think about this for a few
| days, it feels.
|
| 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..
| User23 wrote:
| I'm quite certain that E.B. White's wonderful Charlotte's Web
| is based on the author's similar observations.
| tomerv wrote:
| I used to let spiders live freely in my house, until one time I
| wanted to go to bed at night and noticed dozens of black spots
| on the bed cover. I looked up and saw hundreds of tiny spider
| babies on the ceiling. From then on, whenever I see a spider in
| the house I get rid of it. Sorry...
| freeflight wrote:
| Your bed is very likely already crawling with all kinds of
| organisms, spiders at least keep mosquitoes in check.
| bryans wrote:
| 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 into a box and putting them outside.
| mym1990 wrote:
| You're Vin Diesel's kinda person.
| cmsefton wrote:
| 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.
| andai wrote:
| I've always wondered about that, did they evolve after
| the invention of houses?
| cmsefton wrote:
| My knowledge on it is pretty basic, but as I understand,
| house spiders are adapted to living indoors: climate,
| food supply, and so forth. It's probable that over time
| spiders adapted to live in caves or tree hollows probably
| found it quite easy to move into dwellings, and stay
| there, to the extent that now some species have their
| entire life cycle based around dwellings.
|
| [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... ]
| praptak wrote:
| No, they evolved to become synanthropic. That's usually a
| good deal for a species unless humans change their ways.
| The black cellar beetle was very popular in Europe living
| in preindustrial era because it lived in wooden buildings
| and is now endangered because these buildings are
| becoming rare.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Generally they can live just fine in the wild somewhere,
| and human indoor climates merely replicate their natural
| habitat. Odds are without shelter or clothing or other
| artificial methods of controlling temperature you'd be
| pretty screwed wherever you currently live too.
| poisonarena wrote:
| 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.
| bugzz wrote:
| If they had "no problem" cannibalizing their offspring,
| they'd quickly go extinct! In reality, cannibalizing of
| offspring only occurs in particular circumstances - if
| conditions are poor enough that most of the young won't
| survive anyway, for example. In which case their
| instincts kick in to cannibalize as a way to recoup the
| energy and try again at a better time. If conditions are
| right there will instead be a strong instinct to protect
| the egg sack / young.
| logicchains wrote:
| Humans in desperate situations will do similar things,
| sacrificing their children for resources:
| https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/01/asia/afghanistan-
| child-ma...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > If they were big enough they would kill you and your
| family without any hesitation or emotion.
|
| That's how predators act. Yet, we have no lack of love
| for birds and cats.
|
| Anyway, don't group spiders on the "have no problem
| cannibalizing their offspring and mates". They are much
| more complex than that. Besides some vertebrates also
| have no problem doing that.
| mellavora wrote:
| sorry, what? The claim that "parents/family/emotion" are
| constructs which are limited to (higher) mammals rests on
| the assumption that these constructs are dependent on
| i.e. a highly developed cerebral cortex-- and that
| somehow the cortex is the seat of emotions.
|
| Given that neurotransmitters (adrenaline?) are so
| instrumental to regulating emotional state, that claim
| seems highly unlikely.
|
| The most plausible possibility is that all multi-celled
| beings have some sense of family and parenthood.
|
| And here with the spiders you are presented with evidence
| of such.
|
| Does a mother spider feel distress with quite the same
| level of nuance as a mother human? Perhaps not. Is she
| clearly distressed? absolutely.
| birksherty wrote:
| No species can come even close to humans in killing
| others without any hesitation. Have you even seen the
| documentary Earthlings?
|
| http://www.nationearth.com/
| Levitz wrote:
| 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 vegan because of empathy.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Cats play with their food
|
| oh my cat don't even eat the animals it brings back
| inside the house. Birds, baby rabbits (these ones
| survives for it can catch them but not kill them),
| lizards by the metric ton, spiders, mice...
|
| It brings them back to me and let them in the living
| room.
|
| Sometimes I get two animals a day.
|
| I don't know: maybe the cat understood we do the cooking
| and somehow thinks we're going to cook all it brings
| back.
|
| I remember an old blog where some coder who also had a
| relentless cat (I'd say at least 10 years ago) set up
| face a webcam and face recognition for its cat inside the
| pet door and wouldn't let the door open if the cat had
| something in its mouse.
| akiselev wrote:
| _> I remember an old blog where some coder who also had a
| relentless cat (I 'd say at least 10 years ago) set up
| face a webcam and face recognition for its cat inside the
| pet door and wouldn't let the door open if the cat had
| something in its mouse._
|
| I've got to find that blog post! Luckily my cats don't
| bring back half a dozen animals a day anymore but I'm
| still tired of chasing squirrels and mice around my house
| once a week.
| agustif wrote:
| That last mouse instead of mouth was appropiate/funny I
| guess!
| AwaAwa wrote:
| 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 ridiculous as stating that all animals
| lack behaviors that we may label as empathy.
| swayvil wrote:
| Forget the actual slaughter. They live their entire life
| in a torture cage, smeared in excrement, ears filled with
| the screams of their suffering family.
|
| We are clearly demons.
| phonypc wrote:
| > _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)_
|
| There is absolutely push/incentive to monitor and correct
| for failures in stunning. The stress response it entails
| in the animal makes for poor quality meat, or even
| inedible meat that would have to thrown out.
|
| Also, stunning is followed by slaughtering and draining.
| There is no situation in industrial production in which
| an animal would be dismembered and skinned alive.
| phekunde wrote:
| When I was a kid, one day my dad took me to the nearby
| "meat shop" where they use to slaughter goats in a nearby
| room of the shop. My dad's aim was to prepare me to go to
| the meat shop on my own in the near future. What I saw
| had a very deep impact on me and I decided to not eat
| meat and fish after that. It took me one and a half years
| to stop eating meat and fish. What I saw in that shop
| that day was chilling. Two goat kids were slaughtered in
| front of their mother(the goat). The goat kids had by now
| realised that going inside the room meant death, so when
| the shop owner tried to take the first goat kid into the
| room the goat kid refused to enter the room and the owner
| kept pushing and forcing the goat kid inside the room.
| Seeing this the customers gathered around the shop
| started laughing. And the goat(the mother of the goat
| kid) couldn't look at her kid being taken to the
| slaughter room and was crying for help looking at the
| laughing customers(I had never heard a goat make such
| loud and chilling noises)! The same repeated for here
| second kid. And finally the goat herself was slaughtered
| after sometime.
|
| Experiencing this horror, I decided there and then that I
| will not eat meat and fish again to satisfy my tastebuds.
| It has been years since I left eating meat and fish. But
| even now when I see non-vegetarian dishes(at home or
| other places) I have urge to eat non-veg. It is very
| difficult to leave eating non-veg; it is like addiction.
| But everytime I have that urge to eat non-veg, that scene
| from the meat shop plays in front of my eyes. It is very
| painful.
|
| Another scene that I regularly see in my local area every
| morning is when cattles are transported in a truck to a
| near-by mass slaughter house. The trucks are enclosed
| from all sides with just a slit open for the cattles to
| look outside so that they do not panic in the metal
| enclosure. Looking at their eyes one can easily see that
| they are trying to understand where they are and what is
| happening. And everytime I see that I say to myself,
| these unsuspecting defenceless animals are going to face
| a gruesome death within an hour just to satisfy the
| appetite of some humans!
| pvaldes wrote:
| > skinned while still conscious because the stun
| mechanism could, eventually, fail.
|
| And all those grand pianos falling over the poor cat
| again and again...
|
| Oh sorry, we were talking about the real life, or in
| terms of a cartoon possibility?
| birksherty wrote:
| People don't like hearing truth they don't like, so they
| downvote.
| User23 wrote:
| Painlessly slaughtering cattle isn't trivial. You want to
| destroy their brains as close to instantly as possible,
| but their brains are tiny and their skulls are large, so
| it really requires care to make sure the animal is
| instantaneously killed.
|
| 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.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> 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._
|
| Not every animal is like this. Most spider never kill
| animals they can't eat if they're not a threat to them.
| If one such creature falls into their web, they just
| release it.
|
| _> Spiders liquefy their preys, melting them from the
| inside out_
|
| How else are they gonna eat? They don't have teeth with
| which to chew their food like we do.
|
| _> Cats play with their food._
|
| Many cats can be sadistic selfish assholes, but somehow
| many humans love them to death because they're cute and
| fluffy.
| timeon wrote:
| Not every human is vegan like you.
| birksherty wrote:
| Exactly, they don't have empathy. We have conscience yet
| we all these. So who is lacking empathy emotion tell me.
| We do much worse than any animal can do. Again go watch
| the docu to see completely to know what we do before
| replying. Humans are worst thing in universe because we
| do all these having conscience.
| nickpeterson wrote:
| I think the horrifying thing about humans is we do
| understand what we're doing and choose to do it anyways.
| Spiders kill things to eat them to survive. Humans do it
| for much more complicated or arbitrary reasons.
| swayvil wrote:
| Our whole intellectual/scientific/technological culture
| is founded upon our ability to _focus our attention_.
|
| And the flipside of focus is blindness. Ignorance.
|
| One thing is focused upon, seen and controlled with vast
| depth and clarity. While 1000 other things are obliviated
| away.
|
| That obliviated part. There's a lot of bad stuff going on
| there. (And a lot of good stuff too, no doubt)
| Retric wrote:
| Attention isn't binary. Stubbing your toe is a great way
| to pay a lot of attention to something you normally
| ignore, but conversely we are paying attention to the
| lack of pain without it diverting any effort.
|
| Intellectual/scientific/technological culture is really
| the mind sitting around going nothing critical is going
| on let's focus on something arbitrary. And if nothing
| critical happens for long enough you can start to assume
| that's just how things are.
| swayvil wrote:
| Yes, distraction is a thing. And oblivious focus is also
| a thing. Both are aspects of attention.
| resonious wrote:
| I can't speak for spiders but there are plenty of animals
| that do horrible things for reasons other than eating and
| surviving. Seals come to mind (with what they do to
| penguins). Also cats.
|
| At the very least, mammals will kill for sport and for
| status. The biggest difference with humans is scale.
| Falling3 wrote:
| > we do understand what we're doing and choose to do it
| anyways
|
| Seems like you glossed right over the most important part
| of their comment.
| toss1 wrote:
| Yes, and "Rugby players eat their dead" (true story, 1972
| plane crash, subject of several books, etc. [1])
|
| 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_Fli
| ght_571...
| [deleted]
| edumucelli wrote:
| Many humans do that to other humans, so I do not see how
| different we are from them.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Oh come on.
| bryans wrote:
| The largest spiders are almost universally docile toward
| humans, so your own assumption doesn't really hold water.
| culi wrote:
| most of those babies will probably die on their own anyways.
| If they do survive to adulthood it's only because they
| managed to kill some other bugs. So it'd be a net of less
| total bugs in your house if you just let them be
| mellavora wrote:
| I get rid of them, too. By gently escorting them out a
| window. And, like you, I apologize to them and wish them
| well.
| fullstop wrote:
| I'm the resident "bug remover" at the office and at home,
| since they really don't bother me. I do it, but feel bad
| about putting a spider outside in the middle of the winter.
| johnyzee wrote:
| 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 exercise)
| mkl wrote:
| Much quicker and more convenient is a spider catcher like
| this:
| https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001356203377.html
|
| With that I can easily pick them up and drop them out the
| window or whatever. You can do it at well over arms'
| length too. It doesn't seem to harm them, as there's a
| space within the grabbing cage that they get directed to.
| Small spiders can crawl out between the cage bits but
| usually stay on the end long enough to move them
| elsewhere. Big spiders are fully caught.
| yumraj wrote:
| My favorite is a vacuum. Just use it with the handle
| extension mode and bare floor setting. When you get near
| them, due to the air movement they try to hold on tighter
| to the wall and don't move, which makes it easier.
| freeflight wrote:
| That video ad is something else:
|
| _> "It's fast, easy and eco-friendly!"_
|
| It's a piece of plastic that will be shipped halfway
| around the world, to do what could just as well be done
| by a glass and a bit of cardboard.
|
| It might be fast, easy and particularly _convenient_ ,
| but "eco-friendly" it most certainly ain't.
| hn_go_brrrrr wrote:
| Wrong link?
| mkl wrote:
| Looks right to me. A green and white plastic spider
| catcher. What do you see?
| tzs wrote:
| This could be useful for that [1]. It has a thing to
| catch the creature and a built-in magnifier. The video
| showing how to use it is amusing--those two kids have
| great expressions.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Carson-Quick-Release-Catching-
| Magnifi...
| vector_spaces wrote:
| I used to have extreme arachnophobia, like strip-naked-
| run-screaming-if-I-found-a-spider-on-me level
| arachnophobia. A long time ago I was prescribed
| propranolol for PTSD by a psychiatrist specializing in
| trauma. I hadn't even mentioned my arachnophobia to her
| or any clinician I had seen at that point. It helped me a
| lot of social situations, but the effect was pretty
| subtle.
|
| Anyway, one day, I was hiking with friends, and someone
| pointed out I had a bug on me. I picked it up and
| realized it was a spider -- and then it dawned on me that
| I wasn't afraid of it at all. It was one of the most
| thrilling moments of my life to hold a spider without any
| fear at all. I started seeking out spiders to handle
| them. Even after I stopped taking that medication, the
| effects lasted. Nowadays I love spiders.
|
| I learned years after stopping taking it that this
| medication has been studied both for PTSD and phobias --
| specifically arachnophobia.
|
| Your comment made me think to tell this story because I
| pretty much always attempted to bring spiders outside
| rather than kill them despite my fear. My rational side
| knew that most spiders are harmless, sensitive, and
| highly beneficial creatures. Plus I always hated killing
| anything and still do. But the exposure didn't actually
| reduce my fear of them noticably. And that experience is
| borne out in the research -- exposure therapy doesn't
| seem to be enough for most people
|
| Apparently propranolol is effective because it works on
| memory consolidation -- more or less it helps with
| overwriting old negative memories (more specifically the
| emotional charge that accompanies the memory) with newer
| positive ones.
|
| https://youtu.be/uO8pXtvxAA0?t=1893
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/opinion/sunday/a-drug-
| to-...
| pvaldes wrote:
| People with arachnophobia should remember that 95% of the
| extant spiders are totally unable to pierce the human
| skin. Fangs too weak or short to reach blood capillaries
| and made any real damage, even if they would be poisonous
| doesn't matter. Those that coevolved with spider-eating
| monkeys are the problematic ones.
| crehn wrote:
| I couldn't care less whether the spider is dangerous or
| not.
|
| It's more the erratic, jittery movements of spiders and
| their multitude of fast legs that's off-putting.
|
| Especially when you're taking a dump in a dimly-lit
| outdoor toilet and notice there's a hand-sized huntsman
| spider a few inches from your knees. I have never
| sprinted so fast.
| vector_spaces wrote:
| Yeah, as I mentioned in my post, I _knew_ this rationally
| but it didn 't help my phobia. If phobias could be
| rationalized away I suspect many if not most people who
| have them would overcome them fairly easily
| elcomet wrote:
| So there's still 5% of spiders that can pierce your skin
| and inject stuff? That's not very reassuring
| state_less wrote:
| According to this report, you have roughly 1 in 50
| million chance of death by spider.
|
| https://www.wemjournal.org/article/S1080-6032(97)70944-X/
| pdf
|
| So I wouldn't worry too much about it.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Death doesn't have to be a reason to dislike being bit by
| a spider. A bite from a tiny little brown recluse is no
| laughing matter.
| mikelevins wrote:
| True. A bad bite, anyway. Most bites are not bad. The
| Wikipedia article is informative (https://en.wikipedia.or
| g/wiki/Brown_recluse_spider#Bite).
|
| My understanding is that most people never see a brown
| recluse, even within their natural range. Those who do
| see them probably don't recognize them most of the time,
| because they're not especially big, because from a
| distance they look pretty much like any other brownish
| spider, and beause neither the human nor the spider
| generally want to get close enough to make a positive
| identification possible.
|
| But it so happens that I've seen a lot of them, so I
| offer some trivia about that.
|
| I saw hundreds when I was 12 and my father and brother
| and I were hired by a neighbor to tear down a shack on
| his property. It so happened that there were hundreds of
| recluses in the shack. I know because I was nerdy twelve-
| year-old with a fascination with wildlife and field
| guides, and I had a pretty nice little field guide with a
| good image and description of brown recluses.
|
| I've seen many more of them in the house I live in now.
| I've been in this house for about fifteen years now.
| There are a lot of brown recluses living in it. I've seen
| many dozens of them over the years. The last time my
| daughter came to visit us, she found four or five of them
| during the week she was here. She's a little
| arachnophobic, but not too badly, and the experience
| hasn't diminished her enthusiasm for visiting We expect
| her to be back in a few months.
|
| According to Wikipedia and other sources I've read, they
| rarely bite--generally only when they're being mashed
| against someone's skin hard enough to frighten them but
| not hard enough to kill them. When they do bite, it
| rarely causes any symptoms. When it produces symptoms,
| they're usually minor--most often sores on the skin; less
| often some necrosis of the skin.
|
| The bite _can_ cause much more serious symptoms, but
| that's rare.
|
| I had a bite once living here that might have been from a
| brown recluse. My doctor was skeptical, because the bite
| didn't look quite right. It produced a small, tender sore
| and a really large inflamed area around it. I didn't
| notice it at all until a relative noticed it on my back.
| That's consistent with reports of brown recluse bites:
| most often people don't feel the bite when it happens.
| Their fangs are quite small--usually they aren't able to
| pierce fabric--and the venom itself is painless; it's the
| later effects--if any--that become painful.
|
| At any rate, I and my relatives seem to have reconciled
| ourselves to living with a large infestation of brown
| recluses.
| elcomet wrote:
| House spiders usually cannot live outside. So you're also
| most likely killing them by escorting them outside (I do
| this too btw, because I don't want to crush them, but I
| know that outside is likely not better for them).
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| A fascinating story, thanks for sharing. If you haven't
| already, check out the novel Children of Time by Adrian
| Tchaikovsky.
| obiwan14 wrote:
| Nice story. The interesting part is, if you'd been able to
| "talk" (actually thought transfer) to the spider directly, as a
| few people I know are able to, it wouldn't have needed to do
| all that leg-waving.
| gpderetta wrote:
| Thanks for the great story, that's sound an incredible
| experience!
| lux wrote:
| I had a similar experience with a spider who had made an egg
| sack in a precarious spot along our back door that was
| definitely in hazard's way. I got a stick and a leaf and tried
| to detach and move her setup to a nearby spot that would be
| safer. She did not like that.
|
| At one point in the move, she got left behind and I ended up
| with just the egg sack to move. You could feel the panic and
| protective instinct in her movements. I got her onto the leaf
| and reunited with her eggs on a nearby plant and she quickly
| went to work finding the right spot and securing her sack to
| the underside of one of its leaves.
|
| I watched her there for a while in her new location, and there
| is absolutely more than just instinct at play.
|
| I didn't grow up liking spiders much, but gardening in
| particular has given me a new perspective on them. One measure
| of our garden's health is the amount of spiders we see, keeping
| other would-be pests in check.
| loonster wrote:
| >I watched her there for a while in her new location, and
| there is absolutely more than just instinct at play.
|
| One could also conclude the opposite. What we perceive as
| concious thought or emotion is just instinct.
| culi wrote:
| At that point isn't it a bit a matter of semantics? I do
| agree with your point though. I think the way we think of
| instincts is far too simplistic and lacks an appreciation
| for how complex, adaptive, and context-aware instincts are
| fsloth wrote:
| As a parent I can say that a lot of urges in parenting come
| from somewhere deep and intuitive, rather than as a result
| of some higher level erudition on the situation.
|
| Still, the urge for care ones young, while not necessarily
| very - cerebral? - at least creates a feeling of
| familiarity and connection - ie. empathy. When this empathy
| comes across from an arthropod to a higher mammal it's
| still humbling and awe inspiring, even though it might tell
| more of our autonomous nature than the intellect of the
| arhtropod.
| lux wrote:
| It feels like there's some interplay between
| instinct/emotion and intelligence/decision-making in the
| behaviours we're describing, which I felt was a sign of
| awareness or consciousness.
|
| I wouldn't say what I experienced was much more than
| instinct and making a new web, but the emotional response
| of a mother protecting its young was relatable across
| very different species, which is useful for building
| empathy and respect.
|
| The examples in the article are much more interesting
| from an intelligence standpoint though.
| s5300 wrote:
| > One could also conclude the opposite. What we perceive as
| concious thought or emotion is just instinct.
|
| Pretty sure this is what doctors said as their
| justification for not using anesthetic on babies during
| medical procedures.
|
| "Oh, they're just crying and screaming because baby, duh"
|
| We now look back at that as being quite a barbaric
| practice/way of thinking.
| bryans wrote:
| I had to do the exact same thing once -- the mother ran off
| as I tried to gather her and the sac into a box -- and you
| could see both the panic as she watched the sac being taken
| away, and the relief when she was reunited.
| whatshisface wrote:
| As a counterpoint, how could you possibly see panic on a
| spider's "face?"
| johnny53169 wrote:
| We are all alive in the same way
| hutzlibu wrote:
| There was no mention of "face", I suppose it is about the
| whole body expression.
| mayankkaizen wrote:
| Panic isn't merely a facial expression. It is body
| language, actions and may be some other things.
| ravenstine wrote:
| 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 distances like
| pros.
| Valmar wrote:
| They're relatively smart in that they can quite intelligently
| navigate their environment to best get at prey that might
| otherwise kill them.
|
| Really, all animals are relatively smart (ignoring individual
| differences in a species), in that they have specific skills
| and abilities that allow them to be most effective for their
| biological makeup, and purpose in their respective ecosystems.
|
| We humans are no different in that regard ~ we are relatively
| smart, in that our biological makeups grant us leanings towards
| skills and abilities that other animals don't have.
| downut wrote:
| In our house the rule is all fast and web spiders are removed.
| The jumping spiders and the big lazy floppy guys that hang on
| the ceiling are allies. They are non-aggressive and clearly
| eating something that shouldn't be in the house. My wife keeps
| walls of plants, it's basically a botanical greenhouse on the
| south side of the house. So a lively ecosystem.
|
| 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!
| b0rsuk wrote:
| Another example if incidental evolution:
|
| (European) jay has a yellow ring around its eye. This makes it
| easy to check where a jay is looking. So, unlike many other
| birds, jays pay attention to where you are looking. In an
| experiment, jays would snatch a treat if an assistant's eyes were
| looking elsewhere, but would leave it there if assistant's eyes
| were looking at the treat.
| tdrdt wrote:
| I get tired of reading from webpages like this. -
| Spiders are much smarter than you think - SUBSCRIBE TO OUR
| NEWSLETTER - some text - YOU MAY ALSO LIKE -
| some text - Shutterstock image with a big description
| - ...
|
| Context switching is hard for the brain. Even in readabilty mode
| I get substracted by the image descriptions.
|
| It's a pitty because it's a nice article.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I guess the article is written for spiders, they have no
| problem with context switching since they are so smart.
| imiric wrote:
| Agreed, but be grateful it doesn't have an obnoxious and
| hostile cookie consent form, or is full of ads mixed with the
| content. This is actually a relatively enjoyable website
| compared to similar ones in this category.
| raldi wrote:
| And then they just keep saying over and over:
|
| - Spiders are smarter than you think
|
| - Wow are they smart
|
| - Here's a scientist who says spiders are smart
|
| - A lot of people don't think spiders are smart but they are
|
| They should just cut everything in the article before the part
| where they finally start describing some smart things the
| spiders do.
| kevincox wrote:
| Personally I just closed the tab when the SUBSCRIBE TO OUR
| NEWSLETTER dialog obscured the article. I didn't expect to get
| much value from the content anyways so can't be bothered to
| deal with their crap.
| culi wrote:
| uBlock Origin allows you to filter custom elements on
| webpages. I can zap those elements and next time I visit that
| site I won't have to put up with it. It's game-changing
| although I wish there was a way we could share custom filters
| with others so I don't have to do this for every site each
| time
| peanut_worm wrote:
| SEO has really ruined the internet
| nolok wrote:
| This is not about SEO, this newsletter and you may also like
| serve no purpose for this. It's user acquisition.
| gverrilla wrote:
| Advertising has really ruined the internet
| toast0 wrote:
| SEO gets you in the door, the newsletter gets you coming
| back, and you may also like pays the bills. It's all
| related.
| swayvil wrote:
| Spiders can also get high on marijuana. It's true!
|
| They have the same thc-receptors in their brain as we do.
|
| It follows that they can get baked, enjoy an expanded
| consciousness and benefit from hallucinogenic insights just as we
| humans do.
|
| So get a spider high today.
| andai wrote:
| Interesting... I reckon they need a much smaller dose than us
| though, wouldn't even a single puff lead to an uncomfortably
| intense trip?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Not only marijuana!
|
| Spiders on LSD:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uvmt2hxRFs
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| Spiders have a higher
| https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Encephalization_quotient than humans.
| Brains are so important, some species babies have brains
| extending into their stomachs and even their legs.
|
| IMHO the big barrier for spider intelligence and technology is
| their solitary nature.
| obiwan14 wrote:
| Fact is, most other living things are much smarter than we give
| them credit for.
| perth wrote:
| Turns out being too lazy to clean up spider corpses after I
| killed them actually was like putting out heads on pikes as a
| warning to future spiders entering my home.
| falsaberN1 wrote:
| I was unpacking some computers we rented to a winery a few weeks
| ago, and all the boxes came with a different type of spider. My
| assistant is a young intern and just insisted on killing them
| (grave mistake, he got some sort of allergic reaction from that
| stupidity), while I just preferred to take them out the window
| and let them go (I don't want to hurt them but I don't want them
| to take residence inside our storage machines, cleaning the
| webbing is barely registrable as work, but I don't want them to
| get crushed with the fans or something. Guess I'm a softie at
| heart.) Anyway just that simple action shows you a lot about
| spiders. Some types just climbed on my hand and took the trip to
| the windowsill without any complaints, or they just somehow
| climbed off on their own with that parachute of theirs at the
| exact time I was intending to place them down. Others are more
| reluctant and they have to be running in a direction for them to
| climb. However, the most interesting of them was a jumping spider
| that was trying to make its home inside a crappy HP office
| computer.
|
| I had never seen a jumping spider in real life, and its behavior
| was really fascinating. It refused to climb on my hand until the
| very end, and would wander around, like checking out the place,
| in a way that looked more like a very weird lost puppy with too
| many legs, than a bug. After a couple tries it attempted to
| resist further attempts by putting a recognizable warning stance,
| so I instead tried to tap my finger on the table to make it run
| on the opposite direction. After a couple taps it must have
| realized my bluff and just stared at the finger, confident it
| won't get hit. In the end it kinda reluctantly climbed my hand
| and before I was even near the window, it just jumped off like
| greased lightning and landed exactly where I wanted to put it
| (not literally, but it did land on the windowsill neatly), paced
| around a bit scanning the environment, then parachuted down to
| the street.
|
| I always considered spiders relatively intelligent, specially
| compared to pests like the mosquito, whose only smarts seem to
| involve picking the worst time to show up, but otherwise behave
| like a crappy biological robot (the toy type not even the
| industrial type). But the way that jumping spider moved and
| behaved reminded me a lot more of how mammals and birds behave
| when put in an unknown place and being bothered by a human. I
| wonder if there's some relation to their eyesight. I wonder if
| that increases their awareness of what is what. Surely its brain
| has to be a bit more developed for visual processing, so perhaps
| that development has side effects in just making them smarter
| overall?
|
| I could be falling into the usual trapping of humanizing its
| behavior, but it really seemed like I was dealing with a very
| weird-looking mouse or bird than an arachnid. It surely gave the
| most resistance out of all the spiders I encountered, which just
| happily climbed my hand and took the train to exitville, but that
| little bugger seemed to be aware of all the standard bug-herding
| tricks. I even wonder if it only allowed me to take it near the
| window because it decided it was where it wanted to go after
| scanning the environment enough. It might not have _known_ I was
| taking it towards the window, but it seemed to realize that
| whatever I was doing, I was giving it a vantage point to reach
| the window with a jump given the direction I tried to take it in
| previous attempts before it escaped, which perhaps indicates some
| degree of abstract thinking?
|
| I'm honestly fascinated about this, so if any of you is an
| entomologist or arachnid expert I'd like to know a more educated
| opinion. If I recall correctly jumping spiders are active hunters
| (as opposed to passive hunters like web spiders), so it'd make
| sense if they had some ability to think ahead and make basic
| plans. I don't recognize the specific species this spider was,
| but it was around the size of my thumb nail, light-ish brown with
| no particular markings and the first segment of its legs was much
| wider (around triple the width) than the rest. The boxes came
| from the northwestern region of Spain, somewhere in Galicia. I
| thought it was kinda cute even if its head looked like a weird
| tank turret.
| fsloth wrote:
| Another qurious work describing non-vertebrate cognition was the
| recent document "My octopus teacher". As a person without deep
| experience of them and while octopus are known to be smart that
| document kind of rubs in your face what it means to have such
| level of talent when they live in their natural habitat instead
| of an aquarium pool performing party tricks.
| meowface wrote:
| And imagine if they could live for 80+ years instead of only 3
| - 5. Their unusually high intelligence may be related to things
| like continuous RNA editing. If all of their adaptation
| mechanisms could evolve to occur over a much longer timespan,
| who knows what they might become capable of.
|
| Human intelligence develops over a long period; imagine if it
| all had to be squeezed into 3 - 5 years.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| If you enjoyed "My octopus teacher" you might also find this
| book interesting:
|
| "OTHER MINDS: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent
| Life" Godfrey-Smith
|
| The last common ancestor between humans and octopus was a
| flatworm. So their intelligence has evolved comletely
| separately from ours in a totally different environment. So
| they are truly an alien intelligence, here on earth.
| javajosh wrote:
| Does anyone know what the theory is about octupuses being
| solitary? It seems like a strange place to end up for highly
| intelligent creatures. (Although, now that I think about it
| being smart and specializing in/in charge of your own private
| hunting ground doesn't really sound like such a bad way to
| live.)
| Cybiote wrote:
| Sociality is not the only (and probably not an initial)
| driver of the evolution of intelligence in animals.
| Ecological and particularly foraging competency in less
| predictable environments is another and likely more primary
| stimulator for intelligence.
|
| Coordinating complex movements is another one that appears
| to drive intelligence.
|
| Vulnerability in a hostile environment. Together with
| foraging and coordinating complex movement plans, it is
| hypothesized that predation pressure when combined with the
| loss of their shell drove cephalopod intelligence. Trading
| defense for agility and int would also have provided a
| competitive advantage when competing for prey.
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