[HN Gopher] Scientists Uncover a Shady Web of Online Spider Sales
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Scientists Uncover a Shady Web of Online Spider Sales
Author : Petiver
Score : 36 points
Date : 2022-05-19 22:25 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| hekisek wrote:
| Real life animal crossing
| assbuttbuttass wrote:
| I keep several spiders as pets, so I'm a bit biased.
|
| The greatest threat to these rare species isn't the pet trade,
| it's rather the destruction of their habitat. You'll find that
| most tarantula keepers prefer to buy captive-bred specimens, both
| for conservation reasons, but also due to risk of parasites.
|
| Mexico handles this issue better than most countries: they let
| licensed breeders breed these animals in captivity and export
| them for the pet trade. This strategy reduces the pressure on the
| wild spiders, while not banning it entirely (which just leads to
| poaching)
| setgree wrote:
| Do you find that they interact with you/recognize you?
| [deleted]
| bryans wrote:
| I can't speak toward tarantulas, but some jumping spiders
| definitely recognize, acknowledge and seemingly even
| appreciate individuals. Honestly, they sometimes look excited
| to see you as a dog would -- though that's likely just a
| basic recognition that you act as their food delivery
| service. They even appear to understand the concept (if not
| reasoning) behind their enclosure.
|
| Some folks who spend a lot of time with their jumping spiders
| will actually leave the enclosure door open, as the spider
| will happily stay there unless it lacks water or food for a
| long period of time, and typically only leaves when its human
| stops by. It will come to the door when you get close, jump
| on your hand and hang out very calmly (some people even go on
| walks with them), then gladly jump back into the enclosure
| when you're done and patiently wait for you to bring it food.
| haxiomic wrote:
| When hearing annecdotes about the intelligence of jumping
| I'm always reminded of and David Attenborough's narration
| of Portia
|
| https://youtu.be/UDtlvZGmHYk
|
| Well worth the watch if it's new to you! Quite the
| perspective shifter
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > they sometimes look excited to see you as a dog would
|
| What does that look like?
| erickhill wrote:
| +1 for the clever title.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I get the sense that something has changed about the NY Times
| approach to journalism. Instead of uncovering, breaking, and
| headlining news - what they were famous for and world leaders at,
| 'all the news that's fit to print' - it's long explanatory
| articles and narratives, and lifestyle stuff, plus their take on
| well-known stories but not so revelatory. It's less inflammatory,
| which is valuable, but I don't feel like it's _news_ - shining
| light on the dark corners of power - which is an enormous loss. I
| 'm not sure how to characterize it because I'm not sure what they
| are doing.
|
| Has anyone else noticed? It seems like it's been going on since
| last autumn, at least.
| bloodyplonker22 wrote:
| They realized that the investigative journalism type of news
| was too costly and produced smaller returns compared to this
| type of lifestyle "news". In addition, a lot of investigative
| journalism cannot even be reported on anymore because of their
| newly acquired woke bias. The NY times used to be a
| centrist/moderate source of news, but now wokeism has taken
| over and it's really not the same credible publication it was
| 30 years ago.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > They realized that the investigative journalism type of
| news was too costly and produced smaller returns compared to
| this type of lifestyle "news".
|
| That's been true for a long time. Do you have any evidence of
| this decision at the NYT?
|
| > wokeism
|
| I think that words like that are inflammatory (as is well
| known). Could you use more specific language and is there
| evidence? I know that's repeated a a lot in a certain
| segment, but reptition has no relationship with truth - facts
| (sometimes from investigative reporters) do. Thus chemistry
| not alchemy.
| [deleted]
| RC_ITR wrote:
| I mean the timeline makes things tight, but maybe you're just
| becoming desensitized?
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/2022-pulitzer-airstrikes-g...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/31/us/police-traffic-stops-k...
|
| Like sure neither of those are 'Watergate' takedowns of
| individuals or organizations, but unfortunately, Trump killed
| that kind of journalism.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| My impression is not simply defined and hard to provide
| evidence for, I admit.
|
| > Trump killed that kind of journalism
|
| How did he possibly kill that kind of journalism?
|
| Maybe that attitude explains it, in some way.
| [deleted]
| jppope wrote:
| Wow. I literally thought this was about web crawling
| technology...
| [deleted]
| debdut wrote:
| dang me too, I thought web spiders too
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Instead it was literally about spiders.
| obscuren wrote:
| Did they use a web crawler to find this?
| missblit wrote:
| Yes. From the article:
|
| > To learn more about the scale of the global arachnid trade,
| the authors of the new paper used a handful of search terms --
| "spider," "scorpion," "arachnid" -- in nine languages to
| identify websites that might be selling the animals.
| westcort wrote:
| My key takeaways:
|
| * An analysis of online sales listings turned up more than 1,200
| species of spiders, scorpions and other arachnids; just 2 percent
| of them are subject to international trade regulations, the
| researchers report
|
| * Fish and Wildlife Service trade database included only 267
| arachnid species, the scientists found
|
| * The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of
| Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, which regulates the international
| trade of a variety of plant and animal species, had just 30
| species in its trade database
|
| * Nearly 200 of the species that have been discovered since 2000
| are already being traded; dozens were available within a year or
| two of first being described, the researchers found
|
| * In another recent study, researchers at Cornell University
| found multiple species of endangered tarantulas being sold online
|
| * "Arachnids are being massively traded," Dr. * Hughes said. *
| "And it seems to be going completely under the radar."
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(page generated 2022-05-20 23:01 UTC)