Remember when your mother or friend introduced you to someone of the opposite sex with rather plain looks, but "with great personality"?
Now it is scientists who tell us that spiders have interesting personalities.
More than that, some species of spiders have an unlimited motherly devotion, as you shall see.
I have a special affection for spiders.
I like their engineering talent in building those amazingly strong and beautiful webs. And their trapping skills. And I admire them for their self-sufficiency. They mind their own business and seem to need no one. Although not all spiders are solitary.
I like their engineering talent in building those amazingly strong and beautiful webs. And their trapping skills. And I admire them for their self-sufficiency. They mind their own business and seem to need no one. Although not all spiders are solitary.
My most unforgettable spider is the one I read about in the book Krakatoa by Simon Winchester. He tells of how after the Krakatoa volcano blew its top and left utter devastation all around, a scientist travelled to an ash-covered island in the middle of it all, and what did he see? A little spider that had been blown over there by the wind, busy building her web to catch lunch. She was the only sign of life on that entire moonscape. I'd like to think that if she was unable to catch anything she allowed herself to be transported away by the wind to some other more propitious spot.
"Krakatoa", page 351: It was nestled between two rocks, on an otherwise arid spit of gray and dusty land. This was the very first living thing that could with certainty be said to have appeared after the catastrophe: and it was a microscopic spider. Significantly, and with a nice symbolism, this strange pioneer of the renovation was busy spinning its web! The lonely little spider was hoping that it would eventually be lucky enough to catch a fly. The arachnid's optimism was admirable.
GROSS STUFF ALERT!
Stop reading right here if you're the squeamish kind.
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WIRED.COM - Researchers say their findings support the idea that spiders have personalities. Sure, they’re not as complex as human personalities, but they’re defined by behavior differences that are consistent over time and context. They tested whether the division of labor was related to personality in the social spiders Stegodyphus sarasinorum.
S. sarasinorum live in large colonies that can include more than 200 individuals. They like it hot and dry, and are found in shrubby areas in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.
In addition to being among the relatively few social spider species, S. sarasinorum also display a curious trait called suicidal maternal care. It’s as cheerful as it sounds: After a few weeks of mothering, female spiders allow themselves to be cannibalized by their offspring. They start kind of liquefying their body from inside. The babies crawl on top of these females and start biting them and suck out the juices. The adult females sit still and let them do that.
That particular drama plays out in S. Sarasinorum nests, which are sticky silk balls woven into trees and spiny shrubs. Radiating outward from the main residential area are two-dimensional webs used for prey capture. When an insect lands in the web, the whole apparatus vibrates, prompting several of the small, half-inch-long spiders to hurry out and claim their prize, which they drag back in for everyone to enjoy.
Read more - http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/07/social-spiders/
RELATED
Spiders use electromagnetism to catch prey - http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2013/07/spiders-use-electromagnetism-to-catch.html
Top ten scariest spiders - with pictures
http://www.earthrangers.com/wildwire/top-10/top-ten-scariest-spiders/
Link to this post - http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2013/07/spiders-have-personalities-not-that-we.html
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