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Don’t run away, Meat Shield. It’s a hundred experience points, yours for the taking. Just keep his attention while we slip around behind him.
-via Super Punch | Artist’s Website
Afraid of spiders? Maybe it’s because of all those stories you’ve heard about their creepy ways. Some of those stories hold no water, according to science writer Kim Hosey. She’s got a good list of busted spider myths.
The daddy long-legs does not “have the most potent venom to humans, but its mouth is too small to bite humans.” They’re not venomous. Still, how would we test this, exactly? Extract the venom and kill a bunch of people on purpose?
No spider ever laid eggs in someone’s skin, mouth, or beehive hairdo. Spiders are not waiting in airplane toilet seats to bite your butt.
Millipedes do not have a thousand legs. If it’s roundish and has two pairs of legs per segment, it’s a millipede.
For the love of god, it’s venomous. Poisonous is when it’s ingested or inhaled. Venom is injected into your bloodstream or deeper tissues. Most venom isn’t even poisonous. And I am picturing you eating spiders when you say they’re poisonous.
Read more at Arizona Writer. Link -via Not Exactly Rocket Science
Researchers at the Hannover Medical School in Germany have developed artificial skin made from spider silk. When formed into a fine mesh, the silk from the golden silk orb weaver spider (left) can be grafted onto the human body:
The researchers found that human skin cells placed on these meshes could flourish, given proper nurturing with nutrients, warmth and air. They were able to cultivate the two main skin cell types, keratinocytes and fibroblasts, into tissue-like patterns resembling epidermis, the outermost layer of skin, and dermis, the layer of living tissue below the epidermis that contains blood capillaries, nerve endings, sweat glands, hair follicles and other structures.
Link -via Nerdcore | Photo via Flickr user leppyone used under Creative Commons license
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Not all spiders are dangerous, but those that are can be pretty scary! The good news is that the most venomous spiders are not found in one place, but are spread all over the globe. The bad news is that there’s probably at least one of these species on your continent! Pictured is the Fringed Ornate Tarantula (which sounds like a home decor item). Learn about all ten spiders at Environmental Graffiti. Link
Spiders Are Wonderful is a story by Toby Vok, labeled as non-fiction for children age 4-6. So I didn’t expect much, until I got to the page you see here. The tale veers off into a delightfully scary direction after that point. Link -via My Own Private Book Club
The floods in Pakistan devastated not only the human population of that country, but much of its fauna. Many spiders survived only by crowding into trees, producing pictures like those you see above. Duncan Geere of Wired UK explains:
With more than a fifth of the country submerged, millions of spiders climbed into trees to escape the rising floodwaters. The water took so long to recede, the trees became covered in a cocoon of spiderwebs. The result is an eerie, alien panorama, with any vegetation covered in a thick mass of webbing. (You can see images from the region in the gallery linked below.)
However, the unusual phenomenon may be a blessing in disguise. Britain’s department for international development reports that areas where the spiders have scaled the trees have seen far fewer malaria-spreading mosquitos than might be expected, given the prevalence of stagnant, standing water.
Article and Gallery via Geekosystem | Photo: UK Department for International Development
Previously: Giant Spider Web
By Larry Armstrong for USA TODAY
The yellow sac spider likes to stay warm and it apparently like to go zoom, zoom. This has led to the recall of 52,000 2009-2010 Mazda 6 vehicles in the United States. The spiders weave their webs in the evaporative canister vent line, restricting the line and causing pressure to build up which could cause the fuel tank to crack and leak. Who would have guessed that in a fight between a car and a dime sized spider the arachnid would come out on top? If you drive the four-cylinder version you can take it to a dealer who will inspect the vent tubes, remove webs and insert a spring to keep the spiders out.
Three years ago, Alex linked to a story about a spider web that was 200 yards wide. It was made by many spiders sharing the same web. Scientists recently discovered a spider in Madagascar that can individually create a web 80 feet across. It’s called the Darwin’s bark spider, and makes the largest orb-type spider webs in the world:
It is so big that it can catch 30 or more prey insects at any one time.
Darwin’s bark spider weaves what experts call an orb web, the most familiar spider web design.[...]
“They build their web with the orb suspended directly above a river or the water body of a lake, a habitat that no other spider can use,” says Professor Ingi Agnarsson, the director of the Museum of Zoology at the University of Puerto Rico, in San Juan who made the discovery with colleagues.
That allows the spiders to catch insects flying over water, and explains why the web is so long.
To reach from one bank to the other, the spider must weave anchoring lines of up to 25m.
Because the web must sustain a comparatively enormous weight over broad distances, researchers are particularly interested in how the web is designed and the composition of the silk. It’s 100% tougher than any known silk and is the toughest biological substance known.
Link via Ace of Spades HQ | Photo: M. Kunter
Hey, don’t eat that tarantula just yet! Apparently, when mixed with rice wine, these spiders make a good cocktail:
The arachnophobe’s nightmare is made using rice wine, jack fruit and a tarantula – which many Cambodians believe can help your heart and work as an aphrodisiac.[...]
The trade for spiders as food has been in effect since the 1970′s in Cambodia – but only very recently have tourists been finding a way to see where the spiders are hunted in the nearby countryside.
Link via Glenn Reynolds | Photo: Tom Whitby/Getty
Many people find spiders terrifying, but they have a convenient shape for a robot as many legs radiating from a central core gives a mobile robot stability. Wired has a gallery of 13 robotic spiders built for all kinds of purposes from art to war to toys. Pictured is the Military Micro-Spider Bot, created for spying on the enemy. Link
To give them their proper name, stabilimenta are quite literally web decorations. Some spiders, once their webs are complete, choose to further enhance them. While there are competing theories as to why this is done, the jury is still out for the final verdict. They do, however, look fantastic.
In the early nineteen fifties the children’s author EB White was struggling to come up with ideas for his second novel. One day he noticed the additional decorations on the web of a Banded Garden Spider – much like the one above. It was from this natural inspiration that he would come up with the idea of a writing spider and would go on to write one of the world’s most cherished children’s books, Charlotte’s Web. Although anecdotal this story serves as a fine introduction to this most peculiar of insect habits.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.
The robotics lab at Ben Gurion University in Israel has created a robot that walks on the ceiling. SpiderBot has suction cups tethered to the ends of its four legs. It aims a leg at a spot on the ceiling, then shoots the cup at it. Then it reels itself toward the spot, releases a rear leg’s suction cup, and slowly repeats the process. Video at the link.
Bowen, Australia, a town about 700 miles from Brisbane, is seeing in influx of eastern tarantulas, also known as “bird-eating spiders”. Dozens of spiders have crawled out of gardens and have made their way into public areas of the town.
While not deadly like other Australian spiders, the eastern tarantulas are venomous and can grow up to 6cm (2.4in) long with a leg span of 16cm (6.3in). Despite their common name, they do not eat birds, but can kill a dog with one bite, and make a human very sick.
They are also known as whistling or barking spiders for the hissing noise they emit when they are disturbed or aggravated at close range.
Audy Geiszler, who runs a local pest control service, caught one this week that more than covered his hand after he killed it.
“I think I’m going to mount this one in acrylic to show people how big it is. It’ll make a great paperweight.”
36 hours after drowning, wolf spiders were able to revive themselves and suffered no ill effects, scientists discovered recently.
A study at the University of Rennes in France found that wolf spiders died after 24 to 36 hours of being immersed in water. But when the scientists came back to weigh the dead spiders, they found them alive again. Apparently wolf spiders can put themselves into comas and shut down the metabolic processes that do not require air. Arachnologist Julien Pétillon says,
“There could be many other species that could this this that we do not know of yet.”
(image credit: Sonia Dourlot )
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.
Ugly Overload normally focuses on ugly critters, but the face of this little guy won me over. He looks like he’s smiling. Jumping spiders are really interesting and don’t worry, they’re too small to hurt you.
I’m not particularly scared of bugs or spiders, but this thing gives me the heebie jeebies. Assassin spiders have really long necks, so they can attack from a distance, which they do by impaling their prey with the barbed ends of their jaws. Creepy. Sounds like a total horror movie to me, but at two millimeters long, they are completely harmless to humans.
