Uh-oh. I just submitted my first grant application (a small, in-house grant to do pilot studies) for spider research. This might be getting serious.
In more routine news, I added a new fellow to my stable today: Larry. He’s now savoring a meal before I throw him to the loving mercies of the lady spiders.
In case you were curious about how to identify spider sex, I’ll explain below the fold.
It is so easy. In zebrafish, it’s all about subtle differences in size and color — gold vs. silver shading. Or you can put them on the scope and look at the male’s intromittent organ, but they don’t much like that. With spiders, you just look for the great big mustache: the enlarged palpal bulbs at the ends of the pedipalps, which, when I look at the little guys with a hand lens, look like prominent, dark swellings on their face. Like this:
Also, all spider sex is oral sex. The males load up their face with semen — it’s sort of like masturbating and then slathering the semen on their jaws — and then they jump on the females and stuff their big ol’ pedipalps into the epigyne (the female genitalia). That, and that the males are about half the size of the females, makes them easy to spot.
Now you know more than you ever wanted.
It’s been a good day for spider hunting! Two new additions: Betty and Fred, who are now busy getting it on in the lab. I think I know what we’re going to name the next pair.
Also, all credit goes to Mary, who has been getting mildly obsessive about prowling the garage, looking for new spiders to add to the team.
Wrong! I can use this in a novel!
By which I mean have it be ancillary information that never actually gets used or mentioned because I don’t write that kind of stuff.
This is off topic, but I’ve been trying to find the article that PZ Myers linked to a LONG time ago about a professor who had let Jordan Peterson live in his house for some months. This professor concluded that he should have seen the warning signs and shouldn’t have supported this guy. Can anyone here give me the link?
By the way, you guys might enjoy this excerpt from Maps of Meaning.
I dreamed I saw my maternal grandmother sitting by the bank of a swimming pool, which was also a river. Her genital region was exposed dimly. It had the appearance of a thick mane of hair. She was stroking herself absentmindedly. She walked over to me with a handful of pubic hair compacted into something resembling a large artist’s paintbrush. She pushed this at my face. I raised my arm several times to deflect her hand. Finally, unwilling to hurt her or interfere with her any further, I let her have her way. She stroked my face with the brush gently and said, like a child, isn’t it soft?
This is off topic, but I’ve been trying to find the article that PZ Myers linked to a LONG time ago about a professor who had let Jordan Peterson live in his house for some months. This professor concluded that he should have seen the warning signs and shouldn’t have supported this guy. Can anyone here give me the link?
By the way, you guys might enjoy this excerpt from Maps of Meaning.
“I dreamed I saw my maternal grandmother sitting by the bank of a swimming pool, which was also a river. Her genital region was exposed dimly. It had the appearance of a thick mane of hair. She was stroking herself absentmindedly. She walked over to me with a handful of pubic hair compacted into something resembling a large artist’s paintbrush. She pushed this at my face. I raised my arm several times to deflect her hand. Finally, unwilling to hurt her or interfere with her any further, I let her have her way. She stroked my face with the brush gently and said, like a child, isn’t it soft?”
It’s not always that simple, in my experience, especially if you’re examining a singular spider rather than two spiders (male and female) of the same species – because of course some spider species have bigger/different pedipalps than others.
It’s funny that we talk about “spiders” as if they were all one animal, when really one spider could be as distant from another as a human is from a lemur.
Anyway, please post more spider pictures, I love spiders. Post some jumping spider pictures, that usually changes a few arachnophobe minds. Everyone loves jumping spiders.
Au contraire, this now tells me all that I will ever need to woo a human female. After all, aren’t spiders just lobsters under the skin?
Everything is lobsters.
There is still one question I have been unable to find an answer to, but I’m sure it is species specific. Tarantulas for instance create a sperm package, and use their palps to place it in the female. They can only mate twice. because they only have two palps. I’m wondering if this is common, or if other spider males are capable of mating more than twice, or a few times.
There seems to be pairing happening with my common house spiders. If I find a female in a web, there is always a male making his web either right next to her, or in close proximity.
What species have you turned into your own arachnid peepshow?
Are the next couple going to be Barney and Wilma?
I researched the tarantulas a bit more. Apparently the males tend to die after reaching sexual maturity not due to mating, but because their mature palps get stuck when they attempt to molt. Some females can live for decades.
It is the australian redback that will feed himself to the female after the second palp is inserted.
argentata @2
I positively hate spiders, but those dancing spiders are just too fucking cute.
The idea of having to search for spiders is very foreign to me these days. My apt complex has wood shingle siding, and man is it a spider heaven. The outer walls are ALWAYS covered in webs, regardless when you cleaned it last. Spiders everywhere. If I leave my bike propped on the wall for a few minutes and bring it inside, within a short period, the thing is covered in webs. My car’s rear view mirrors have multiple live-in spiders that travel with me to work (I clean the webs off, and they are back by the time I head home).
When I first moved into the place, I thought about asking to get pet control out there. Then I quickly realized that if this many spiders can live in such a small area, they must be eating well. I have decided they are housemates, and they pay their rent doing pest control.
Intromittent organ? I have one of those. Sometimes it works and sometime it doesn’t.
The mildly deranged penguin again reminds people and the horde that poopyhead’s “microphotography” is misleading. He’s actually using a superdooper Hubble. Those cute “little” baby spiders are roughly the size of Mars’ moons, Saturn’s moonlets, asteroids, that sort of scale… the adults are, well, ever hear of Dyson spheres? Those are their webs.
Is Betty and Fred a mistake or a deliberate act of adultery?
When I was an aircraft mechanic, I would do the daily (sometimes several times daily) inspection of our 707 freighter after it came back from a flight, usually coming down from altitudes that could be as high as 42,000 feet. If there was still a significant amount of fuel in the wings and the humidity was high sometimes the bottom of the wing would frost over as soon as it landed because the fuel inside was still way below freezing – it had cold-soaked during the time spent at altitude.
Many times, in less than an hour after landing (could have been longer and maybe I’m mis-remembering the timeframe), I would notice the tops of the main landing gear tires would be crisscrossed with spider webs. Our airplane’s parking area was on a vast ramp of concrete & asphalt far from any vegetation at Madrid’s major airport, so I find it hard to imagine they walked out there and went to work on the tires. They must have been stowing away somewhere in the airframe and came out when it warmed up, and it would be quite warm on the black rubber tires after landing.
But how could they survive the low atmospheric pressure and freezing temperatures found at high altitude?
P.S. – jumping spiders will chase a laser pointer!
Hmmm someone else apparently likes spiders.
We know Dr Myers was at the theatre, so he’s off the suspect list. (Actually it was an inside job.)
PZ posted the simple headline “Welcome, Larry!” and I immediately perked up and started scanning the sidebar for a new author in the FtB horde!
Whoever said science isn’t sexy?