I have not been advertising this aspect of my research, but I have been striving towards developing a Perfectly Spherical Spider. Here’s my first success.
What good is a spherical spider, you might ask. The benefits are legion. For one, think of their utility in physics problems.
Actually, what happened is that I’ve started trying to breed the spiders with my impoverished bunch of small, young males, and because I was concerned about preventing nuptial cannibalism, I gave the lovely females a big banquet on their wedding night, and boy did they eat. It may have worked against me, because a) this female hasn’t budged in a couple of days, and I don’t think she can move, and b) the male I put in her cage gave every appearance of being fascinated and terrified, and orbited her at a distance of 5-10 cm. I’m hoping he might have darted in at some point over the weekend and done the deed, but who knows? I’ve pulled him out now and will place him with a possibly less intimidating female.
Isn’t she lovely, though?
Physicists: they make silken draglines, you could probably use spherical spiders in pendulum problems, too. You can’t do that with spherical cows!
High-fructose corn syrup again?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow
ZOMG I love you.
Of course you can do pendulum problems with spherical cows. You just need a large crate and a length of string with a one-tonne breaking strain.
If you can factor them into trolley car problems, you can win the love of philosophers too!
@Marcus:
Funny, I had also been thinking of how spherical spiders might be useful to Philippa Foot-Myers.
Rubenesque! I guess they built their own divan’s to recline on. Venus on the fly carcass…
I think spherical spiders are too small/light to use in pendulum problems, air resistance becomes an issue. If you want to do this I would recommend you either breed spiders who can survive in a vacuum, or breed spiders the size of cows.
We’ve got transgenic spider goats. Just a matter of time.
I just heard the tale of a young girl’s hamster who had been huddled in the corner of it’s wire cage for a couple days, not moving to eat or drink. Her mom took the critter to the vet to see what was wrong. Taken out of the cage, the critter immediately began moving around and eagerly ate any food offered. “Has the hamster done anything unusual lately,” the vet asked.
“Well, he got loose the other day, and we found him under the fridge.”
Then the vet looked closer and noticed something hidden in the hamster’s cheeks. It was a fridge magnet.
@Artor — That poor hammie!