I collected my first spider egg sac of the summer — see, that means summer is finally here — and I got to load up the egg incubator.
Some of you might protest that that’s a device design for chicken eggs, but that’s just what Big Chicken wants you to think. It’s calibrated for 28°C and 65% humidity, which is perfect for spiders, and I also bought some decorative plastic ovoids from a craft store that might, from a distance, look a bit like chicken eggs, but I’m putting spider egg sacs in them.
I’m just saying, next time you crack an egg for your breakfast, you might be surprised at what comes swarming out.
“I’m just saying, next time you crack an egg for your breakfast, you might be surprised at what comes swarming out.”
I actually like spiders but that idea makes me glad I eat mostly vegan. ;-)
Part of the fun of science is coming up with creative and more importantly, inexpensive ways to get things done. The imager on one of our telescopes at the university’s observatory doesn’t have a filter carousel so nominally can’t take colour images. We discovered that theatrical gels come in sizes large enough to cover the entire half-metre aperture of the instrument. $50 into this experiment we get not bad colour images out of the beast.
Yeah, this incubator was under $100, and it’s perfect for spiders.
Looks like a high-tech pill dispenser. You separate them out by day and time and when the time comes to take them, the dispenser fires them at you. :D
Voice of Peter Graves: “Your assignment, should you choose to accept it”
is to use the incubator to breed your Army of Giant Mutant Magat Eating Spiders. We have a list of food items for them. We are sure you have a list of candidates, too. Do you think they would like to eat a ‘ham’?
PZ wrote: “I’m just saying, next time you crack an egg for your breakfast, you might be surprised at what comes swarming out.”
I reply: given the massive infection of industrial egg farms in scarizona, two things come to mind.
1) soon there will only be tariff priced eggs in scarizona stores, if any at all.
2) see comment @5
Do your plastic egg-shaped ovoids have holes for air to travel through them, or did you have to use a pin vise?
They came with holes. The holes are just the right size to stop adults, but spiderlings will have no problem escaping through them.
We need bigger incubators, the size needed for those luminiscent orbs Nostromo found at Zeta Retculi.
Shermanj @ 5
You want to do a Mars Attacks on the White House? I’m in!