It’s the first day of the semester: first class, first lab, and coincidentally, first day of interviewing candidates for a chemistry position. It all begins at 8:30 this morning, and doesn’t stop until May.
I’m going to need some hard spider videos to get my day started.
I’ve never encountered a spider who would lay eggs in a person’s hair, so you’re special, Doris!
They’ve got the best spiders. Here’s an Australian broadcast about spider murder methods, full of stories about gymnastic assassins and netcasting ogres. It was making me jealous, especially given that the spiders here are all huddled under a thick blanket of snow and aren’t coming out for another four or five months.
As if that wasn’t enough, they’ve also got Christmas spiders! There are colorful spiders that are scurrying around right now called Christmas spiders or jewel spiders, and they are gorgeous. Now I want some Christmas ornaments based on these spiders for my tree. Unfortunately, if you search for “Christmas spider ornaments”, you get ornaments that look nothing like Christmas spiders. What do those look like? I’ve hidden one picture below the fold.
I’ve been telling everyone for a long time to be nice to the spiders in your home. I wish to assure you that it’s not because my spider horde has taken control and telling me what to say. Promise.
That’s where I expect this photo of unknown provenance was taken.
If you can already guess what kind of large critter you’d find in Australia might be, you don’t have to look below the fold.
But not because it’s a giant spider — that’s just cute — but because it’s yellow.
(For those who don’t know their comic book lore, Green Lantern’s weakness was the color yellow. I know, it’s dumb.)
So much spider biology in this one. Look, gastrulation! Segmentation! Sex!
What more could you ask for?
We have a couple of terraria with Bold Jumping spiders — they’re fairly large, they got big cute eyes, they’re usually active — but the biggest of our jumpers retired to a silken refugium last month. We decided to check on her and winkle her out, and discovered the sad truth.
She was dead.
She did, however, leave a legacy — a big egg sac full of squirmy baby bold jumpers. Take a look!
