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How Cool is This? (hint: Extremely Cool)


Jerakeen

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I find it really hard to believe that the spiders actually know what they're doing, but this is astonishingly complex behavior for pure instinct. Or maybe it's just the result that's astonishing to a human, and it's no stranger than the myriad of other survival strategies that evolution has produced.

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Bah, I always knew spiders would be the new lords and masters of the world, and I think Jeff will be their trusted servant.

Or maybe it's just the result that's astonishing to a human, and it's no stranger than the myriad of other survival strategies that evolution has produced.

I will go with this, as a hobby I have spent some time to observe the behavior of insects and similar things including ants, spiders, scorpions,grasshoppers and very rarely snakes(and obviously mosquitoes) and while I haven't discovered anything that great, they do some pretty cool things.

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Or makes you wonder how much more deadly they can get.

 

 

 

I want you all to promise me something. If you ever see a spider, I want you to smash it dead, alright? Don't just put it in a little cup and take it back outside, because It'll just find its way back in. Kill them. Kill them all.

 

Yes. With fire.

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I want you all to promise me something. If you ever see a spider, I want you to smash it dead, alright? Don't just put it in a little cup and take it back outside, because It'll just find its way back in. Kill them. Kill them all.

What if it says : "You are cute"?

(In a rather high pitched voice I mean)

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Yes, extremely cool.

 

 

@actaeon- you've been here how long, and you're just now realizing? :p

 

 

EDIT: By the time I caught the typo, it had already posted, and the mobile page wouldn't let me edit it. It's fixed now. Jeez. :p

 


The Silent Assassin is testing this fancy new ipb for mobile thing. So far, the autocorrect isn't too bad, but the lack of formatting options is a little frustrating.

Also, it needs more pie.

Edited by Lenar Labs
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I'd be slack-jawed with astonishment at a spider's ability to accomplish this without any real cognitive capacity, but single cells can accomplish astonishing feats of engineering (like producing an entire fetus!) so I'm just regularly astonished.

 

—Alorael, who has to work harder on training his pet spider. Just spelling out messages in a web isn't going to impress anyone anymore.

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The vast majority of spiders are harmless. I can understand the creepy-crawly response, but an arachnophobe wanting them all dead is like a clastrophobe calling for the destruction of all caves.

I think a "clastrophobe" would be afraid of destruction/breaking things, so one would want quite the opposite of that.

Edited by &#958
Admittedly, the root is not quite right. But it's close enough.
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At first I thought this was a hoax. In fact, I'm still a little dubious, but if true this is incredible.

 

http://www.wired.com...uilding-spider/

 

Warning to the sensitive: This link leads to depictions of spiders — made by spiders!

This just in: Spiderweb Software has confirmed that its arachnid customers overwhelmingly choose shadowwalkers as their main characters in the game Avadon: The Black Fortress.

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Trenton, spiders are our allies in the war against mosquitoes.

Not to mention that spiders are our allies in the war against other spiders.

 

Species are distinguished on the basis of the structure of the male and female genitalia.

Admittedly, Dikiyoba knows nothing about arachnid taxonomy, but that seems like a really limited way to distinguish species. Obviously, unique genitalia is a clear sign that a population of spiders are reproductively isolated from close relatives and thereby a separate species, but it seems like other morphological differences and major differences in behavior would also count as evidence that spiders are a distinct species and not just displaying variation within a species.

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It seems to me plausible that they could be a recent enough offshoot that they wouldn't necessarily qualify as a distinct species, at least based on physical characteristics alone.

 

 

Who knows? If we manage not to wipe them out, in a few thousand generations they might be constructing full 3-D, anatomically correct replicas of themselves. In which case, we can answer the question without killing any of them.

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Re the original topic: I never knew that spiders used any kind of decoy at all, let alone one that was vaguely spider-shaped. That, as was pointed out already, is pretty cool.

 

Re killing spiders: I'm something of an acachnophobe, and have killed a good number of spiders. However, I do realize the role they play in keeping my house insect-free, so I don't go out of my way to hunt them down. As long as I don't see them, I don't mind them so much; though I shudder to think about how many will come out of hiding when the basement gets a good, thorough (and long-overdue) cleaning.

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