tarantulas can live for well over a decade, and female tarantulas can expect to breed multiple times before they finally kick it! and since there’s always the expectation of there going to be a new clutch of eggs in the nest every year, there’s no benefit in getting rid of the frogs that will keep those eggs safe.
a female columbian lesserblack tarantula will treasure and protect her frogs until the day she dies, and then those frogs will go into the care of whichever of her daughters inherits her burrow! it’s an eternal cycle. a cycle of frog.
the scorpion came upon the frog on the riverbank.
“friend frog,” said the scorpion, waving its little pincer things in an emotive fashion, “would you carry me across? the river is wide, and I cannot swim.”
the frog was a kindly fellow, and hesitated, thinking it over.
now, this story could have progressed as it normally does, into a very sad and rather ham-fisted metaphor for the nature of the human experience, but luckily for both the frog and the reader (though not for the scorpion), our story is interrupted rather abruptly here by the sudden appearance of a ginormous fucking spider popping out of the bushes and making short work of the scorpion.
“Ribbort,” said the giant fuckoff tarantula, delicately wiping some scorpion off her huge terrifying spider fangs, “there you are! I was worried. you know better than to wander off into an allegory like this. come home, the children miss you.”
the frog, whose name was Ribbort, shrugged his damp little shoulders. indeed, some metaphors just can’t be accurately applied to the natural world, due to the enormously complex and often unexpected web of relationships between living creatures in any given ecosystem, and that is the way of things.
Honestly the mere fact that some people refer to Daddy Long Legs as “harvestmen” is creepier than 90% of all deliberately created horror but like the worst part is that the alternative is calling them Daddy Long Legs
True harvestmen, and not cellar spiders which are the other Daddy Long Legs, are truly omnivorous- known to eat everything from spiders, to fecal matter, to leaves and fungus… But one of the singularly most interesting habits of a particular European species is their almost symbiotic relationship with beehives– particularly man-made beehives. When a bee dies inside the hives, workers will remove the the corpse to just outside the hive just before dark. And the harvestmen? Well, they live up to their name.
So what you’re saying is that they are the grim reaper for bees.
The grim beeper
I need someone to make a Harvestman from this it’s like medieval lore I’m
I’ll tell you a secret: most arthropod eyes are incredibly shitty.
they may have a near-360-degrees of view, but most insects eyes simply aren’t on the same level as yours, and it’s because of physics!
see, each of those individual bumps on those eyes up there is a convex lens, which focuses light onto a retina to form a picture of their surroundings.
however, the power of a lens dramatically decreases the smaller it is, because small lenses capture less light to make into an image!
to these animals, the world is a brightly colored blur that extends out for a few feet around them, and ends there. so no, they CANNOT see the moon. weep for them.
to insects, humans have god-level foresight and prescience! HOW DID YOU KNOW THERE WAS FOOD OVER THERE, HUMAN. TELL ME HOW.
but some spiders are different.
see that? those eyes are completely smooth! jumping spiders in particular have developed eyes with a single massive (for a bug) lens on the outside, and a second focusing lens on the inside, giving them single-image vision much like your own.
the diagram of their eyes looks like a pair of binoculars, and their focusing power is completely nuts, enough so to make up for that underpowered lens!
so yes, some spiders CAN see the moon! take solace in this fact.
sweater weather is upon us once again, so it’s time to introduce you to a tiny fuzzy creature to warm your soul and make you go
✨💖💖AWWWWWWW💖💖✨ (dramatization)
also, I feel like this tiny fuzzy creature should have legs. LOTS of legs. at least 7.
so, meet the Mustache Spider!
✨💖💖AWWWWWWW💖💖✨
the Mustache Spider (Phidippus mystaceus) is a type of Jumping Spider native to the southern US. Like all Jumping Spiders, they have four pairs of kind and loving eyes, excellent and forgiving vision, and soft, strokeable fur covering their tiny adorable bodies (though tragically, since the larger females reach a maximum length of about 1 cm, they are too small to snuggle).
A TRAGEDY BEYOND COMPARE
the Mustache Spider gets its name from the fancy facewear that female spiders sport (say that five times fast)
it’s not known why exactly these spiders go in for a lovely fashionable pencil mustache, but some theories include that it’s because it’s “simply smashing” or “absolutely delightful” or “almost inutterable fancy” (my theories. these are my theories)
oh so dapper! she’ll be tying a helpless maiden to a train track any moment now
sadly, the male Mustache Spiders do lack this distinguished facewear, though they still have those tufts of fur that kind of look like kitty ears
nyah, ma’am
like all Jumping Spiders, the Mustache Spider is an adaptable ambush predator that will hunt anything it can get the drop on.
it stalks its prey (like a cat) and wiggles its tiny fluffy butt (like a cat) just before it pounces many times the length of its own body, pinning its helpless victim (like a cat) and injecting a paralyzing venom that liquefies the prey’s insides, which it slurps up with its hollow fangs (like a cat)
Ò w Ó NYA.
this being said, the Mustache Spider is completely harmless to humans (though they would totally hurt a fly).
in fact, Mustache Spiders are often curious about humans! like all Jumping Spiders, Mustache Spiders are intelligent enough to solve puzzles, watch nature videos and observe you observing them for no other reason than they think humans are neat.
Giant Hairless Ape is my favorite show
who knows, maybe they think we’re as adorable as we think they are.
Just like cats or dogs, spiders also have claws attached to the paws,
but in their case, legs also work as ears and nose picking up subtle
changes in the air to hear and recognize smells.
mc1303 