A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
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This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
So I'm like 13 years old, climbing a tree at a friend's house. It's a bit of a shimmy up the trunk, I'm well in the air, hugging the tree. I look down at my feet to make sure I have footing before lifting a hand above my head to reach for a branch.
As my head is going from looking down to looking up, just as I am grabbing the branch and hanging from it, I realize that my nose is almost touching a big old wolf spider mama, fully laden with all her children.
DROP
I never climbed that tree again.
Are they venomous or otherwise dangerous to humans?
To add to what nougat said, because that’s very much the appropriate answer…
All spiders are in fact venomous- it’s part of how they feed. Many species, the venom is not harmful to humans, or only very weakly so. (Wolf spiders qualify as “very weakly so”)
That said, you try keeping a reasonable head when you suddenly come eyeball-to-eyeball with a wolf spiders qualify and her kids.
All spiders are in fact venomous
Are there any exceptions to this? And what about non spiders like daddy long legs?
So, true spiders digest their food externally by injecting the venom. They then slurp it up. So the answer to that is "Yes". Some true spiders may also eat the more solid bits, but that's in addition to. but again, many- most- spiders are essentially harmless to humans.
harvestmen (daddy long legs) are not venomous and lack the mouth-parts necessary for injection, but they're not true spiders.
harvestmen (daddy long legs) are venomous and lack the mouth-parts necessary for injection, but they're not true spiders.
Harvestmen do not possess venom glands.
Dammit I need to be more careful when posting on mobile. Meant to say not, lol. Thanks for the correction
So, true spiders digest their food externally by injecting the venom.
That is not quite correct. They inject the venom to kill the prey, after that they will inject digestive fluids which will liquify and pre-digest the insides before the spider slurps it up again. But the venom is not essential to the disgestive process.
harvestmen (daddy long legs) are not venomous and lack the mouth-parts necessary for injection, but they’re not true spiders.
Harvestmen can bite (though many are too small to penetrate skin, it's very rare), so it's not like they lack the mouth-parts per se, they just don't have any venom glands that are feeding into the mouth-parts.
Also Opiliones are not just not true spiders, they are not spiders at all ("true spiders" are one of the 3 infraorders of the spider order). Opiliones are their own order.
However "daddy long legs" could also refer to an actual spider (and a true spider at that), Pholcidae. It's quite the ambigious name (there is even an insect, the crane fly that is also going by that name in some places).
Yes, all spiders are venomous, but only few have venoum which are dangerous for humans and also only few capable to inject it under the human skin. Dangerous are only few species and not necesarly the biggest ones, eg, the Australian Huntsman is not. https://www.britannica.com/list/9-of-the-worlds-deadliest-spiders
Did the comment above get edited? It look like you're just repeating the same thing stated in there.
Yes, all spiders are venomous
Almost all :)
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/wolf-spider-bite
Seems like it's not even as bad as a bee sting. Spiders are really not very dangerous at all, generally speaking. They're going to leave you alone unless you're fucking with them.
No, they are spider bros. They kill brown recluses, black widows, and other things that are dangerous. Typically do not mess with humans unless seriously provoked.
I get the sentiment, but black widows (and Theridiidae in general) are quite proficient in taking out wolf spiders and other prowling spiders, not the other way around.
I'm going to need to see some videos before I can determine who is winning this debate. With heavy metal background music, though I would also accept a David Attenborough narration. With and without the wolf spider swarm.
sigh For completion sake, should probably also check out some videos of each of those spiders vs other things like scorpions, mice, mongeese, non-mon geese, snakes, etc.
I wouldn't recommend those types of videos. These are just the arthropod version of cock- or dog fighting and basically animal abuse. They also don't actually teach you much, since the scenarios don't reflect their actual behaviour in nature.
For example, almost every active hunting spider will kill a black widow if you put them in an enclosed space together. But in the real world the widows would be in her web where something like a wolfspider would get trapped long before getting close to the widow spider.
Yeah, they are morally dubious at best. But there's just something about watching things fight to the death that makes it so fascinating. Though I agree that it is best if they are each in their own natural environments rather than just shoved in a glass box together. They should have the option to disengage, too, because it's also interesting to know when two killing machines opt to not try each other (and based on the one video I did see of wolf spider vs black widow, I'd guess most of them would go that way because the wolf spider wasn't very interested in getting anywhere close to the widow and only killed it in the end because it kept trying to web it up).
That makes me wonder how many of the animal vs gladiator fights would have resulted in them walking away from each other.
When they get spooked they launch their kids everywhere to overwhelm potential predators. Imagine if you squashed a spider and suddenly you were covered in hundreds of tiny spiders?
SC2 swarm hosts is probably based on this.
One climbed onto my foot while I was brushing my teeth once and I launched myself into the wall behind me pretty hard which hurt. Other than that I don't think so.
Wow that sounds dangerous
I remember a bush outside my window with the spider in it. Green body, orange legs... I watched her build a web all summer. One day there was an egg in the web. After a while, the egg hatched and hundreds of baby spiders came out and ate her.
Well this took a turn.
It's a quote from Blade Runner.
Lemmy, I am disappoint.
Thank you! I saw people sharing their creepy spider stories and immediately thought of this.
Was surprised when it started gathering upvotes seemingly just because people thought it was just another creepy story.
Seriously?
I was scratching my head because I couldn't think of any green bodied web-building spiders with orange legs that also practice matriphagy ...
Ah, only seem it once.
sounds like sharks and their siblings
You're reading a magazine. You come across a full-page nude photo of a girl.
I flip it.
Wait, no, that was the tortoise...
Try to keep wolf spiders alive but if you must kill, watch they don't have the hundred babies on their back. If they do....it's nightmare fuel
Had a smoke detector going off randomly one night and I pulled it down only to have mama crawl all over my hand as the babies were running around like maniacs, some casting off. Mama still had a bunch on her when I got the smoke detector outside.
First time I saw this was on the beach late on a moonless night. This was before cell phones, so I had to get close in the dim glow from a street light half a block away. They started sprawling.
My condolences
happened in our garage when a roommate stepped on a fat spider trying to kill it. mini spiders everywhere!
I found a wolf spider with a bunch of babies in my sink. Scooped it up and put them in the leaf litter outside my house. Normally I never see them inside my house, especially carrying all of the babies.
They are not great indoor spiders but since they are always roaming around they sometimes end up inside homes.
TIL, it's not so much that we step on them as they they throw themselves under our footsteps...
Since spiders get drunk on caffeine, she's doing a Starbucks run.
Given THC the active ingredient in marijuana, the spider didn’t build a web, but a hammock. Where it would lay all day and watch the caffeine spider go.
Walking back home from work at night I cross some fields, I see dozens of them. They are super easy to spot with a headlamp, their eyes shine like tiny glass shards or water droplets.
Don't make me stop this thorax
I can tolerate looking at one single spider. Some of them are even looking very cute.
But one big spider with hundreds mini spiders on top of it looks very disturbing 🫥
Aren't they the cutest nightmares you've ever seen?
I'll never forget walking through my grandfathers yard and noticing that with every step I took, I'd see a few dart away from me. Only saw them when they were crossing the tops of flat clove leaves in the grass. Wouldn't have known they were there, otherwise. They were everywhere, out there. Every square foot of grass. Was curious enough to find out what they were and much to my relief, mostly harmless. Still, tresspassers caught inside, get the death penalty.
I've crawled under nearly a thousand houses since then and never got bit, despite undoubtedly being covered by different kinds. Still panic if I catch em on me, but I know I don't have much to worry about here in the PNW. The coast and valley are pretty safe. Rattlers and widows are more common east of the valley.