Harvestmen are honoray spiders in my book, just for gaining a fearsome reputation despite being completely harmless:
"An urban legend claims that the harvestman is the most venomous animal in the world, but possesses fangs too short or a mouth too round and small to bite a human and therefore is not dangerous (the same myth applies to the cellar spider and cranefly, which are both also called a 'daddy longlegs'). This is untrue on several counts. None of the known species have venom glands; their chelicerae are not hollowed fangs but grasping claws that are typically very small and definitely not strong enough to break human skin. This myth is so pervasive that it was debunked by two popular television shows, MythBusters and "Bill Nye The Science Guy"."
It is beyond me how this myth even got started.
And what is up with crane flies being mistaken for "giant mosquitoes" all the time?
Lost Salientblink twiceif you'd like me to mercy kill youRegistered Userregular
edited September 2010
I don't like spiders in my house. Outside they are pretty neat, though! I used to be asceered of them, but since mosquitoes here are enormous (real mosquitoes, not that fakey huge guys posted earlier) I'm all for keeping orb weavers and shit around the outside of my place.
It's funny, teaching kindergarten makes you about a million times more tolerant of insects and the like. Because I don't want to teach my students to be afraid of bugs or anything in nature, you know? So at first I had to act like I was cool with the wolf spiders on the playground and before I knew it I was collecting caterpillars and snails and centipedes and the like to put in terrariums for my class.
On which note, these guys are my homeys:
Yeah! Eat the spiders living in the bathroom drains! Thanks lil (medium-sized) friends!
On the other hand, I hate running into these guys:
No, you don't get to eat anything with a spine you thousand-legged hellspawn!
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited September 2010
Ant lions are the best insect.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited September 2010
Fuck yes
This book is hard to find – don’t even bother with Amazon – but my brother was persistent and after several weeks of patient searching he got a copy from Alibris and sent it to me. It is a story of a boy who wakes up one morning transformed into an ant. The book describes his travels and adventures in the world of the small. Of course, he meets a bunch of really cool creatures, like various wasps and bees and moths and honey-ants, etc. But the one I remember the most was the ant-lion.
The antlion is actually quite pretty, yet short-lived, as an adult. But it is the larva that is really cool:
It digs a pit in the send and hides underneath the sand right under the bottom of the pit. When an ant, or some other insect comes by, it falls into the pit and has trouble climbing out of its steep walls again. The ant-lion lunges out of the sand (like a scence from “Tremors”) and eats the poor bug:
Now the really cool part: the volume of the pit is bigger when the antlion is hungrier (or so they say at this marvelous website that I highly recommend you browse around). But, hungry or not, the ant-lion digs a bigger pit when the moon is full. Nobody has any idea why that would be so. Here is a photograph of a colony of ant-lions, each with its own little pit:
But here is the coolest part of all. If you take ant-lions out of the field and put them in little sandboxes in the laboratory and isolate them from any cues about the outside world they will still dig bigger pits roughly every four weeks – they have an internal lunar rhythm:
They have, somewhere in their brains, a lunar clock that tells them to dig larger pits whenever the moon is full even if they canot see the moon itself (e.g., on a dark cloudy night). If and when somebody figures out how this little brain works, I’ll be sure to tell you all on my blog, but you may have to wait years for it – nobody is even thinking about studying it right now.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
Thats just a grainy cracker you glued little legs and pincers onto.
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited September 2010
Fun fact: when an ant lion seizes its prey, there is a tiny explosion within its pit, and then the ant is gone.
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Lost Salientblink twiceif you'd like me to mercy kill youRegistered Userregular
No, you don't get to eat anything with a spine you thousand-legged hellspawn!
Seriously! The first time I saw one of those zergling centipedes here it was crossing the street where I was jogging, and I stopped full-on and gave it the right of way. It's the sort of creature that you say, "After you, sir," to instinctually.
And the giant thing is actually a face-on photo of a house centipede! I like them. Which is good, because they loooove my place. And the thing about the drain spiders is, most bathrooms don't have a separate stall or tub or anything for the shower fixtures, they're just on the wall in the open, so the entire room is fixed up with one or two (poorly plumbed) floor drains. And if no water goes down them (like one in my bathroom) the spiders seem to really become quite partial to it.
Lost Salient on
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
I admit Munkus when you mentioned the Antlions my first thought was:
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited September 2010
I don't eve know what that is.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
There's one that seems to be living right outside my front door. He couldn't fit on a quarter, probably the biggest resident spider I've seen. Some kind of Tegenaria species, either a small Duellica or large Agrestis.
Luckily they are more common in South because its warmer. I'm not scared of them, but they do make me jump if I see one running across the floor. Then they enter the world the glass and paper.
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BeastehTHAT WOULD NOTKILL DRACULARegistered Userregular
A few weeks ago my boss was going to kill a baby huntsman spider. I was all, "Hells no!" and saved it.
Some people may call me crazy for saying this, but it was a really cute spider!
I find baby spiders at work all the time, I put them in the plants we sell outside so they can catch the flies and any insects that might go for the plants. Put them to use.
Screw Brown Recluses to hell. Stop appearing in my bathroom!
I do not need to get bitten and have my flesh dissolve.
I almost would rather have a Black Widow. Also these spiders are not killing the cockroaches fast enough.
Lazy ass bums.
Screw Brown Recluses to hell. Stop appearing in my bathroom!
I do not need to get bitten and have my flesh dissolve.
I almost would rather have a Black Widow. Also these spiders are not killing the cockroaches fast enough.
Lazy ass bums.
The venom of the brown recluse is a tad overrated anyway. There is another type of house spider that is great at murdering roaches but I can't think of it offhand.
There used to be a common house spider that made its home underneath our tv cabinet.
We had a truce with this little dude, even the cat who would regularly eviscerate, eat or torture anything smaller than itself knew this spider was not to be fucked with.
I've got this spider outside of my house that I want to identify. I live in Indianapolis, and have never seen this before. Anyhow, it looks to be black, or dark brown, is slightly larger than a US quarter, and has a thick web of about 1' circumference, with a tunnel made out of the web where the spider sits.
I've got this spider outside of my house that I want to identify. I live in Indianapolis, and have never seen this before. Anyhow, it looks to be black, or dark brown, is slightly larger than a US quarter, and has a thick web of about 1' circumference, with a tunnel made out of the web where the spider sits.
Any idea what that could be?
Can you describe the coloration, patterns and number + arrangement of eyes? I can't seem to find anything going off just Indianapolis funnel-web spider.
Posts
"An urban legend claims that the harvestman is the most venomous animal in the world, but possesses fangs too short or a mouth too round and small to bite a human and therefore is not dangerous (the same myth applies to the cellar spider and cranefly, which are both also called a 'daddy longlegs'). This is untrue on several counts. None of the known species have venom glands; their chelicerae are not hollowed fangs but grasping claws that are typically very small and definitely not strong enough to break human skin. This myth is so pervasive that it was debunked by two popular television shows, MythBusters and "Bill Nye The Science Guy"."
It is beyond me how this myth even got started.
And what is up with crane flies being mistaken for "giant mosquitoes" all the time?
that mosquito is
HUUUUUUUUUU
UUUUUUUUUGE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWec266Lo3Q
It's funny, teaching kindergarten makes you about a million times more tolerant of insects and the like. Because I don't want to teach my students to be afraid of bugs or anything in nature, you know? So at first I had to act like I was cool with the wolf spiders on the playground and before I knew it I was collecting caterpillars and snails and centipedes and the like to put in terrariums for my class.
On which note, these guys are my homeys:
Yeah! Eat the spiders living in the bathroom drains! Thanks lil (medium-sized) friends!
On the other hand, I hate running into these guys:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeFhaVdWy5A
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
Also I noticed a bunch of the comments on the giant korean centipede video are Zerg/SC jokes, pretty funny.
I'm not sure what that giant thing that looks kind of like a mite is Sal, but I would imagine spiders in your drains would be pretty conspicuous.
That being said, I fucking hate big centipedes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoXfYvoUsxg
No, you don't get to eat anything with a spine you thousand-legged hellspawn!
Fuck yes
Seriously! The first time I saw one of those zergling centipedes here it was crossing the street where I was jogging, and I stopped full-on and gave it the right of way. It's the sort of creature that you say, "After you, sir," to instinctually.
And the giant thing is actually a face-on photo of a house centipede! I like them. Which is good, because they loooove my place. And the thing about the drain spiders is, most bathrooms don't have a separate stall or tub or anything for the shower fixtures, they're just on the wall in the open, so the entire room is fixed up with one or two (poorly plumbed) floor drains. And if no water goes down them (like one in my bathroom) the spiders seem to really become quite partial to it.
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
That little fucker. How's the arm looking?
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the wolf spider that lived under my subwoofer has moved on
sub wolfer
HA
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Luckily they are more common in South because its warmer. I'm not scared of them, but they do make me jump if I see one running across the floor. Then they enter the world the glass and paper.
this is exactly what stale said as well
as if i dont feed the fat little asshole enough
Some people may call me crazy for saying this, but it was a really cute spider!
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Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
I find baby spiders at work all the time, I put them in the plants we sell outside so they can catch the flies and any insects that might go for the plants. Put them to use.
im all WUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH
then it is tissue + front garden time
I do not need to get bitten and have my flesh dissolve.
I almost would rather have a Black Widow. Also these spiders are not killing the cockroaches fast enough.
Lazy ass bums.
The venom of the brown recluse is a tad overrated anyway. There is another type of house spider that is great at murdering roaches but I can't think of it offhand.
We had a truce with this little dude, even the cat who would regularly eviscerate, eat or torture anything smaller than itself knew this spider was not to be fucked with.
I've got this spider outside of my house that I want to identify. I live in Indianapolis, and have never seen this before. Anyhow, it looks to be black, or dark brown, is slightly larger than a US quarter, and has a thick web of about 1' circumference, with a tunnel made out of the web where the spider sits.
Any idea what that could be?
They hoist a leaf up into the middle of their webs, and curl it up and live in it.
Can you describe the coloration, patterns and number + arrangement of eyes? I can't seem to find anything going off just Indianapolis funnel-web spider.
Also not spiders.
well done