They’re not coming through the windows – they were already inside.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-49730011?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGA
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This is the Pine Rockland Trapdoor Spider (Ummidia richmond), a newly discovered species of spider that lives in the endangered forest surrounding a zoo in the middle of Miami, Florida. Related to tarantulas, this particular species are approximately 1.5 inches across. — Read the rest
Source: https://boingboing.net/2021/05/04/new-and-creepy-black-spider-species-discovered-in-the-middle-of-miami-florida.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-and-creepy-black-spider-species-discovered-in-the-middle-of-miami-florida
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The Article Was Written/Published By: David Pescovitz
The Shapiro Undergraduate Library closed for two days after three Mediterranean recluse spiders were found in a storage area.
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/venomous-spiders-prompt-university-michigan-library-close-n1258842
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The Article Was Written/Published By: The Associated Press
Enlarge / Look carefully into the spider’s two largest eyes and you can see internal structures similar to the ones that we’ve evolved. (credit: Emre Can Alagöz)
First, the confession: I’m an arachnophobe, spooked by the most harmless everyday spiders. Close encounters with the scarier sort—the goliath bird-eating spider in an undergraduate zoology class, the venomous redbacks sharing my tent on a research trip to Australia—well, let’s just say they taught me more about myself than about arachnids. And yet I’ve discovered a soft spot for one group of spiders: those undersized males faced with the daunting prospect of sex with a giant mate, often one with murder in mind. Think Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, only with spiders.
Why the sympathy? It’s not because these puny males risk their lives for love. It’s because they’ve evolved such a bizarre array of ways to achieve their ultimate goal of siring spiderlings with a monster of a mother.
Sexual size dimorphism—where one sex is bigger than the other—is nothing too much out of the ordinary: Picture a massive male orangutan, or the bull elephant seal towering over his harem. And many insects and other terrestrial arthropods have large females, because a bigger body can produce more eggs.
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Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1725590
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Spider cannibalism — the tendency for female spiders to eat their mates during or after sex — is fairly common knowledge at this point. There’s a surprising evolutionary benefit to this copulatory suicide, too, as Ed Yong explained in National Geographic in 2016:
In 1996, Maydianne Andrade found that sexual encounters between redback spiders are longer if the male allows himself to be cannibalized.
Source: https://boingboing.net/2020/11/20/some-male-spiders-tie-up-females-before-sex-so-they-dont-get-eaten-alive.html
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Thom Dunn
There are many time-lapse security cam clips around of spiders building webs but this one is particularly striking to me because of the angle, lighting, and sound. It feels like an avant-garde art film from the 1960s or an industrial band’s music video from the 1980s. — Read the rest
Source: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/21/fascinating-time-lapse-security-cam-footage-of-a-spider-spinning-a-web.html
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The Article Was Written/Published By: David Pescovitz
