Sweet Spider Dreams

or yeating your partner? Joining me today is someone tougher than Bear Grills, host of the podcast Fogo Fear of Going Outside, a story of conquering the outdoors one twig at a time. Welcome Ivy Lee, Hey Greedy, so good to be here. I'm so happy that you're joining me. Uh. Your podcast is about someone who is now I don't mean to be rude here, but self described kind of an indoor person, uh, making their way to the outdoors. Uh, sort of one one little bit. Why why would I

think being an indoor person is? I don't think there's anything wrong with being an indoor person. Yeah, I mean I agree. I actually I do love the outdoors. But I agree with you on a lot of your points that you make on your podcast, the primary thing being that plumbing is an incredible invention that I love, and clean water I can't get enough of it. Clean water is amazing. Yeah, not having to filter your water look

for worms in it. Yeah, it's I have been backpacking before, and while I enjoyed certain aspects to it, the lack of plumbing um. Also, like, so when you go to kind of high altitudes, you have to peel a lot because like it's um more stress on your kidneys. And so I would go have to go pee, like in the middle of the night a bunch of times, and I would go and then like find a little private place, um, and humans wouldn't bother me. But animals don't realize that,

like this is your private time. And so I would have like mice or marmots or something like come and join me while I'm trying to pee in the middle of the night. And I gotta say, as much as I love animals, maybe not in that context. I'm sure the animals were judging you and they're like, wow, she's

just so pretty traditional. She's right exactly. Yeah, Yeah, it's I think I did make a decision that when I had like a mouse run over my foot while I was trying to pee, Like, you know what if I if I go camping again, I want there to be like some kind of bathroom facility. Yeah, I want that for you. I want to you. I thought I thought people had to peel a lot in the mountains because

because they're because from the drinking. Yeah you have to you have Oh you mean like drinking alcohol or drinking water, Yeah, yes, but out from alcohol. Ah yeah, no, I I if I I absolutely cannot drink alcohol when I'm like hiking in high altitudes because then it would be the hike would be one bathroom related So we can't have that. But majestic and the waterfalls like the glacier drip is

your bidet right exactly? Yeah, I mean, if if all, if all the hike was sort of bid at base, then maybe I could enjoy a beer in the great outdoors. But until then, no, Um, but enough about me and going to the bathroom, which uh, normally my podcast is not about that, So don't worry folks. Um, you you're not so much of an outdoor person, but you are forcing yourself to learn more about the outdoors. And I think a lot of people can relate to that, especially

when it comes to insects and God forbid spiders. What are your feelings towards spiders? M tepid. I would say spiders are Uh, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Is how I look at spiders, I don't I don't mess with them, I don't touch them. If I see them, I'm sure there's a very good reason that they're there, and we just look the other way and have a have ah an armistice with each other. Right, you have a cordial but chilly relationship. So yeah, I like that. That.

So your enemy is generally insects, and since spiders do eat insects, they are you form kind of an alliance, like a lazy fair kind of you let them be and hopefully they let you be. Hopefully we do. I live in Texas. We do have poisonous spiders like poisonous to humans like them. What do you have Do you have brown widows? Uh? We do. We have the brown recluse, brown recluse. Yeah, that's right, brown widow. Do you have

black widows as well? I mean it's Texas probably. Fortunately, venomous spiders tend to be pretty shy, like they don't really want to bite you. They don't really want to interact with you. They just want to go about their business, eat lots of bugs, have lots of babies, and on occasion be in your shoes. But other than that, you know, they're they're fine, they're chill. You're a You're a worthy ambassador, right, I like, I'm very good at pr for spiders. I

I do. Actually, there are certain spiders that I like. So of course I don't love the venomous spiders just because you know, I don't want to, you know, get necrosis or something. Um. But I do really like jumping spiders. They to me are cute. So have you ever seen a jumping spider's cute little face? I have, and it was not cute. It was face to face with a jumping spider and a blind because I'm learning, I'm in season two production for Fogo right now. This season, I'm

trying to figure out how to become a hunter. So I spent hours and a blind with a jumping spider, hours together with this jump in spider. It was not cute, not the spider, the spider did not feel good about it. I did not feel good about it. It's a bit awkward then between you two. But you know to me, like they got those big adorable eyes though, and they're fluffy, So tell what is the finding? Like, what is the difference between a puppy and a jumping spider? Fluffy and

big eyes? Like? What is it? The number of legs? Like what? I think it's it's the stance. You know that the jumping spider always looks poised to like mess you up, I guess, although you know that sometimes puppies are poised as well to get on you and show everything that you have and own. Uh, But personally I find jumping spiders cute. Your your mileage might vary. Some people don't find them so cute, but they are really interesting. They are a fascinating spider and they are the world's

most visual spiders. So visual as in they actually use their vision in a way that most spiders do not. So they actually are the only spiders that can track your movement just by moveing their eyes and not their whole bodies. Well that's exactly what the spider was doing to be the entire time. What was it collecting what information where they using their eyes for well, they they do hunt, so they use their vision to hunt. They

also use their vision in selecting a mate. So there are a lot of jumping spiders that are really beautiful. So like peacock jumping spiders, they have these fantastic displays of color, and they do these little dances. They wiggle their butts, they waved their arms. Uh. To me, it's it's the cutest rave in the world. Um. But they need to be able to see this in order to appreciate it and select a mate based on these dances. So you're saying I should be flattered by the attention. Yes.

So they have four pairs of eyes, uh, with which they can see move, vivid color. They can see in higher resolution than most animals, including humans. So those big cute dew we eyes that I've described that for some reason you don't find so cute, Uh, those are actually the principle eyes. Uh. These eyes can see color and resolution, and they can move their retina's around to track something that they're looking at. So there are other eyes are

more like other spiders eyes, they can't move. They mostly specialize in detecting movement, especially in the periphery. But with these principle eyes, they can see really well and they have this very acute visual system. This is what's really interesting is there is some new research about these spiders and the question is, well, if they can see right, if they if vision is really important to them, Like how do they think? Do they think in images? Like

do they dream in images? There is actually some recent evidence that jumping spiders may be able to have visual dreams, dreams, like like what do we think that they are, Like like they're just like tripping on mushrooms the entire time or do you mean they're like one day I'm going to be as big as this like hunter I'm looking at right now one day. One day I'm going to

have my own podcast like Dreams Spider Aspirations. Yeah, I mean like like when they sleep, Uh, it would be like when you when we have dreams, Like when we sleep, we have a bunch of like we can sometimes replay the day, but sometimes we have sort of invented dreams. Sort of we take an amalgamation of the information we've learned over our lives and like turn it into this kind of you know, private film that we show ourselves we're like processing our traumas and emotions. Is that what

the spiders do? They're like processing main traumas. Spiders Like one day I was like sitting here and then I saw this lady and I want to be friends with her, but she didn't want to be friends with me, and I was very sad, and so I had a dream where we were friends. So and then then she picked me up and I became her, and she became me, and we became one. And who knows where her legs and my legs and my legs and my legs ended in began? Uh the dj TSO track like swells is

this love? So we don't know exactly what a spider would dream, but there is evidence that they do dreams. So this evidence actually the research came about in a pretty cute manner. Daniella Russler is an ecologist at the University of Constants in Germany, and she noticed that when jumping spiders sleep, they twitch their little legs like dogs

and cats do. And they're sleep, you know how, like your dog or your cat might start to like move their little legs a little bit, twitch a little bit as they're maybe dreaming about running or jumping or having their dream come true of catching a car. And like, sometimes I wonder if my dog just dreams that she's really big because she's a little dog, and so it's

like that she's maybe she's dreaming. She's just huge, and like she's like, I'm I'm the human now, I say, when I have dog food, look at me, look at me. I'm the human now. Yeah, yeah, I am the one. Yes of the captain. I'm the captain now. Yeah. So they twitched in their sleeping so this research, I was like,

I wonder if they're dreaming. And so she set up a baby spider nursery sleep lab in her home, as one does, and basically a bunch of had a bunch of baby spy fiers hanging from a thread, curled up in sleeping position that she's studied. Wow. The reason she used baby spiders is their heads are transparent, so you can visually measure the movement of the spider's retina's so spiders, that's disgusting. That's so gross. Uh, it's only like Peter Parker had like since he I mean he's a kid, right,

he's like a teenager. If he had really gotten the spider DNA. I guess he would have been more like see through, like you could kind of see his blood vessels and some of his organs. That that would have been fun. You just like I think he just entered into like a rachnid teendom, right, which is brutal, Which

is brutal way to enter your aragnid life. Yeah. So this researcher found that these tiny baby jumping spiders actually demonstrate rim sleep ari e m sleep, which is rapid eye movement which until recently has only been thought to be characteristic of vertebrates. So this is the first invertebrate

who may demonstrate rim sleep, which is really interesting. Arachnas they're just like us, yeah, I mean, so they're to clarify with their eyes, they don't like when we move our eyes, our whole eyes kind of move in our sockets. So you're not gonna see like you're not gonna look at one of these spider's face and see their eyeballs

like moving around in their sockets. But the back of their eyes, their retinas move and rotate, and so you can see that with like a flashlight when you study them, but you're not necessarily going to see them moving their eyes towards you, for for better or for worse. I guess that might maybe that's a comfort for some people that they're not gonna suddenly see a spider side eyeing them. But like, so their retinas are separate from their arrest

of their eyes. Their retina's um. It's kind of like like if you hold a rubber band um and then you like hold it firm with one hand and then like you can move the back of it with one hand. That's kind of like how it works. So like muscles can pull the back of their eye and move it. Uh. Does that make sense? I guess I was about to be like, oh, that's like weird, but now I realize that I have no idea how my eye works, Like

I don't know if my retina is the same at all. Well, our retina and our are the rest of our eye moves sort of um together in unison and it rotates around in our eye socket. Uh. And there are muscles that line so like um wrap around the eye. By

sort of tensing these muscles, the whole eye moves. Uh. And like it's it's not you know, like we can't move our eyes three D sixty degrees and just spin them around freely, because that's the muscles can only move them so much like side to side, up, down, you know so much. Um. And so for these spiders, those muscles are just located at the back of their eye and sort of move around, uh their retina, whereas the

the actual eyeball itself is remaining uh still unstable. But it's like you know, it's not their eyes are kind of wiggily. They can they have some give there, you see why, you see why this is really unsettling. Um, Yes, of course I see why that it would be unsettling to a normal person. Yes, but yees, so they will have u this rapid eye movement that you can see with these with these little baby spiders that you use

a flashlight to see right through them. And they would also twitch like a little which I think is cute maybe like to someone a twitching dreaming spider is menacing, but like their little legs like twitching like a puppy. And so what do they dream about? One can only get us. Uh, they are hoping to continue to investigate the extent to which the jumping spiders dream, but we

don't know what they are dreaming. About world domination. Maybe just like a like a just flying because they can't really fly, right, they can just kind of jump, but they have flying dreams when they're I'm not certain about jumping spiders, but for a lot of spiders when they are very small, like baby spiderlings, they actually do take to the sky because they release like a strand of webbing that they use as sort of like a parachute, and they're so small that the wind just like carries

them away and so they fly. This is how they disperse. Yeah, I think jumping spiders do also do. This behavior is called ballooning. Uh So maybe maybe you're right, maybe they do dream about flying, uh fond dreams of flying in their in their babyhood. It's just like remember or that feeling that freedom. And they see birds in the sky. They see these like insects that fly and then they get tangled in their webs and they're just like crunching

out and they're just like eating them. They're like, maybe if I eat them all get the ability to fly, and then they dream about it. Yeah, yeah, it could be.

I mean I would imagine they probably dream about things like like seeing seeing food, eating it, um and maybe or maybe like seeing a mate, you know, standard stuff, standard spider stuff, or taking sexy spider dreams, sexy sexy spider dreams, sexy spider dreams, seeing dreaming of a male waggling its abdomen and waving its arms, and then just like when it's about to get to the good part,

like something lands in the net. Yeah. Yeah, it's always the way, isn't it when you find the sexy spider man of your dreams, like in your dream and then your alarm goes off. M HM's exactly how it goes. Well, and we come back, we're going to talk more about spiders. Uh this time, the mating is not a dream, and it also ends a little bit in a nightmare. It's a nightmare. So uh so, spider males have a classic problem, which is how do you mate without getting eaten by

your much larger partner? You know what? You know how that is? Yeah? I do. As a human woman, I do know. How do you find a connection without being cannibalized? That's that's every woman on a dating apps dilemma? And I suddenly find spiders extremely related. I don't know if that's a win for feminism. Actually, where the females are larger and the ones that eat the males, Like, is that a win for feminism or is that like a loss because it's about equality. I don't know. Hashtag the

bay it's lost. I think we're I think if we're just if we're just gonna, you know, rebuild a structures of oppression. Yeah, that's what was the point. Spiders like, we want equality. We don't want to eat men. I guess, all right, want them to help build our webs and help them raise our children. Well, they hackled orb weaver species Filiponola prominence is one of these spiders in which the males do have to worry about the female eating them.

The hackled or weaver female has a large, round abdomen with these kind of bumpy protrusions, whereas the male is less than half her size and much scrawnier, and so would be a relatively easy snack for the female after copulation. I mean, it's nothing personal. It's just like get hungry after that kind of thing. Yeah, it's extra, it's cardio, it's exercise, you know, a lot of stress, and then like it's awkward to like once you're done. So it's

like it's a win win, you eat. You know, it's like, hey, the awkwardness over. There's no question of like do I leave, do I say we get some uber eats over? And

do I just eat you? Yeah? Uh. So the male is not so into this, would much prefer only to please his partner's sexual appetite and not her you know, hunger appetite for his little body, so he will uh try to escape the female and this hackled or weaver spider has a fantastic method of escape, which is catapulting himself off of her after the mating deed has been done.

So when you look at a video of when you look at this in real life, it actually looks like the male teleports away from the female um, but when you look at it in slow motion, you can see he's pushing off of her and just like being like all right, well that's done, sia, and just flinging himself away like she's like was this something I said? No, I didn't mean you were a snack in that way. Yeah.

So they use their front legs to push off the female, eating themselves away in the nick of time, and males that did not use the strategy or who weren't fast enough, researchers found were typically consumed by the female, so it

is a very important survival technique for these males. And the way they're able to fling themselves off so quickly is that the joints in their front legs so the legs are folded against the females abdomen during mating, and once they're done, the male squeezes hemo lymph, which is basically spider blood through the leg really quickly, using hydraulics to quickly unfold the leg as uh, and then it acts as this spring and just jettisons the male off

of the female. Oh wow, and there are there. That's that's a good system. That's a very different system than what we do with our blood. Yeah, we don't so much like squish our blood around to move, but spiders do. They're kind of hot hydraulic based movement with their legs and they're like and I live to copulate another day za.

And they're also it is truly sort of like a robin Hood esque movement because they're attached to a thread of silk that uh, they trailed behind them, So when they launched themselves away, they swing on their silk out of her clutches to safety. So it really is like the little robin Hood spiders of mating, uh, mating from the females and then uh and then just like uh youing sent away and jump it away. How do you

how do you practice safe spider sex? First you need to anchor yourself with a silk thread to a safe location. You study the stunts of classical actor Errol flynn Um and this is how you you know, this is how you practice responsible save spider sex. Man, these little it's just these little Tom Cruise spiders. I respect it, you know, like is it maybe it's is it a little disrespectful? Yes, But you know, on the other hand, I appreciate the stunts.

Like you know, if if you have a one night stand and someone you know, your partner just leaves, that's kind of sucky. But like if you have a one night stand in your partner does like a does a back flip out of your apartment, that's cool. I mean, can we got like, can we call the mission impossible spiders? Because if we call them Tom Cruise spiders, and it would actually be the female spider that would have to hatch a extreme only detailed plan to a skipe is true.

That is true. In that case, it is acceptable to eat the Tom Cruise spider, I believe, And what other choice do you have? I know exactly. This is not This is legally speaking, this is not a threat. We are not going to cannibalize Tom Cruise. We're just saying he's not a great person, so like I guess, he wouldn't taste very good. We're just saying, we're just saying that relationships are complicated. Exactly. Thank you, my my legal team, thanks you. So Onto another spider who uses physics to

achieve amazing stunts. The genus Hiptiatis is a small, brown, fuzzy spider I think kind of cute because they have such a round abdomen. They're just like real, real chunksters, and they use physics to catch prey. They're called the triangle weaver spider, and they're called the triangle weaver because they weave triangle shaped webs and it seems like a really odd web shape until you find out what they

do with them. So they position themselves at the tip of the triangle and anchor themselves to like a branch, and they loaded like a sling shot where they are basically the projectile. Uh So when they spot prey like prey lands in their web or near their web, they will launch themselves and the web towards it. Uh. It is so effective that they can accelerate over twenty times the acceleration of a space shuttle, over twenty times the acceleration of a space shuttle of a space shuttle. Yes,

oh my god. Yeah, My question is why aren't we Why aren't we deputizing these spiders to be astronauts. Why aren't we sling shotting our astronauts into space? Is it? Why can't we sling shot bezos? Yeah? I mean right into the sun actually, but just yeah, I mean, you know, it is a question. I do sometimes wonder if, like any of the astrophysicists have thought about using a giant

sling shot. I think it's you know, maybe maybe that would work, you know what I mean, just like, get a lot of a huge rubber band, get a lot of people to pull it back, and that way we're not using fuel, right hopefully. Yeah, I'm sure they thought about this. I'm sure they have. There's probably some problem with a giant rubber band shooting a rocket into space, But honestly, I can't think of one. I mean, what if we take the example of this spider, right, what's

the scale? Is the spider just like the size of a person on a football field, or would the slingshot have to be like as big as like I don't know, the Empire State building or something or Liefel Tower to actually like get a human sized person in proportion to spider, I mean out into space into space. Like, so this spider does not go space distances to get a human into space using sort of a spider web that's scaled

up to human. Um. I can totally do the math of that in my head absolutely, Uh, going into states like with that acceleration, I mean, how far are they going?

The spiders aren't going that far, but they're accelerating extremely quickly, so you can see like it looks like they're teleporting, Like they just kind of go from one end of their web suddenly they've like teleported three inches teleported another inch, So they are it's just like it happens in the blink of an eye, and they'll do it multi full times, so like um, kind of pause uh and then slingshot

themselves again. Pause, reloads sling shot themselves again as they get closer and closer to this prey, and it's it's kind of from the praise perspective, from like this flies perspective, it must be really creepy because it's like the spider being one place and then suddenly it's like, you know, three inches closer to you, suddenly another inch closer to you, and it's moving so quickly. It's really hard to track this spider with your with your vision. Oh my god,

this is terrifying. It there was a Doctor Who episode about this with these like statues only move when your eyes are closer. Every time you blink, they're just like menacingly a menacing distance closer to you. This is even if you don't blink, Honestly, it just keeps coming towards you. Yeah,

I mean it is absolutely a horror movie trope. Um. It's like if you saw a sort of a monster at the other end of a room and then like it basically just moves really quickly and in the blink of an eye is you know, like five ft closer to you. And also you're trapped in its sticky web and you're so doomed and about to have your insides lico fide and sucked out of you. I'm sorry, where were you trying to make spiders more relatable this episode?

I guess I kind of forgot about that. Yeah, I think it's cool though, Actually, like, look at these little guys like a real dinnis the Menace kind of kind of dude, just like with its little sling shot past during his neighbors, sucking the juices out of its victims, you know, just like give us the menace? Yeah, you boys will be boys, Boys will be boys. This is probably a female actually, but yes, spiders will be spiderbiders will be spiders exactly. That's a much less toxic phrase.

I feel like, you know, how toxic are they? How toxic are they? I don't is it a less toxic phrase? How toxic are these spiders? These ones? I don't think they're very venomous in terms of humans. How do they kill? How do they how do they kill their prey? Are they like choking it? Are they injecting it out? Is it a is it a you know, kick to the suplex?

How much does it suck to be a fly? You spend your life like all you eat is like poop Yeah, you have a crappy life, short crappy, and sometimes you have a spider essentially teleport itself at you and bite you and juices. You end in a horror movie. You live in a Dickinson novel. Right right, you're like poise, So may I have some more um animal poop, just you know, like little little h No, it's tiny Tim. Isn't the one? What's the one who asks for more porridge?

I think that one is that want to tail a two cities small Samuel, a little little little Orge. No, I don't know it's it's is it is that David Copperfield Oliver No, Oliver twist, Oliver twist wants more porridge? So Oliver this Oliver twitch, Oliver twitch. Yeah, I mean I guess that works for a spider. Oliver twitch, spider asking for more porridge, but the porridge is specs um. And then that's the fly, right. I can't believe. I

can't believe. We were trying, we were trying to make spiders more relatable, and you actually made me have sympathy for flies. Yeah that was also hate flies. Yeah, I have to reclaim my hatred for flies and the disease that they spread, and the oddslat that they bring to every picnic I've ever held. Yeah, now that that that was an accident. I was trying to do pr for

the spiders. Actually, you know what, the triangle weaver spider, the one that we're talking about, does not have venom, and that's actually probably why it uses it's uh it's webbing in this manner in order to disable its prey. And then basically it just kind of, I guess, just just scares it to death, probably choose on it to death, eats it to death, which, yeah, it just eats it a lie, it eats it eats it. Yeah, I mean at some point it probably does die from the eating.

But nature is brutal, brutal, harsh, but fair. Okay, maybe it's not fair, it's just harsh. It's neutral, it's neutral. When we get back, I will actually tell you a story that I think makes spiders cute or maybe not, maybe just makes plants more menacing. You be the judge

when we get back after a very quick break. So, I feel like I have been remiss in my mission to make spiders more relatable because we did have the cute dreaming baby spiders and uh, which seemed to only kind of unsettle you the fact that spiders, well, because you told me that their heads were clear. Yeah, well you know, semi translucent and if you shine a light through you can see the back of their eyeballs. I'm

not sure I see what the problem is yet. And then I talked about how some male spiders will catapult themselves off the female so that they don't get eaten after mating. Again, I feel like this is an awkward situation that we can all relate to some kind of scenario you'd find in seinfeld Er friends. That's true, that was very relatable. It is. And then I talked about how the triangle weaver spider will catapult itself towards its prey and um, using its web like a sling shot.

And you know, I think that it makes them like a cute little rascal. You said it's horrifying that they would do that to a fly and eat them alive. And I feel like because you said it looks like it's teleporting. Yes, it's true, it does teleport towards its prey and then kills it dead. Um, So you know, maybe there's maybe, like we both have a point let's say that right. Let's regroup. Let's regroup. Tell me, tell

me about your love of spiders. Yes, so I do want to talk about how cute it is when spiders have friends, and I want to talk about you know, there there are a lot of classical friendship between animals and like Disney movies. It's like, you know, Oliver and Company. Remember when that kitten made friends with those dogs. Sometimes you'll see in like news stories like this duckling is friends with this at or like this pig is friends

with this sheep. Ah, it's so cute. And spiders do that too, sometimes, like the friendship between a spider and a carnivorous plant. It's like a musical waiting to happen. So uh. The Nepenthes picture plants are a vase shaped plant found in Southeast Asia. They attract insects with a sweet excretion, but it's a trap. Once the insect ventures to the slippery interior walls of the plant, they fall down into the belly of the picture plant, which is

filled with digestive fluid. Once the insect is liquefied, the plant can absorb the liquefied nutrients of their victims. Just like you know, just like a homeward bound a cute or like a soilent or like drinking a Yeah, they make their own smoothies. It's it's that's fun and fresh. They're like a jomba juice, but they're a plant. Yeah. Yeah, if you're like a plant and like you just like had a jomba juice in your house, right exactly, Like

who are we to judge like that? They make their smoothies out of flies when we make smoothies out of like weird stuff like cheese, you know, yeah, I mean, yeah, we're on the plant is looking at us like, oh my god, oh my god, you make smoothies out of plants. That's messed up. That's messed up, right, Yeah, exactly. Uh Well, there's a beautiful friendship between these plants and the yellow

crab spiders and also the red crab spiders. So the yellow crab spider is a lovely, bright yellow crab like spider, as its name implies, they're they're not too big. The females are usually less than half an inch in length around ten millimeters or less, and males are even smaller. The red crab spiders even littler it's about six millimeters or point two inches long. So these are these are little spiders. They're quite pretty in my opinion. They are

these bright colors. They look sort of like flower like in a in a weird way. And both of these crap spiders like to make their home in the carnivorous picture plant. They will lay in wait just under the rim of the pictures opening, and when a fly or other insect comes to investigate the sweet smelling nectar that the plant has um excreted as a bait, the spider will actually strike out and catch this insect. But then does it? But then doesn't the picture plant get mad

about that? You would think so, right, Well, first of all, I don't know what an angry plant looks like. It does its leaves just kind of scowl at you. I'm trying to think. Or does it start to just try to trap the spider and try to, you know, get put up more of that liquid to get the spider. No, Actually, it turns out that this is a beneficial relationship even

for the plant, which is surprising. Right, So the spider is safe from the plant generally speaking, because it has a strand of silk that it's attached outside of the picture so that even if it like slips, it's still got this safety literal safety net preventing it from falling into the digestive basin. But they are actually doing something

that ends up helping the plant in certain ways. So uh, they may increase the success rate of capturing more agile flies who might otherwise evade the picture plants trapped the presence of these spiders. Researchers went around and like measured the number of flies and stuff inside the picture plant, and picture plants who had these spiders living on them, they actually would have more flies inside the picture plants.

So what probably happens is these spiders are good at like knocking a fly down right catching, you know, knocking flydown. But sometimes they you know, miss they make a mistake, and if the fly starts to escape, then it slips down into the picture plant. So the picture plant is getting the flies that the spider is not successfully catching um, and that means it's actually increasing the rate of success

for these picture plants. In addition, the spider one it's eating the insect is kind of messy, so it'll drop like crumbs which are just insect parts down into the picture, which the picture plant also digests. Additionally, the spiders once when they like die of old age or something like, they will actually fall into the picture. So it's like one last gift that these little friendly spiders give to the picture plants, which is their own body as a snack,

which is adorable. Like homeward bound basically bas where the red fern grows, right exactly. Yeah, yeah, man, that book sucked. It made me sad. I got angry as a kid. No, I yeah, it was a that's like, that's the kind of the first touch of tragedy. Yeah, how dare they? How dare they try to make me feel complex adult feelings as a literal child. I should see them. There was also that book The Yearling. Did you ever read that? No?

I didn't. It's horrible, highly disrecommend the opposite of recommend as Anyways, Yeah, they were beautifully written books, but if you if the end of the book. Same thing with Old Yeller. It's like at the end of the book, it's like, ah, you made a bond with these cute animals. Well, now we're going to kill him. It's like, you know what, maybe I'll write a book about a spider and a picture plant and their friends and they live forever and then they die and then the and on the last

day and the last day of the spider's life. You know, it's basically like a Tuesday's with Marie. But then the spider dies and just gives itself to the plant. Yeah, or they or they are acute and they live forever. Also the end that can't happen, I guess not. I guess the harsh realities of life must be taught to children and make them cry. Um. But yeah, I mean, you know this is I love these like symbiotic relationships where like at first it seems like these spiders are

klepto parasites. So klepto parasite is something that steals resources from you, so they're not actually attacking your body like um uh, you know, like an indo parasite lives inside of you and you know, like taking your shine right right exactly. An ectoparasite is like a flea or a tick. It's you know, uh, sucking your blood or taking nutrients from your body by living outside your body. But a

klepto parasite steals your resources. So like certain like seabirds can often be kleptose parasites, Like goals will steal fish from birds other birds who have caught the fish, and so that's a klepto parasite. And so like these spiders

seem like klepto parasites. They're taking the insects that would otherwise get into the picture, But it actually seems more like it is a mutualistic relationship where the spiders um get more success rate because the plant is attracting insects and the plant actually gets the sort of failures of the spider when like the foul balls that the spider is dropping into the picture, the picture is getting. It's like teamworky, it sounds that's actually sounds like a super

healthy partnership. It is. Yeah, it's actually it reminds me a little bit of the relationship between badgers and coyotes. Have you ever seen like those those videos of like a coyote and a badger walking together. Uh No, it's very cute. Highly recommend that. Don't don't read Where the Red Fern Grows, don't read books, just watch videos of the badgers and the coyotes. I'm joking. Books are a

wonderful world into the imagination. Do read them just like if it's where the red Fern grows, skip the last twenty pages. But yeah, yeah, badgers and coyotes will team up. And what they do is they will attack um uh burrows of like you know, things like gophers, um, groundhogs, and like they will. The badger is very good at digging and the coyote is very good at chasing and catching.

And the badger will go on one end of the burrow and start digging in and these poor terrified little rodents will try to escape the badger and run out, and what do they see on the exit hole a coyote there to catch them. And so the badger will sometimes catch the rodents right like, because they'll sometimes run out that way, um because they're scared of the coyote. And sometimes the coyote will hatch them because they're scared

of the badger. So it's like, you know, they they basically trapped these these uh their prey and so either the prey is going to get got by the badger or the coyote, and so in that way they actually both benefit even though they're not directly like sharing the food They're not like killing a ground hugin and presenting it to the other one. Uh. In effect, by them both being there and cornering these poor little rodents, they are helping each other. Um, but they're also both bits.

Like a rising tide floats all boats, you know, just like a total panic attack of a rodent colony floats all boats. Everyone. I like that saying better, a total panic panic attack of a rodent floats all boats of an entire rodent colony. Right, an individual rodent won't be enough to feed them, but like they're doing it to terrorize the entire column. The terrified screams of a rodent is good for the goose and the gander. M hmm, well,

you know, mixing lots of animals. Yeah, yeah, it actually to me, it reminds me of the symbiotic relationship of a small child and a dog. Dogs really love small like a smart dog, like there are some dogs that just hate kids, and you don't want the round kids. And then like a really smart dog knows that children are frequently being offered food, and children frequently refuse it, and even when they do eat it, they're extremely messy eaters, and so they just stick the kids. What's the what's

the dog giving the child though? Other than emotional affection, I guess well, constant play buddy. But also you know then if you don't like something, you can sneak it to the dog eaters. Yeah. Man, I was such a picky eater as a kid. I should have had a dog because I had a cat and if I tried to feed her apee, she'd try to kill me. Yeah, I don't think that's I don't think cats and humans have as much as symbiotic relationship, no, as much as

like a sub dumb relationship. Yeah, they're more bosses, right, like you know, we're there, we're the cats employees. Like I'm trying to like earn my cat's affection to like heal the love that I do not feel like I got as a child. Yeah. Yeah, it's uh yeah, you know it's are we it's kind of a codependent relationship with cats, I think versus with dogs or like spiders and spiders and picture plants. Yeah, a picture it's that,

it is. It is such a beautiful like relationship though, you know, just like they're both they're both giving and they're both taking, which is what you want. Yeah, they're like leave they leave no crumbs. Yeah, like together they like the plate clean the plate, being flies another and flying insects. But yeah, so so have I warmed you up a little bit to spiders? Maybe possibly a little bit. I do. I do feel, you know, I do empathize with that perspective of like, hey, there's enough for all

of us, don't fight over them. If we fight together instead of fighting each other, there's enough for us all to grow big and strong. Yeah exactly. I love that these are very these are these spiders have a very um not what's the opposite of zero sum? Hundredsome it's win win win, right, Yeah, exactly. They understand, they get it. These spiders get it that we don't have to live in a zero sum society. We can support each other,

community care, sharing fly parts. It's beautiful. We make a bigger we make a bigger pie, We make a bigger more flies, a big fly pie, right exactly, to fight over the pie. That's a that's right, that that sounds wonderful. So like zero out of tin, how would you write spiders? Um ivy um? I mean on what scale? Just don't I don't feel that you've made spiders cuter for me today. Uh, and I feel like my I can maintain my armistice with spiders in perpetuity. But I do feel like I

learned something from nature today. So like that would be a tin you'd say, mm hmmm. No, I mean I I learned things from Uh you know, I learned I learned things from osama bin laden, So things from anything. You heard it here, folks, You heard it here first, folks, spiders just like a sama bin laden some of the laden out of tin. That's that's where that's where we're at. The enemy still an enemy. But uh, you know, a worthy a worthy opponent. It's what you're saying about a

sama pin on, a worthy worthy opponent. Ah. Anyways, saw our toes had a sawn our toes. I'm not gonna lie. But before we get inundated with emails, uh, we gotta play a little game. And that game is called gets Who's Squawking? Guess Who's Squawking? Is the Mystery Animal sound game. Each week I play a Mystery animals sound in you the listener, and hey, you the guest, to try to guess who is squawking. Last week's Mystery Animals sound hint was,

who's this knocking? Well, don't let it raise your hackles. You're really gonna test my credentials as a nature show host today. He's so tricky I probably wouldn't get Honestly, if I were playing against me, I would probably Ah, oh that left alt weird inside my ears? Ah Frog, Frog, Oh oh it sounds so weird. Yeah, I hope you're you're not listening to the headphones right now. Ah Uh, it's it's like a fun little a SMR. Isn't it

a little tickle in your ear? It looks like I got it looks it feels like someone like licked the inside of my ears without my consent. It's like it was like a non consensual what will it? Non consensual? A sm some more like super super inappropriate a SMR touch. So you guessed frog, that's not correct? Did you have any more guesses? Like? Literally, anything could be a bird? Any sound like there's a bird that can make that sound?

It is a bird. You're correct on that. Do you want to guess the species of bird or do you want to like leave it generally just a bird? I only know like three birds, which are the birds? You know? Pigeon, grackle, and dove. Well it's probably closest to the grackle. Um, but this is actually a raven. Oh so you may have noticed the term hackles being used in my hint. So hackles of the raven are those roughly feathers on their throat. So ravens don't just croak. They make a

wide variety of noises. They can even learn to imitate human speech, so there are in fact talking ravens, usually at zoos um, but in this case poems they do these. Sometimes they write poems too, and then some sad guy from like the eighteen hundreds steals that poem and claims it's his. H So you know, this sound is actually not imitation. This is a natural sound that they make. And this it's like it kind of sounds like a

weird water droplets, sound like some weird machine. Um. This is most likely the call of either a mated pair communicating with each other and reaffirming their bond, or a dominant female raven in the social hierarchy sounding off and kind of uh, I guess, strengthening her role as the dominant female. Oh and we can't tell the difference, We don't know, Yeah, I don't think we fully speak raven at this point. It's like, you know, they probably have.

They probably have some kind of accent. There's probably like, you know, like an oom out somewhere on the that they say, um, but yeah, I'm not sure we we full Maybe a raven expert might fully understand this, the subtle differences in tones and ornithologists. The ornithologist who was like collecting these sounds and they're just watching it and they're like, Okay, either it's affirming, it's affirming this like

familial bond, or it's both. It's both like or like they're like, but then I also heard it there and I don't know if it's asserting her dominance or if she's just affirming her familiar blond with her like lesbian polycule. I mean it's kind of like, I mean, humans have

stuff like that, like hey babe. Can a couple reaffirming their bond or it can be like uh, you know, a boss boss Batch being like hey babe, like you know, basically like it, And it depends on the tonel like hey babe, that's nice, like we're reaffirming our our bond. But if it's like hey babe, hey babe, Hey babe. Then it's it's a little agressive there. It's getting a

little bit a little bit aggressive. So I'm gonna saybe you need to like chill or like hey, babes, sign up for my free webinar where I'm not going to try to sell you anything. The trick to this, baby, like listen, babes. The trick to this is that you actually make money, um doing nothing and um you know you make money from your downstreams, babes. Yeah, so all you have to do is pay me to ninety nine. It's a webinar. It is a webinar that will change

your life. Babe, babe, this will change your life. Yeah, so you are going to be the CEO of your Dreams Trip Drop Coup. So, kid, what's that? I won't try to either side? Okay, yeah, I can't do it either. Not much of a word caller, um, but yeah, this is this. Yeah so this is probably the hay babe of the raven LINGO. Uh so they could be it could be a loving call. It could be trying to get you into a raven mL M. Who's to say so? I bet they have them too. They must. They're very

smart um. They're very smart and petty. They're smart and petty. I could imagine them starting a multi level marketing scheme like you know this, this is not just about peanuts. This is about self actualization. So onto this feminism, this is this is actually about fighting for our rights. And also we sell twigs to each other. So uh onto this week's mystery animals sound uh here is the hint. It is the largest of its order. But that doesn't

mean will refuse a good cuddle. Oh. I keep thinking it's going to be like a little woodpeck, Like I think it's going to be a woodpecker, But then that little like at the end just sounds like a mammal to me, So you're gonna go with so I'm trying. There's like, there aren't there mammals that chopped wood? Like was it beavers? Beavers? Yes, they do, they do chew on wood. I wouldn't. I wouldn't call it chopping. Really, it's not. They don't like swinging their head like an

act exactly, but they do. They do gnaw on wood. Okay, that wasn't Yeah, that's all the other I was because I was hearing like a tap tap tap, but you're gonna you're gonna think of woodpecker because the only woodpecker sound I've heard is from like looney Tune. Yeah, so somewhere between a woodpecker and a beaver is your guests right? Yeah? Well I will reveal the answer on next week's episode of Creature Feature. So if you out there, thank you know who is squawking? You can write to me at

Creature Feature Pod at gmail dot com. I'm sorry, Ivy looks devastated that she's not going to find out. This is not what I signed up fort. You had a no cliphangers clause. I'm sorry, um, but I mean, thank you so much for joining me today. Uh tell people where they can find you they can find thank you so much for having me. I love and hate nature. I will watch all the nature documentaries like It's a

train wreck. Um, I'm I believe with one e that praise all spelled out of pretty much all social media Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, what have you? And I would love it if you love nature, if you would listen to my podcast from Spotify Studios. You can listen to any platform for free. It's called Fogo. Fear of Going Outside a nature show by the most reluctant host ever. Uh it is. It is a good listen, especially if you yourself are a little bit hesitant about camping. So uh yes, thank you

guys so much for listening. If you're enjoying the show and you want to leave a rating or review, I would be most grateful. I print out everything's going to give it literally zero stars from the clip hanger. I'm gonna go rater no oh no, I'm going to get like a review from Ivy Lee. It's gonna be like Ivy Lee, um Goku sixty nine. And then it's going to be like, I you you literally didn't tell me

what that squeaking noise was, and so negative. Somehow you'll manage to find out a way to do negative stars. The review is just gonna me through you where it's just gonna be rude, so rude. Well, if you think the podcast is rude, or if you think it's great, whatever, you can leave a review for me. I'll read them all. I print them all out, and then I like playing it like it's snow. I make a snow angel out

of the reviews. So the more I get, the better my snow angel quality of all these papers that I've strewn about the house and made my husband worry about me. Uh so, thank you so much for listen. Thanks to the Space Classics for their super awesome song Exo Lumina. Creature features a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or hey guess what, Wherever you listen to your favorite shows. See you next Wednesday.