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Oh hey, it's your neighbor's dad practicing golf on the lawn alley. Ward, it's also the lady who's going to be on The Tonight Show on Wednesday, May fourteenth. Correct your podfather, your internet dad me. I'm taping the Tonight Show the very day this episode comes out. And if you're here because you saw that, welcome, I'm made a spider episode for you. Sometimes on this show we talk about bears or psychology, or porcupines or rocks, but today
it's spiders. So thank you everyone for all of the support. Going into this taping tomorrow, I'm excited and my hands are sweaty. So first off, I'm going to say, I know some of you are very afraid of spiders, and we are gathered here today to change that. Okay, we can do this. Many psychologists assert that the best cure for apprehension and phobias is what's called exposure response prevention. So you have to fight fear with knowledge and proximity.
It works. Listening to this. If you're afraid of spiders will make you a stronger person, and it'll make your life easier. You got it. And if you're not afraid, it's just a great way to fill yourself with facts about our tiny little iracanid friends. And side note, this episode does not called it rachnology because there are different types of iracanids that are not spiders, but the scientific distinction for spiders comes from the Greek root erinea, so
hence raniology. And we have a great one for you. He is a professor and researcher at San Diego State University and so passionate about spiders. Such a friend to spiders. Also, his vibes are like Ron Swanson. He's cool, not a yapper, but brimming with love and respect for these maligned and fascinating creatures. He's calm, he's collected. He's going to take us on a journey. I personally I love spiders and
I fear them not. But I am holding your hands if you do, because it turns out you were brainwashed. That's why you're afraid. So I hope you're not. If you're listening, I hope you're cool with them. You will be in a minute. But first off, there are thirty eight thousand known spider species in the world, and about one hundred species have venom that's detrimental to humans. So that is zero points zero zero two five. So let's
start there and continue. Okay, but first, thank you so much to all the patrons at patreon dot com slash ologies for supporting the show for as little as a dollar a month and sending in your questions. Thank you to everyone wearing ologiesmerch fromologiesmerch dot com, and thank you to everyone who leaves a review because they really help the show so much and I read them all and
I prove it to you. So thank you Lady ellentia o four, who wrote a review this week that said, I've been able to cut my doom scrolling to almost nothing because Ologies always keeps me on the edge of my seat. Thank you, thank thank you for making this space possible. Lady ellent o oh four, Glad you're here, happy to do it. I hope you like spiders or I hope you fear them because this episode will cure a rachtophobia maybe, and if not, you get your money
back on this free podcast. Speaking of free podcasts, also we have shorter g rated versions of our episodes and their own feed. Wherever you get podcasts, you can abscribed to that. That show is called Smologies. It's also linked in the show notes. We made them for delicate years, so now, let's get into it ready. I headed to San Diego State University to interview this expert who had been on my list for years. And it was hot, like one hundred degrees, and for some reason, I think
I was wearing a sweater I can't remember. Parking was incredibly confusing, and it was not going well. I'm going to set the seed. I'm nearly twenty minutes late to this interview. Nightmare. Some of you are very afraid of spiders. This is my actual nightmare. It's one hundred degrees two twenty four Life Sciences South, so sweaty, and because it's one million degrees and I did not want to die, I drank like a gallon and a half of water in.
The way here.
It was a two hour drive. So here, I am not believe how that I have to be. My neck feels and smells like a t rex has been licking it. Oh, excuse me, excuse me. Do you know where Life Science South is? Oh? Do you know where the Life Science building is? South? O? Life Science is South? I believe it's down there, down there. Yes, I'm not a hundred though, Okay, I'm honing in. I'm getting closer at this point, despite arriving on campus early, I'm one hour late to his office. It's a nightmare.
I'm looking for Marshall.
He's a science a spider guy. He's in life science. Is South two sixty four?
Yeah, yeah, okay, thank.
You so much for the escort.
Happends all the time.
Ah, you're an angel. Thank you so much, Marshall. My dad, is this heaven?
A little red in the face.
Yeah, it's a hundred out there. There are people just straight up in bikinis a hundred, if not a little bit more. And I talked to Yeah, it's I'm disgusting, but that's okay. So I'm so sorry. Can I use the ladies who really quick? Okay, you're the best. He was so forgiving and very humble and shy and subdued. I don't think he had ever heard of ologies or realized what he was getting into. Much like a spider that you see in your shower, who's like, I'm okay,
what are you? But relax, chill out, enjoy such dazzling information such as what is a true spider versus not a true spider? Which are the most advanced spiders, what's a spider's vision? Like, which movies get it really really wrong, the rarest ones, the tiniest ones, What fieldwork is like how learning about these critters is the key to loving them. Hidden phone features, mating habits, the oldest Spider, and so much more so. Let's hand the mic to professor, researcher,
spider defender and a raaniologist, Doctor Marshall Hadeen. Can you pretend like you're doing karaoke? Just like pretend you're either Seinfeld or karaoke Celine Dionne, one of the.
Two Marshall Hadeen, him Headeen, Hedeen.
Okay. A lot of people call you Hedden probably, yes, yeah, you get that a lot. I'm glad you said it because I Hedeen Headen. Okay, perfect? And now do people call you doctor Spider ever?
Rarely?
Really? Yeah, that's a missed opportunity to be Can I call you doctor Spider?
You can call me doctor Spider? Yeah?
And you are an a racknologist. I am right, big time, big time. What how do you classify just a normal arachnologist and a big time one based on the level of passion?
Yes? And I work on different groups of iraknids. If you just work on spiders. I mean you're kind of sort of an a rachnologist, But if you work on spiders and other aracnids, then yeah.
Now, when you are tasked with defining a spider in very technical terms, what do.
You mean defining a spider like defining a new species?
No, just literally, what is a spider as opposed to another iraknet?
Spiders have in their fangs, they have venom glands m H. And spiders produce silk from their abdomen. That sets spiders apart from other.
Arachnids venom glands and silk.
That actually makes them the ultimate predator. Venom and silk.
And let's say that you're talking about daddy long legs.
Yep.
Does it irritate you when people call them spiders?
No? I mean.
So the daddy long legs that you're used to seeing, those may not even be spiders. There are these creatures called opilionies, and we are going to exonerate them in a moment.
No, I don't get too upset about it. Okay, so there are daddy long legs spiders, okay, which are sellar spiders which people find in their cellars. But those are spiders and then there are if you go to the east coast, you see a little a racknet with a little round body and long legs, and people call those daddy long legs. Those are apilliones, not spiders.
And apilliones don't have venomous glands.
Or so, that's correct.
Yeah, and their body segments just one ball of a body.
That's right. They don't have two part body plan. Yeah. But there's another myth because some people think that opilionies what they call daddy long legs, are actually highly venomous. But that's not true.
So those slenderman friends that hang out in your shower sometimes they're not even spiders and not venomous. So that myth that the these non spider daddy long legs are dangerous, but they just don't have fangs. The total horsepucky, garbage stalk, and even the seller spiders not a threat to your life.
Well, they don't have venom glands for one thing. But even if it was a daddy long legs spider, it's not really dangerous either. So myth number one, crushed.
Flim flambusted spiders technically aren't insects either, or are they insects? Not even close not even close to insects. So when people say I hate insects like spiders.
Why would you ever say that?
But well, I tell me about it. One thing you should know about me right off the bat is I love bugs. Okay, love bugs.
This is good.
I bug collection. My One of my favorite things to do before the Internet when I was a kid was just pour through field guides of insects. Awesome, I draw them. If I see a spider, I will let a crawl on me and then rehome it outside. I'm thrill. I saw tarantula in the wild last year and it was I almost started crying whereabouts. It was in the Santa Monica Mountains and I'd never seen one in the wild before. Here's some actual audio from this encounter, and it's mortifying
amounts of glee. That is beautiful. We have trapdoor spiders in our backyard.
Sweet. Yeah.
So I'm the opposite of a person that's like kill it with fire. That's why I've been so excited about this for so long. Thank god that we established that, because you can tell this good man is used to haters. What about you? When did you start getting interested in bugs as a general category.
When I was a grad student.
Really not until then, you weren't out looking for bugs and new your kid.
No, I was outside a lot when I was a kid, but a lot, But I was interested in mammals mostly.
Really we were turned out into a field and told to come back when it got dark.
Yeah that was me too.
Yeah, just like see you later when you smell rice a RONI come back.
That's right, different times, yeah, exactly. Although you can still do that up and are Northern California turn loose?
It's good for the microbiome. Get a tetnis shot, best of luck.
I like it.
So why mammals when you were growing up in Mount Shasta?
That was just kind of the culture I grew up with, you know, hunters around, hunters and stuff, So that's kind of what we did.
What were you studying grad school?
When I was a master student, I actually studied mammals mice. But then when I did my PhD, I made the transition.
What was it? What flipped that switch?
I was kind of floundering around, but I was interested in like questions, evolutionary biology questions, and then I got I just got interested and kind of floated around and founder rachnids and then yeah, went from there.
Was it something about their mystique or their web spinning or no.
Initially it was just because they were very poorly known, and I thought there was a lot to learn.
How many species do we know of spiders?
Yeah? Fifty thousand, fifty thousand described that's so many. Well, there's probably twice as many as that, actually, one hundred k one hundred one thousand spider species.
She's a spider. Yeah. Did you ever have the phobia of spiders?
No?
No, you probably run into people with it a lot, right, or people if they find out what you do, they probably.
I've heard that. I've heard about that.
Yeah, I've heard that.
There's a thing. I think one of your Venezuelan spiders hitched a ride here.
There may be some spiders around here that are very dangerous. Do you blame a lot of it on arachnophobia? The film?
Uh? I mean I think that film's kind of so old that people don't watch that anymore.
That's good.
I think it's just yeah, something about the culture. Yeah, that's what parents learned. Then they teach their kids the same kind of fear.
I talked to you or her patologists said the same thing. About snakes. Yeah, it's just conditioned. See that herpetology episode with doctor David Stein about reptiles and how children don't start to fear them until they see their elders spooked. Even the Mayo Clinic is like, if a family member has a specific phobia or anxiety, you're more likely to develop it too, because children may learn specific phobias by watching how a family member reacts to an object or situation.
That's straight from the Mayo Clinic. And we're more on how fear works in your body and how you have what I like to call a screaming almond of terror nestled at the center of your brain. We have an amazing two part furrology episode with doctor Mary Poffenroth, who also has a new book out called Brave New You. She's great, But the message here you're scared of spiders because probably someone else was in your life. Let's crunch
the numbers on the actual danger. How many of those fifty thousand known species are a danger to humans?
About fifty five oh fifty out of fifty thousand, pretty small percentage.
Yeah, human beings are probably much more dangerous to that's right.
I always talk about this in my class. It can show a slide of animals that kill people.
Mm hmm.
And spiders aren't on the list, right, Yeah, they don't kill people essentially effectively, so they're not on the top fifty list.
So it's like mosquitoes people. From what I understand, like, there's mosquitos and then people.
And then a bunch of actually dangerous animals like dogs or whatever.
Yeah, yeah, right, and here I have one in my bed every night, that's right. But if some people see a spider outside the right, so yes, I have a killer in my bed every night, and her name is Gremlin. Statistically, dogs kill twenty five thousand humans a year globally, ranking number four on the list of dangerous animals. And you can see our recent hippo episode for some debunking in that department. But I still love my dog. I'm not scared of her. You want to know the top animal killer,
of course, once again, not spiders. It's mosquitoes. Because of their vector born they're responsible for roughly a million human deaths annually, and they're not spiders. There are over two hundred million mosquito spread cases of malaria a year and it's on the rise, and most deaths occur in little kiddos under the age of five. Mosquitoes kill more people on Earth in one day than sharks have in the last century. Spiders are like, leave me out of this people.
And to be fair, I will say it's not the mosquito's fault that they are just lousy with parasites who use them for a ride. But the number two animal cause death mosquito's number one, dog's number four, snake's number three coming in it over a half a million human fatalities per year is a species of ape Homo sapiens, which means that I have one of those in my bed too. So if a mosquito bites me while I'm sleeping in my home, I am in bed with three
potential killers, and none of them are spiders. So in terms of what animal could take your ass out, it's a mosquito, or a warlord, or a drunk driver, or maybe a person who was sold firearms when they don't know how to handle them. But it's not going to be a spider most likely. So you are needlessly afraid
of spiders, I get it. The receptionist at my dentist office this week told me that she is so afraid of spiders that she has broken two phones by throwing them across the room when she saw a picture of a spider on the phone on the screen. Not a real spider, just a screen spider. So what can you do? First, you can ask yourself if something happened with a spider once that surprised you. One guy friend once told me that he hates spiders, and I was like, did you
ever get surprised by one? And he was like, oh, I guess I did have a tarantula crawl across my hand in a desert when I was a kid, and I was like, well, there you go. So try to distinguish between the different emotions of fear and surprise. Also exposure. I know you don't want to hear that, but it's true. Look at photos first and then see if you can hold one, or try to look at some spiders from
a distance outside. And what you're doing is rewiring your brain to learn through exposure that they aren't scarier a threat, And then you're teaching the people around you that they don't have to fear them either. And unfortunately, whether it's about writing an email or texting someone hot or getting started on your novel or procrastinating on a work thing, or even ordering food over the phone. The more you
avoid it, the more it scares and owns you. That is from my therapist to your brain, and it includes spiders. One person asked me if during this episode if I could bleep the word spider, and I was like.
I don't.
I think that's not the problem hearing the word spider.
That's right, We're.
Gonna be saying it could get pretty annoying. Yeah, exposure therapy is the way to goes. But what was your graduate work in spiders? What part of a technology was that?
Well, it was pretty I went to grad school in Missouri, but I did my work in the Southern Appalachians. Wow. And I worked on spiders that like to live in caves. Oh like the combination right.
Yeah. For more on caves, you can see our recent Speleology episode about what it's like to spend weeks underground sleeping in a hammock for science. Spider roommates are part of the job.
You combine the cave, you combine with the spider. Not all of them live in caves, but a lot of them live in caves. A lot of them just live up in the beautiful mountains of that area.
Is that a spider rich territory and generally Appalachia. Yeah, yeah, it.
Was really spectacular working there.
Does your work deal with field work or lab work or kind of an equal combination both.
Yeah, in the field is the best.
People like us? Are you getting? Turn us out with a bucket and a flashlight.
That's so awesome. Looks like a road trip, like a three week road trip. I mean you're with people that also love nature and are really interested in spiders. And every day you're outside in beautiful places looking for things, often finding new things, finding new species, lots of rich conversations. It's it's the best.
What kinds of places has that taken you to?
Well? I mean in California, I've been everywhere. What is that a song or something?
Everywhere?
Man?
Bang the ball to mors Aalbadora, Amarilla, Tocopilla, Barnbulla, and Vanilla.
I'm a gonna I've been everywhere.
Man, I've been everywhere literally in California, and a lot in the Western United States, a lot in eastern United States and southern Appalachia, South Africa, Australia, a few times, Central America, South America.
Australia's got some spiders. I've seen pictures of Australian spiders and they're like bread plate They're like a palm size, right the huntsman's Oh, yes, but it's not just Australia that has giants booters.
Oh, I had a giant crab spider that I just found in Arizona. I should have brought it.
Then.
How big is a crab spider.
Well, that giant crab spider is pretty big. They have long legs. They can kind of fill your palm or something like that. But they're in the same family as the spiders you're talking about, sporacids.
Yeah, their legs are sort of set back a little bit, right. Yeah, this giant crab spider, or Olios gigantius, is a huntsman and its legs are more along a horizontal axis than a circle, if you can imagine that. And Marshall, this man knows his spiders. He's been at this professionally for decades, discovering new species and cataloging them and then teaching the next generation of what he considers stewards of the environment
and protectors of the species. He's traveled all kinds of terrain, and he says to go spider watching, head to different habitats, and our apaiology episode with Joseph Saunders is a really great intro into macro photography even with your phone, and how to get up close and patient looking for tiny creatures with new eyes. So maybe start with some photography. Can you tell me for an evolutionary perspective, what do we know about the evolution of spiders and how they
branch off like that? And why do they call things that are true spiders not true spiders? What's with that taxonomy being a little.
Yeah, that name's kind of dumb, But we know a lot about the spider tree of life. Our knowledge in the last ten years has exploded. Tell me, I'm actually part of that, but we're using like DNA evidence to reconstruct the tree the phylogeny for spiders. My lab was the first lab to kind of develop this technique where we could pull the same genes from the spider genome and compare it across species. So now that you can do that, you can easily collect a lot of data and reconstruct that phylogeny.
Marshall says that they used to have to request a specie sample sent to look at its gennies under a microscope and its mouth parts and stuff to determine who it was, what was what species, and if it was a novel five and where they fit in with spider evolution. Can you give me kind of a broad strokes tree of life overview, like when did spiders maybe emerge in history?
And like the common ancestor of spiders goes back to maybe three hundred and fifty million years ago, so that's in the Palaeozoic, that's before dinosaurs. But then of course they've been evolving since then.
So when it comes to your war with spiders, spiders were here first before you, before dinosaurs. Not to be goth about it, but spiders are going to be here after you, probably after us. As a species.
Spider evolutionary history is really old compared to a lot of like mammals or birds. It's really really deep history. It's like akin to all vertebrates combined, Like all animals with a backbone maybe have an evolutionary age that is about the same age as all spiders.
WHOA, yeah, WHOA, they're old. Did certain species of spiders kind of remain unchanged? Do we have any that are kind of the horseshoe crab all this spider world like a living fossil. Yeah, yeah, we do in California. What
are those, Well, there's a genus called hypo kylas. Okay, so hypo kylas have been around since before the dinosaurs, and there are what's called an eranomorph or a true spider, and eranomorphs or true spiders are most of the spiders in the world, about ninety percent of what you might
see now. Arenomorphs have fangs that point kind of diagonally over each other, like having a crossbite, and they include critters like jumping spiders and wolf spiders and little house spiders making cute cobwebs in your corner, the big huntsman's, the little pink and white crab spiders that hide the flowers, and those orb weavers that make those gorgeous classic spider webs.
But another type of spider is what's called a meglomorph, which means shrew shaped, and meglomorphs are typically burrowed spelling, so they hide little holes. And they include Tarantula's and Australia's funnel web spiders, which we're going to get to later. And instead of being crisscross miglamore fangs point straight down like a little, tiny, cute little vampire. So yeah, true spiders are just the eranio morphs. And then our little
trapdoor and tarantula friends don't count as true spiders. But Marshall says that is a ridiculous taxonomy blunder. But yeah, back to this living fossil hypocylas spider that Marshall loves.
But Hypocylas is kind of early on the branch of true spiders right here, and.
They're still kicking, they're still running around.
They're so awesome. They're called lamp shade spiders. So they build a web that looks like this flimsy, beautiful lamp shade, and then they sit on the rock kind of behind their lamp shade, and they have a morphology that's very cryptic. They blend in with the rock, but their morphology hasn't evolved really kind of it's morphological stasis.
What does that mean exactly?
They just have stayed there the entire time. So they're spectacular spiders. That's kind of like when you see them, you can envision that the lineage that they exist in was there when the dinosaurs were there. They've just been there the entire time, kind of in stasis, kind of persisting.
These little long linen babes build webs that are kind of conical, and when the light catches them in dark spaces, they take on this glow of a lamp shade. And there's some of the more primitive newer species, and Marshall loves them, I think it's safe to say. And I love that the.
Beautiful story of evolutionary persistence. And for someone from California, it's so cool because you can kind of go there and see that very very special spider.
And this is exciting.
We actually described a new species of Hypocilis a couple of years ago, really from the far southern Sierra Nevada, from up near Kernville.
Did you get to name it?
Yeah?
Would you name it?
It's all the hypochilis Hamote, which is an indigenous name.
Oh that's great. Yeah, what does it mean?
Amote? It means from the south.
Oh, that's beautiful. And according to a newspaper article titled his spidy sense must have been tingling, stsu biologists discovers new species. This newly discovered beauty is brown, orange and black with these iridescent blue and green specs. And it's little though, it's described as the size of a pencil eraser. So if this genus is one of the older ones, what are the newer models of spider? He says that some jumping spiders with big eyes and sharp vision. They
do complicated dancing courtship. And yes, they have the ability to bound nearly forty times of their body length, which is the equivalent of you jumping over two hundred feet. That's from one tip of a seven forty seven wing to the tip of the other wing. Jumping spiders can do the equivalent of that. But Marshall says not all models of spider are from the same time. Some lingering under your fridge or sitting on a flower could be one hundred thousand years old, while others are one hundred
million years old. What about sizes? What's the biggest spider?
Biggest spiders like a big tarantula that you would find in Brazil, a bird eating spider like the size of a dinner.
Plate, and they really do eat birds, right, that's what I hear. Was that named because someone's like that thing could probably eat a bird or are they like, I got another bird?
No, yeah, they found them eating birds.
Okay, oh my goodness, he eate a bird, Michael, he ate a bird?
Hey eight a bird?
Well, then that's accurate. What about the range of spiders across the globe? Does every continent? Does every latitude have them?
Except for Antarctica? But everything else there's spiders. There's some spiders up in the Arctic. I mean, obviously as you get further north, there's fewer of them, but they get pretty far north.
How do they survive those temperatures?
Oh, that's interesting.
Let's have it.
Some of the species that live at either high elevations or extreme latitudes must have anti freeze. Yeah, they're spiders that are active on the snow.
Spider anti freeze. You ask the heavens, spider anti freeze. So, according to the two thousand and four study anti freeze proteins in Alaskan insects and spiders in the Journal of Insect Physiology, these cold tolerant little critters have high concentrations of a type of alcohol in their hemolymph or blood, and proteins that lower the freezing point of water, but the melting point stays the same, which is called thermal hysteresis.
In case you're ever like in the hardest game of bar trivia ever known, You're probably never going to need to know the term thermal hysteresis, but no I do. And while spiders they usually have eight eyes, most have to rely on touch to kind of suss out the world around them. They're literally navigating the world on vibes, and their brains are tiny, and their neural tissue can extend all through their torsu. They are thinking with their
whole chest. What about anatomy of a spider. We've got the fangs up front.
Come back to the basics.
I like this, yeah, because like, let's get to know spiders.
They're good.
We got the fangs up front, typically two, always two, always two, So callissary are upfront, and those are the jaws of a spider, and they're tipped with little fangs. Now, next to those callissory are some short, leggy looking things called palps or petipalps, and they can be small and right near the mouth, or they can be larger like wolf. Spiders sometimes have them with little ping pong paddles or boxing gloves at the end, and they're usually bigger in
man spiders. Now, we did a scorpiology episode with doctor Lauren Esposito, and to my delight and shock, I learned that scorpions pinchers are technically petapalps. Petipalps petals are those technically legs or they just modified legs into mouthparts.
Yeah, they're technically legs.
They are yep. So petty means foot and palps means to feel. So they have mouth legs that they use like fingers. Tell everyone you know, spiders have mouth legs and they live on earth, but.
They don't really function as legs. They function in a sensory way. The spider uses the petopalps to kind of sense its environment, unless you're a male spider, in which case the petopalps are modified to transfer sperm. But they're not walking.
Legs, so they don't count as legs. But they are appendages.
They are appendages. They're paired appendages. But technically a spider has six pairs of appendages going from front to back. That chalissae are paired appendages, but they're not walking legs. Obviously. The petapalps are paired appendages, and then the four pairs of walking legs.
Yeah, so spiders have twelve appendages. Only eight of them are legs and the other four are mouth legs, and they're fang area. But even though they have fangs or callissary in their head, you might say that spiders kind of have two business sense because of course, one lies at the base of their little finger butts. If you glance down at the dairy air of a spider very closely, it may seem to be like if an old lady was knitting on a porch and just wave like helloo.
And then what about spinnerets in the back?
Those are modified abdominal appendages. Yeah, those are actually very cool because you can see them as appendages, like when a tarantulus plays out some silk. You can see them moving independently.
Mm hmm, like a little like a finger on each side of the butt.
Right exactly. It's really cool.
As a companion piece. I urge you to see this Spidronology episode we did to learn all about spiderwebs and spider silk and how they are putting geens that make spider silk into silkworms and sometimes goats to make other things. It's a wild world. We'll link in the show notes but okay, let's talk about their beautiful face and bod which are kind of sewn together. They're like neck, no thanks, different than an insect, so they fuse their head and thorax together.
Yep Insects are hexapods. They have six legs. M h iraknans have well, they have twelve legs, but they have eight walking legs.
When it comes to their internal organs, do they have a stomach and an intestine, I understand there are book lungs in there that are kind of just like blood or hemolymph just squirts out in there. It's kind of open concept.
You mean squirts out bathe.
Things are just bathe.
That's right, right, it's an open circulatory system. Right. They have this dorsal heart.
So a dorsal heart, like a dorsal fin, means that it runs along its back and down the length. So imagine if your heart wasn't on the front side, but it ran down your spine. But spiders don't need a spine because their skeleton is on the outside of their body. But they do have a heart, so it be nice to them.
And then they have hemal lymph that pumps through the body. And then the book lungs just lie in contact with that hema lymph and then there's respiration across that surface. The book lungs, of course include these sheets of cuticle. There's extremely high surface areas like the inside of a lung. Oh, but it's cuticular.
So yes, a usually blue colored juice called a hemo lymph instead of blood splshy splashes just around inside their body, just transporting nutrients and keeping things slippery in kind of an open concept circulatory system. But according to the twenty twenty two paper Take a Deep Breath The Evolution of the Respiratory system of Symphidoonathoid spiders, there are no less than twenty two different respiratory configurations in this certain kind
of spider. And by the way, that's just one family of one info order, and that's twenty two different respiratory system configurations, so it varies. Marshall says that a lot of spiders lose their book lungs with evolution, like and other meglomorph spiders, which tend to be older in the evolutionary scheme of things, they have four book lungs, which are structures kind of like pages in a book that have increased surface area for gas exchange.
But most uranium orph true spiders have moved away from that. Some of their book lungs have evolved into little cuticular tubes that just permeate the body. It's more efficient. The spider can be more active that way because it has basically a more efficient circulatory system.
Are those more like veins exactly?
It's like a capillary system. You have that kind of clunky, open system. And if you're a mygalomorph like a tarantula, you have four book lungs and you're kind of slow because of your respiratory system. They're metabolically not very active. It's like life in the slow lane. But if you're a jumping spider, you have this tracheal system that permeates the body and they can be very active predators.
For more on the boggling, dazzling world of dancing jumping spiders, see the Kinetic Salicidology episode with the beloved doctor Sebastian Everichi, which is all about how spiders dance seductively, and it also includes a bonus electronica track made of spider thumps composed by Jason Scartamalia. It's so good. Yeah, they are jumping around all the time. But you never see a tarantula doing no, that's right, than lumbering.
And like a trapdoor spider, it just sits in its burrow. Literally, it can sit there without eating for a year. Is like sitting in its closet. I'm just gonna I'll pass this year, catch me again next year. Right, It's ridiculous.
It's like going fishing and you're like, I'm just going to sit in this boat.
But it's super duper efficient in their lifestyle. They can persist in the landscape.
They can outweight yeah, their prey, that's right. How often do most spiders eat? Do they need to eat daily?
It depends on what they are. If you're a jumping spider, you need to eat a lot, But if you're a trapdoor spider, literally they can eat once a year. It's crazy. I don't know how it works.
Can we talk more about trap door spiders the one who hang out in a burrow and then seal it with a little quirk like manhole they made of dirt, plants and silk, or one species of trapdoor spider whose actual ass is flattened like a disc that they use to close their little house off. They use their butt as a door. It's a back door, front door made of spider butt. Can we talk about trap door spiders? Great?
Now.
Trapdoor spiders I think are amazing because they've got absolute bonkers camouflage.
They've shown that female trap door spiders can live for forty five years in the wild. Yeah, how that's right again, it's kind of life in the slow lane.
Wow.
Yeah.
In Australia, these kind of beautiful studies, they marked the burrows of spiders and they just kept following them through time, and there was this one big female matriarch and she lived essentially forever. Forty five years for such a small bodied animal is really really cool and it's very different from other arthropods. And then finally, only one day they walked into the forest and they found her trapdoor had a hole in it. The wasp had finally got her
forty five years. No, that must have been pretty sad, actually, yeah, find that. But it's still cool.
And for more on this, you can see the twenty eighteen study The Longest Lived Spider Meglomorph's Dig Deeper and Persevere, which reports that this legendary trapdoor lady, who went by the title of Number sixteen was observed from her first spring as a spiderling up until her death in twenty sixteen, living to be forty three years old. Forty three a spider in her forties, and her principal watcher was the Australian Lady of the Spiders and a ra acknologist, doctor
Barbara York Maine, who worked into her eighties. Motivated she had said, by seeing how long Number sixteen would stay alive, and doctor York Mayne she died of complications from Alzheimer's just months after that final paper was published, and Barbara's mentee, Leanda Mason, who took over the field work, has said that in doctor york Maine's advanced memory loss, she remembered Number sixteen, but perhaps mercifully forgot that Number sixteen had died.
Now they are in the beyond, hopefully hanging out together in the ether and waiting for bugs. And so what was the secret to the long life of number sixteen? At least so studies on these slow moving arachnids site that sedentary, fiercely solitary lifestyle in unkempt environments and what we would call very intermittent fasting keep these babies alive longer,
and also to mate. A female soaks a mat of her own silk with some sexy pheromones and then waits for a male to knock on her door, and then when she answers, he blocks her fangs with his leg
and injects a handful of spermy silk in her. So a long, perhaps lonely life, not eating much, putting out a personal ad on your doorstep, you open the door and you get jiu jitsu with jiz So like as much as I like to glean strength from nature, as your internet dad uncle I or you do not use trap door spiders as a physical or a mental health model.
It's such a cool study. And you know, to be able to follow an individual spider for forty five years is really awesome.
And are those wasps those tarantula hawk.
Wasps probably yeah, like a spider wasp on pilled.
I've seen some of those in our backyard because I know we have trapped doors get away from I know, I know this stinkers gorgeous insects, but I'm also like, no, not the trapdoor spider.
What kind of trap door spiders do you have? Oh?
That's such a great question.
California trapp spiders. Yeah bothreeo, yeah, awesome.
When it rains twice or three times, they've tried to come into the house, and a couple have perished that those are the males. The males, Yeah, speaking of males. And then once one was just lumbering down our hallway and my husband started screaming, partly out of a little bit of shock, but also because he knew I'd be so excited.
Nice.
It was like going and we were trying to find a good place.
The males use heavy rains as cues to leave their burrow.
Where are they going?
They're looking for the female. It's time to go.
They're not in my garage.
Well, they don't know.
Get out of here. Man, God, ladies to meet.
That's the ridiculous thing about male trapped or spiders. So they live in their burrow, let's say, for five or six years, and they're molting, they're getting bigger. They're in their burrow. They live in California. It hasn't rained for six months. It's October, first rain of the season. They've molted to maturity. They're like, okay, it's time to go. But how do they know where They're going like, they
just clumber out of their burrow. This is the first time they've ever done that, and then they have to go find a female. I'm a little nervous. It's actually it seems maladaptive to me. I have no idea how it works, but it obviously does work.
They find females, and so if we see one inside again, returning them to the hillside is the best.
Just put it on the outside. Yeah.
Now, we talked about burrows, We've talked about jumping spiders. So when it comes to hunting, obviously spiders are great at it. Hence the fangs and the venom, fangs in the venom, and their web and the web.
The web.
Now, all spiders make silk, but not all of them use webs to catch right, So what are some hunting methods and living methods that spiders use?
Well, you have like the bull of spider. You know about the bull ass spider.
I don't think I do.
You don't know about the bull ass spider?
I don't think so is this a joke?
No, bull of spider is a derived or weaving spider, Okay, like a Charlotte's web spider. Oh okay, yes, that they've taken the Charlotte's web and instead of building a complex orb web like that, they just have a single line of silk. And at the end of the single line of silk they have a sticky ball of glue.
What what this thing is flinging a sticky ball around to catch stuff And bullus means ball and these bull of spiders, according to your bff Workipedia, they hunt by using one or more tacky little capture.
Blobs on the end of a silk. It's like a lasso made of your body secretions.
That's cool, But the cooler thing is that they emit chemicals that mimic moth pheromones. So those bull of spider sits in one place and they attract moths. This is happening at night, and then when the moth is attracted, they whip their bullus and catch it with the sticky glue. No, that's pretty specialized.
No one's never told me about that.
And they attract moths of like a single species, so they're very species specific, Like they attract male moths of a single species, right, because they're producing a chemical that mimics female moth pheromone. Yeah, aggressive chemical mimicry. They're spectacular.
Sounds like a moth rodeo. I'm excited about this.
That's right, it's a moth rodeo. But they can actually switch their chemical in the middle of the evening and start to attract a different species. It's ridiculous. The whole thing is ridiculous.
That is ridiculous, spectacular and it is just all going on under cover of night in it maybe from a tree branch.
Right, they are orb weaving spiders. They just no longer make an orb web.
Wow, They're like webs are so five minutes ago. I'm one of this new stuff. What about funnel web spiders? Okay, so there are two kinds of funnel web spiders and one is a harmless sweety pd one is not.
That's good to clarify. So Australian funnel web spiders are my gallomorphs, and those are the most medically dangerous to human spiders in the world. And the females and the males they silk. They kind of live underground or on trees, and then they have like this messy web like a funnel web at the entrance, but the male same idea multimaturity and then they go look for females, but they have evolved venoms to protect themselves from predators when they're
wandering around. Oh, those venoms happen to be also highly dangerous to people, so they've killed people. They're deadly spiders, but there are anti venoms that have been developed.
It's like they're carrying pepper spray or something. They're like, I'm gonna be a we walking out at night. They're going to be safe here, that's right. So knowing your spiders and not avoiding them is what will keep you the safest. I am chill around local spiders because I know who's who. And so if you're traveling somewhere new or even just around your own area, get to know spiders so you can kind of kick back around most
of them. And I'll give you a heads up that there is a Brazilian wandering spider known to be a bit aggressive, and its bite can cause rapid heart rate and high blood pressure, dizziness, sweating, hair standing up on end, and in that vein painfully long lasting erections, so much so that the pharmaceutical industry is eyeing it as a treatment for dick props. It's also sometimes conveniently called a banana spider. Now, on the other end, what about anti venom?
So A Journal of Toxicology paper titled anti venom Treatment in Arachnetism says that the spiders it would cause you the most problems are the widows, the recklesses, and that wandering Brazilian spider. Anyone with writer's block feel free to use reclose widow wandrous to Brazil as a prompt go make a novel. But anti venom this was news to me.
It's sometimes made by milking spider fangs or dissecting venom out of the spider and injecting it into an animal like a horse, with tiny doses, and then more and more so their bodies build antibodies to the venom. Then the horse blood is gathered and the antibodies to the venom are injected in you and they bind to venom to neutralize it. However, this sucks. Your body can make antibodies to the antibodies, which means that some anti venom
really doesn't help much the second time around. But even one shot at getting away with a fatal bite seems like magic. It's been around since the nineteen eighties and one of its developers, Emil von Bahering, also won the Nobel Prize for helping to develop the dip barrya vaccine, and he was known as quote the savior of children because so many kids used to die from diphtheria. So
vaccines literal modern miracles. But yeah, know your spiders. Sometimes your throne a curveball and a small funnel web spider in say California, is totally harmless. But there is another type of funnel web spider that is chunky, highly venomous and Australian.
If you're in Australia, you know what a funnel web spider.
Yeah, I'm sure.
I actually picked one up back in the day when I was I was on the eastern seaboard of Australia on a field trip and we went to this friend of mine's house and he had this patch of forest that was covered in my Gallimore spiders. It was wonderful. But I found a bunnel web spider and I picked it up because I didn't know what it was, and he was like, I wouldn't do that.
Whatever you're called, obviously you're survived. Congratulations on that. It's like you one, what about sexual dimorphism, because I know with the orb weavers, it's beautiful to see this ginormous, beautiful female and then there's like there's like a little dude hanging out on.
The corner male.
Yeah. How different across the board? Do we tend to see the different sexes? Do we tend to see larger females?
Generally larger females than males, but the amount of dimorphism varies. It's generally the case that the females are bigger than the males, but sometimes the males are pretty close to the female size. But then and some spiders, males are stupidly small, like a golden silk spider.
Yes, right, yes, but.
The females are gigantic, Like if you go to Costa Rica, they'll see this gigantic female and the male is literally like, oh, one to one hundredths of their size.
It's like a tuba versus a kazoo. It's like, what is going on?
Not even that, it's worse than that. Males have very different lives than females, so they're morphologies often very different.
Is it because they just don't need to capture as many nutrients to create offspring? How are their lives so different.
Well, they're typically vagrant, so they're having to move around the habitat more than a female. The female is just going to stay there and the male comes and look for her. And again, they don't care about food. Once they mult to maturity, they don't care about food. They're just looking for females.
Hello, ladies.
They have a different kind of natural history or a different life history once they're ready to go, once they're sexually mature.
Do you have a favorite spider?
I love Hypokylis. I love the idea of hypokilis. I can take you to see Hypochylus.
I know I want to go.
Let me know if you want to go see them.
You're kidding field trip to see spiders? Heck?
Yeah.
So these are those little ancient lamb shade spiders that we chatted about earlier, and one of perhaps the rarest lives right outside of La in the San Bernardino Mountains.
It's called Hypochylis Bernardino and it's only known from It's literally the species is only known from like one little creek drainage. Oh my god, they're pretty rare, but I know where they live. I'm actually going on not this coming Sunday, but the Sunday after that.
Okay, holler, okay, yeah, that'd be serious. I am, I am.
You just can't tell anyone where they are.
Oh, I would never. Once you're in with spider people, you can never betray that trust. They're few and far between of us. Just an update on this. The day we were supposed to meet up for the spider hunt, which was a bristlingly hot and dry weekend, a forty
three thousand acre fire in the same mountains thwarted our plants. Now, this spider's habitat should be fine, but given that this species has been discovered in exactly one creek drainage in all of the world, climate change, habitat loss, and in general insect or prey decline all threaten spider populations. And Marshall's specialty is finding and highlighting the spiders with the small distributions. I asked him how he does it, and
he said, a lot of fieldwork. Do you have really good hiking boots?
I have multiple pairs.
I bet three pairs. Actually, I bet you a good mileage on am I do typical like a Fitbit day for you would be like twenty thousand steps, I guess. And when you're in the field, something crazy.
I'm in the field, it's time to go boots on the ground. It's actually called boots on the ground. Is it really important to be in the field these days? It really is. You need to be out there just kind of see what's going on of seeing.
What about their eyes? What kind of eye sight? I know what? Various species to species. Some probably need their eyes and low.
Leg that jumping spiders can see really well and in color. Many of them can see in color well. Spider's pretty good eyesight, but it's kind of more nocturnal and really kind of motion detection vision. Some blind cave spiders have no eyes.
Who needs them.
Lots of spiders have eight eyes, some have six, some have four, some have two, some have zero.
Do they use all of those eyes for different things?
Yeah, kind of for different things, like their principal main eyes in the front. They might use them to actually see things like a jumping spider, but then all the peripheral eyes are used to kind of detect motion around them.
Can I ask you listener questions? Yes, okay, all right, so don't go anywhere because your questions are next. But first we'll donate to a cause of theologist choosing and this week in honor of Marshall is going to the San Diego State University Biodiversity Museum to support student stipends and the purchase of a quipment and supplies in their donation was made possible by sponsors. You're on the.
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All right, let us burrow into the question bag and see what we catch. Okay, Courtney Hudson says, I remember hearing at some point or reading somewhere that on average, you're never more than eight inches from a spider. So I'd like to know if that's actually true or if I just made that up somehow. And then also, can we talk about micro spiders, because I want to know about them little cuties? What spiders? If you're outside, do you think you're around less than a foot from a
spider at all times? No, I would say, no, okay, there's not that many spiders.
No, it depends on where you are, but no, in California.
No, okay, what about micro spiders? Are there tiny tiny spiders called micro spiders?
Oh? Yeah, there's spiders less than a millimeter in size.
Yeah, full grown.
Full grown adults. Kind of ridiculous. In particular, there are some male spiders that are really small like that, and basically the male is just like, it's just kind of like a walking petipalp.
Aren't they all?
That's a walking intromittent organ.
They got one job. I googled what's the world's smallest spider? And I landed on a Wikipedia page that was simply three sentences. I'd like to read them to you. Patoo marklessi is a species of small spider endemic to Samoa. It is considered the smallest spider in the world, as male legspan is less than half a millimeter. It also has the largest sex organs to body size ratio of any spider species, and the size of its sex organs tend to be a hindrance to mating rather than an advantage.
What an emotional journey. Never underestimate a short king. Okay, we've talked about book lungs Ana, Dylan, Elie Snowden, Rachel McGill want to know why are their butts so big? What's in there? Is that where they hide all the web or the spider babies are. Why are their beautiful butts so large? Good question that.
It is a good question. Yeah, not like a big adult female would be doing both. She would have her spider babies in there, and that's where all of our soap glands are. And of course if you're talking about an orb weaving spider, then they have multiple different types of soap glands. So their abdomen is technically just packed full of all these glands that are making silk proteins. Ah, that's pretty cool.
It is very cool. It's just a silk factory housed in a dump truck abdomen. Now, Mother's Day just passed, but it's never too late to remind mom that one species of velvet arachnid, called the Indian cooperative spider, lives in a colony of mostly females working together to build webs. But a few weeks after their kids hatch, the mama liquefies her own internal organs to regurgitate them into her
children's mouths. And she does this until she dies, and then the children hop on her dead body and drink the rest of her juice until nothing is left but an exoskeleton. Now, this is a testament to the strength of the biological inclination to care for young and also the absolutely exhausted urge to just cash it in and go to heaven when you have seventy five babies at once. So patrons Lisa Gorman and Mikaylae Shaughnessy in Mikayla's words, who asked, how much am I rooting their day when
I accidentally sweep up their nests? Like, probably a lot. It's the only thing they live for. But to patrons Aaron White Day were Jesse and Devin, who all asked, in Devin's words, why do spiders have so many babies all at once? Well, it's because baby spiders are delicious. If you are a bird or a lizard or a fish, they are like popcorn chicken. You know who else eats you? If you're a baby spiderling your own siblings. It's worse
than any prestige TV drama about family dynamics you'll ever watch. Like, a tarantula can have up to three thousand babies at a time and very few were going to make it to their own parenthood. But what if you're not so committed to juicing your own viscera for your babies and you're also a spider, so eating dogare for a living. And Christina Craft wanted to know what's up with having a backpack and made of your children? Some of them have live babies on their backs? What's going on with that?
Yeah? I mean they're a good little they're good mothers. So like a wolf, spider will carry around her eggsac like a white disc for a long time, and then the spider leans will come out of that eggsack and then they crawl onto the female's back and do that for a couple more molts.
And they don't eat each other. No, oh, some spiders snack on one another, right, they can do that? Yeah, after a good date. It can happen from what I understand.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's kind of like famous. But I would say that that's the exception rather than the rule.
So to Trista Algar who said, my girlfriend wants to know if there are cannibal spiders, the answer is hell, yes, but not all of them all the time. And to Danielle Napolitano, the story about black widows eating their males is not always true. They don't do it every time. Also, the females can be twice the size of the males, so the males is a little sneaky snack. Now, let's say that you're a red back Australian widow spider. If your male, only twenty percent of you will have a
chance to mate. So when you follow the scent of other males spiders into a lady's web, you pluck on it like a harp. Some will do what's called a copulatory somersault and they land into the fangs of their bride. Yeah, she might meet you, but otherwise you would die a virgin. In this way, she gets to feast upon your body and make your shared babies. It's not all bad. Now, On that note, I found myself following some sex trail to a paper titled Spider behaviors include oral sexual Encounters,
which detailed that quote. Our field and laboratory study of Madagascar Darwin's bark spiders uncovers a rich sexual repertoire that predictably involves cannibalism, genital mutilation, male preference for freshly molted tender females, and emasculation. Surprisingly, this species of male spiders also engage in oral sexual encounters. It then added that irrespective of a female's age or mating status, males salivate onto female gen tellia pre during and post copulation. So
maybe that's how you don't get eaten. Everyone loves to hear a juicy story, that's right.
They kind of love that sexual cannibalism, but it doesn't always happen.
Roslin Hasby for Colin Hasby wants to know how do spiders poop just like anyone else. I guess, yeah.
They have a little anal tubercle near their spinnerets, in between their spinnerets and behind them, and they just poop out generally a little kind of liquid gray poop.
Oh, So it's not like frast it's not like little sand.
No, it's not like No, it's not like a little mouse poop or anything. Okay, it's more liquid than that.
In my office, I have an office that's a shed outside my house, and there are last count eight spiders that live in there. I check on them from time to time. They eat a lot of ants.
Eight individuals.
Say one over in that corner whenever in that I'm going to take some pictures, okay, because mostly I just see their webs and I go, thanks, man.
Send them to me. I'll, okay, identify them for a fives hell yeah bye.
But five bucks each Mega four four seventy five with a forty five cent tip. So patrons Moe and Tristan Falk, Yes, it is actually beneficial to have a little spider roommate for bug control. And no, Tristan, you have not been
lied to. This is true. Now, if you live in parts of the country like the southeastern United States, you should familiarize yourself with local species, like know the body shape of a black and brown widow and check for the red or orange hourglass where a belly button would be. Know the tiny violin shape on a brown reclose google an Australian funnel web spider. And if you know the venomous ones, then it's easier to spot all the non
threatening ones, which are the vast majority of spiders. And although last week's episode was about AI ethics, one feature you may not know about your phone or your other non iPhone phones is that it does have this very cool ability to identify species at least guess about the id. So you can take a picture of a spider or a plant or what have you, and you swipe up on the picture and the location will be on there as well as now an AI guess on the species.
Try it. It's bonkers. I'm usually a friend that people text to ask what the hell bug is this? And I don't want people knowing about this phone feature because then no one's gonna ask me anymore, and I don't get to look it up, and then my off the cuff knowledge of bugs is no longer impressive to acquaintances, who texts me once a year with a bug question.
But let's say you have a house spider on your hands or on your wall, which can be one single species with a common name house spider, or confusingly, can be one of a dozen or so at least in the US that are referred to casually as house spiders because they like to shack up with you where it's
nice and dry, the rent is paid. So many of you Emma Henson, AA, Dylan, Jacob Shepherd, Denny Karina Reagan, Carrie Walker, Nita Chen, Hannah Gory, Caitlin Melndor, Derek Pelquin, Rachel Harshorn, Melanie matskar and Nisip Brillard and first time question asker Amber Hayes wanted to know in Amber's words, I heard that if you put a spider you find in your house outside, it's like a death sentence for them.
Is this true? Aren't they from the outside? Amber Hayes, great question, and I'm sorry to say that, yes, somehow spiders just can't make it out there on their own. But if it's between that and squishing it, just put it outside. Maybe it'll find its way back in. But hide in your bookshelf better. Also, if you need the best device for grabbing bugs, there's a thing called a
my critter catcher. It looks like a soft bristle brush and it's attached to a three foot pole so you can kind of gently scoop them up into the bristles and then walk outside with them.
Grinter Catcher, let you safely grab those bugs without any fear and release them harmlessly outside where they belong.
Okay, it sounds like mean, but for functionality and kindness to I give it a twelve out of ten. Every home needs one, and some homes do need spiders because they eat so many other bugs. Now, Dave Cannon said, I don't mind spiders. I think they're great, really, but how many are okay to keep secretly in the house? Don't tell my wife, now, Dave, get familiar with the venomous ones in your area, escort those outside, and keep
as many around the house as you like. I think I just told your wife when you told me not to. But whatever. Now. Others had a sweet spot for spooters, such as patrons Natalie Parsons, Tamracatino, and Lucy Antonelli, who asked, how do I become friends with spiders? Honestly, here's my advice.
Let them stick around and don't kill them is probably a good first step to any kind of diplomacy, and for more on that, you can see our recent Genocidology episode, which will link in the show notes and spoiler it's not about spiders now. Chan and Cody asked do spiders want hugs? And I dug into some research on this and it's no. But back to that hairiness, Batty Fat asked about their fur and Emma Kelly Brown, Jason Ganley, Body Fat, Jorn Fredberg want to know why are they
so hairy? Now? That's not fur though, right, that's no SETI.
Site Yep, A lot of them aren't. Some of them are like a wolf. Spider has quite a bit of setae that make them kind of look like that. But tarantula certainly has a lot of set that make them look kind of hairy, but certainly not an ubiquitous thing for spiders to be like that. And generally the case their cephalothorax has fewer hairs than the abdomen. The abdomen is generally covered with quite a few hairs that make them look kind of furry.
And many spiders have a variety of sense organs, which was recapped by the twenty eighteen paper The Sensory Equipment of a Spider, a morphological survey of different types of sensillum in both sexes of ur ip Brunecci, and the paper says that they include structural ones to sense air movement and vibration, chemosensory organs that might aid with smell and taste, and some spiders have ears on their legs. One of those spiders is called an ogre faced spider.
And despite yeah, having eyes like a lemur and hairy tusks like a walrus, calling them ogre faced is rude because they can hear you with their creepy legs. Now, as long as we're name calling, Stacy Pinkowitz wants to know thoughts on calling spiders bugs even though they're not insects.
I'm against it.
Okay, they're not bugs. Spiders are not bugs.
Spiders are not bugs. Okay, most insects are not bugs.
Oh because true bugs himistera.
That's right, we really want to get into it.
And then again, there are true spiders that are not called true spiders. We have a brand, major brand.
That true spider thing is problematic.
So true bugs belong to an order of insects called Hymiptera, which are shield shaped like a stink bug. And Patron's analyst young and tarantula lover Win Constantini asked about tarantula is not being true spiders, And yes that is technically true because their order is a get older and they have some anatomical differences. But once again this spider expert thinks that sucks. Also, patron INGVI wanted to know what's up with the word tarantula, and I'm glad you asked,
because I didn't know what I got to learn. So first off, there aren't tarantulas in Italy, and as an Italian, I can assure you sometimes we are very stupid. But there's a wolf spider that inhabits the area of Taranto. It was named after the town because people thought when you were bitten by this wolf spider, you would get very bummed out and sometimes experience mania, and the only way to sweat out the venom was to dance a frenetic jig, which is why Italians dance around at weddings
doing the tarantella. This is also where filmmaker Quentin Tarantino got his name as a descendant of folks from Taranto, And honestly, I can see him getting both depressed and also very energetic and happened to just wiggle it out. But yeah, there are some word origins with a side of eight legs. Tarantula's not called spiders. Not all bugs are true bugs.
But like when I teach entomology and one of my students says I found a bug, I get kind of stoked because I think they're talking about a hemiptern. No luck sometimes no.
Eating dog hair for a living Danny C and Moe want to know, are there any that are facing extinction, any that are in real dire straits or we probably wouldn't know because there's so many.
There are spiders in the United States that are listed as US federally endangered. Yeah, I actually work on those. I'm kind of proud of my spider conservation work research. I do a lot of that.
Which ones you want to shout them out?
There are cave spiders in Texas, quite a few species that are only found in a single cave. There's actually a species called Sikurina boronia, which is from a single cave in downtown San Antonio. What that has now been covered with you know, concrete and culverts, and that species is almost certainly extinct, but you can't go into the cave any more, so we don't really know. That's kind of weird enough. Yeah, but there's a lot of Texas
cave spiders that are endangered. And there's a special little micro tarantula that lives on mountain types in southern Appalasia that is also listed as endangered. And it's actually it lives in spruce fir forests on the very very tippy tops of mountains, and those spruce fir forests have declined because of invasive bugs.
Well, according the paper assessing the impacts of balsam woody adulged and anthropogenic disturbance on the stand culture and mortality of Fraser fur in the Black Mountains, North Carolina, this small European wingless thing, and Adulga's name means invisible. It's actually not a bug. But we're going to forgive Marshall this time. We're all human, unless you're a spider who's like hate those balsam woody adulgens.
So the forest kind of died off and that exposed the moss mats where the spider likes to live. But the kind of climate change scenarios for the future they don't bode well for that species. Oh man, this is going to get warmer and warmer, and then the forests that the spiders live in will actually go away mm hmm, and then the spiders might go away.
Yeah, so be kind to spiders. They've been through so much. But some species have been around for one hundred million years and evolution is an ongoing process, so we are rooting for them. What about pets spiders as pets? Shannon Cody wants to know do jumping spiders make good pets? Mouse Paxston wants to know if black widows are good pets in general? How do you feel about having pet tarantulas?
Pet tarantulas are fine if the animals are bred in captivity, that's obviously a problem because they're often not, so then it becomes something that I'm strongly against. Obviously, people have pet bit of this jumping spiders that because fit if it's jumping spiders are big and they have a personality and they'll look at you. I mean, you have to be prepared for the fact that they're only going to live for a year or two, so they're going to die sooner or later. I mean black widows as a pet,
that's it's interesting. They're actually really cool spiders.
Yeah, they're beautiful.
They are quite beautiful. But I don't know. If I don't, I wouldn't recommend it for everyone.
You mentioned something about jumping spiders having personality. Gena Ninja LB wants to know if they have feelings or show personalities. Jacob Shepherd do spiders have personalities? Earl of Gramulcan Mouse, Paxton David the Altruistic Missanthrope and Vanessa Adams all want to know little tiny personalities that you notice.
Yeah, no, for sure. Some people have actually studied whether or not individual spiders have different personalities. Yeah, that's the thing.
And according to the twenty fourteen paper Animal Behavior Task Differentiation by personality in spider groups, the researchers support the idea that spiders have personalities. They looked at that in in cooperative spider that lives in colonies and share that quote certain individuals specialize in bringing the food while others rarely are never help out, which means, as spider's hypothesize,
also talk shit about one another. And the paper continues with kind of a Carrie Bradshaw pondering what is it that predicts differential participation in this spider Individual personality is the answer. Individuals vary in their level of boldness and bolder spiders socialize in prey attack. What do the shy group members then do? And are the bold group members actually better at catching prey? These are still unanswered questions
in social species. So yeah, when you kill a spider, you might be swatting at an asshole or like a really good guy. But speaking of culture, let's talk Australia. Jess See says, as an Australian, I wonder why we are so famous for our spider friends. Do Australian spiders deserve their reputation or are they unfairly maligned? And Nims wants to know why the preponderance of fvenomous spiders in Australia or big ones.
Yeah, I wouldn't say it's a preponderance. It's just the fact that they have members of a particular family that happen to be venomous, and there's quite a few species of that family, so it's kind of like just a historical accident. It's really just members of that one family that are medically dangerous. So if you took that family away, the Australian spider fauna and overall is not atypically dangerous.
It's just that.
And they're big. You know, they're Sitney funnel web spiders and their relatives.
And this is the family ultracity. And if you live in or are going to Australia, do some research on who the baddies are down there, because a funnel web spider in Australia can kill ya. I'm just being honest. Now in North America again, funnel web spider has the unfortunate same name, but they are harmless, little grass spiders that make tubes out of silk. It's like having the same legal name as a serial killer and it's not fair.
But in the popular Zeitgeist listener, analist de Young suggested the nineteen sixty seven children's book Be Nice to Spiders. Jinga Ninja Lb said, please see the book Ah Spider by Lydia Monks to help your fears. And many people. Danielle Suscher, Blake Bairard Mack and Adam Weaver mentioned the book Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikowsky, and Adam said it's a beautiful sci fi novel and it involves some
spider intelligence. Now, Timmy h and Emily Burns had Harry Potter admonishments for featuring a taless whip scorpion and calling it a spider. I also think that's egregious now. Patrons Rachel M and Amanik asked about the sweet sweet imagery of Lucas the Spider highly recommended Adorable Jumping Spider cartoon, and the Mary slav generously shared that years ago, I was bitten by a brown recluse on my scrotum, of all places, I never developed any spider power. Does that
mean it was probably not radioactive? And other Spider Man questioned. Patrons such as and Jolly Himali and Andrew McVay wanted to know about spiders in the media. Is there any pop culture that gets it right? Charlotte's Webb, Children of Time, Harry Potter, Lucas Spider, Spider Man, anything that you go, Yeah, that's cool.
Charlotte's Web.
Yeah.
It kind of portrayed the spider as something that was interesting and complex and partly intelligent and kind of beautiful. So I like that the best. Okay, she was very sophisticated.
I think that it shed some light on how artistic the webs are. Yeah, yeah, and how friendly they can be.
I think everyone should go back and read Charlotte's web. It's just really cool.
I agree. What about Deborah L. Blanton wants to know how do spiders hear? Do they have a sense of hearing?
Yeah, they have little, tiny, very sensitive hairs that respond to those mechanical stimuli. So yes, there have been studies that have been shown that they can use their web as like a gigantic ear.
So the sound vibrations.
Yah, yeah, I know exactly, that's pretty spectacular.
That's amazing. Aki wants to know do spiders communicate with each other? If so? How a popsicle Emperor wants to know do any spider's connected bond with other spiders? I imagine they have to because they're spider babies everywhere.
Yeah, sure they communicate. They communicate using vision, some of them they communicate using acoustics, sound vibrations, chemicals of multifaceted Yeah, they're communicating.
Jenikamaki first time question asker asks if you've seen the picture of a big spider with a small frog and if they ever live in a symbiotic relationship. Have you ever seen that?
Yeah? Yeah, I know there's a paper that talks about it's a South American tarantula and frog that have a symbiotic relationship. I believe it's a tarantula and frog, but yes, yeah, I love that.
Please see the two thousand and eight study Commensalism in micro highland Frogs and megalomorph Spiders, which recounts that spiders and frogs, certain South Asian species that would normally fight and eat each other, were witnessed hanging out in the same burrow or living in the same tree hole. Why
aren't these two fulfilling their evolutionary obligation of being enemies. Well, the paper notes that previous studies have found that certain tarantulas recognize frogs with some chemical cues, which prevents them from attacking this frog. They're like, this one's cool. The spider leaves some decaying remains of its prey, which attracts ants, and the frog eats the ants, and staying in the spider's burrow during the day keeps the frogs safe from the heat, and the frog eats the ants that would
eat the spider's eggsact. So, yes, it's a commensal relationship. It benefits them both, But we can also call them best friends if we want, especially when the world feels like trash and we have to imagine them chilling in a hole together having a good time. Sebastian at Cheveri, who we have already spoken about. Sebastian's on here, wants to know weirdes spider go weirdest spider?
Is this whole thing live?
It's not no.
Weirdest spider. I mean, spinning spiders are pretty awesome and kind of weird.
Spitting spiders where are they spitting?
They spit a combination of glue and venom. Oh if there were a lot of spitting spiders, or if spitting spiders were bigger, then they would be pretty scary.
What happens with the glue and the venom?
They spit sticky glue and immobilizes their prey. If you look at a slow mode video of the spinning spider, it's moving its challisserae like in a zig zag pattern. Huh. The glue comes out literally.
Like this Marshall kind of motioned some finger guns and it.
Just sticks to like a like a fly or something.
It's a rad that's like a wonder woman.
Like, yeah, exactly. The true spider man would be like a tarantula that has foot silk.
Does it ever make you mad that Spider Man doesn't spin webs out his butt.
Nope.
Can you imagine a couple of spinnerettes down there, just a hole in his body suit? Well, that'd be so great. What's with his wrists? Can you have come out the other end? Baby, that's the business end of it. Toby Maguire's like, not, well, I'm playing Spider Man. Let's talk about repellance, some people said, Meghan Walker, Robin r Michael Anderson, Danielle at Napoleano, Clara Mauer, and Robert Odette. Robert has a boatload of catface spiders in the back of their
rental home and flag staff. They keep knocking down webbs. Me and Walker wants to know. Is there actually some essential oil or other substances that act as spider repellent or do they not care about that stuff. I've heard that peppermint oil is not something spider's like if you wanted to aromatically discourage them from taking presidence in your ear canal or something.
This is not something that I have done any research on. Not interested in repelling them.
Yeah, you're like, that's not a problem. I had come to my office.
Hours riders interested in the opposite.
And in case you were not, Marshall, I looked into this for you and according to the twenty eighteen paper, natural compounds as spider repellents factor myth. Volatiles released by mint oil and chestnuts may be effective into turring spider settlement in two different families of spiders. But lemon oil as a repellent is a myth. So roasted chestnuts, mint
lemon cocktails. Maybe you're hungry. We're going to fix that because Ali Brown, Alan Ally and Julian and Hailey Kirby asked, in Haley's words, will spiders crawl into our mouths as we sleep? Or is this just an irrational fear? Have you ever heard the myth that you swallow eight spiders a year?
I think I've heard that.
Yeah. I don't know where they got that. That doesn't happen though, right.
I think that's ridiculous.
Yeah, And if you need proof, you can see the twenty sixteen piece believing that humans swallow spiders in their sleep false beliefs as side effects of the processes that support accurate knowledge, which explains that there was a rumor that this rumor began in the early nineteen nineties as a columnist named Lisa Burgett Holst warned about the dangers of misinformation spreading the email and used this particular example as a sad illustration of how we sometimes do not
use our brains to question pretty much anything. Now, twenty years after Snopes explained that and gave the source, Snopes confessed that they made up the journalist and that entire backstory. And in fact, Lisa burget Holst is an anagram for this is a big troll, And it was all in April Fool's Day prank that they waited decades to reveal. At the spider's expense, mind you, so please tell us everyone you know that you do not swallow any spiders in your sleep, probably every year, or you know, two
per season. Oh, speaking of seasons. Trista Algar first in question, Asker and Sarah Meaden and Kieran want to know where do spiders go in the winter.
Depends on their lifestyle. If they're a trapped or spider that lives for forty five years, they don't go anywhere chilling. They just do what they do. In fact, they like the winter. Like a California trap or spider. They live for the winter. During the summer, they actually take silk and they close their burrow. They seal it shut from the inside to kind of retain moisture. And they know that they're not really going to eat during the summer,
so they live for the winter. But then like a little jumping spider that lives on the slopes of Mount Shasta that's covered in snow in the winter, Let's say they've made it in the spring, then there's little babies. The little babies are kind of getting bigger over the summer, and then when the fall comes, they just go down into the leaf litter or whatever and build a little silken cocoon and hunker down.
They just chill in a sleeping bag.
It depends on what their life history is.
Man, if you could knit your own kevlar sleeping bag camp over winter.
There are spiders that live on sand duns in California, and they during the day, they come out and they sit on the sand dune. But when it's time for them to go to bed, they flip on their back and they start spinning silk. They start spinning in a circle. They make a little sleeping bag, and then they actually pull it over themselves and then the sand just covers them. Isn't that radical?
That's so cute? And speaking of hiding, Liz Cleland and Jeff Stumpo had reclusive questions. Do you have any myths about the brown recluse that you'd like to bust? Mary Slay says years ago, I was bitten by a brown recluse on my scrotum, of all places. I never developed any spider powers, which means it probably was not radioactive. But anything about brown recluse that you want to clear up.
In the southern southeast United States, they are endemic there, but everyone freaks out whenever they see any spider that's brown, that's a brown recluse. Is it really the venom or is it a staph infection that'll get you from that?
Oh? It's probably a combination of both. Okay, I mean, they certainly have chemicals in their venom that cause your cells to die. But most importantly, for people that live in the Western United States, there basically are none of those spiders. There are no established populations of those reckless spiders. There are native species that are found out in the desert,
but those are not brown recluse. So effectively, all brown recluse bites that are diagnosed as such in the Western United States are misdiagnoses, and that's problematic because then you're not really doing what you should do.
They're misdiagnosed because they're a skin infection of another.
Kind, that's right, and then the treatment plan is not what it should be. Yeah, because it's not a reckless bite, it's something else.
So many people think they get spider bites, but I understand, and a lot of those are just straight up staff infection from a cut exactly. Yeah, that happened to me Where I thought I got a spider bite. It turns out I was just hauling wood literally gave myself an infection. They went into my veins. Oh sorry, huge, huge PSA
from your dad. Word, if you have a red welt on your skin and it's growing and it starts to trace up your veins, go to the er, like immediately, do not fuck around, do not find out, do not pass go drop what you're doing, because that can be a blood infection and you might need antibiotics. Now, it happened to me, But the point is that a lot of times spider bite air quotes is blamed when really you just have an infection from a nick or a scrape,
and spiders are like, hey, here's an idea. Take a shower and clean your wounds and stop blaming us for your blood infections. I don't even touch you. But like people see a big welt in an infection, they think a spider must have done this to you, and it's like, no, you may be caught yourself on a fence or something.
Yeah, it's a medical misdiagnosis problem.
It's not. I'm telling you, spider. There needs to be more spider integration in our culture. There does, and the first thing is combating fear. So last listener question I have is Britney Ross, first time question asker, also an admitted arachnophobe. What are some qualities with spiders that are endearing? I have learned to find jumping spiders cute now they say,
but help me love the less quote adorable spiders. Lauren RR says, besides raising the next generation to not be afraid of spiders, how can we help shift the narrative away from fear toward respect and appreciation. I will add that they so deserve, of course, literally fifty of you, gentle souls asked how to overcome your fear of spiders? But I'm going to shout out just the first time question askers Mark Payton, Jasmine si Rowan Tree, Helena, and
Felix Cosmo. And here I would like to quote Chief Dan George of the Slawatu nation, who said, if you talk to the animals, they will talk with you and you will know each other. If you do not talk to them, you will not know them. And what you do not know, you will fear. What one fears one destroys.
Well, I would just say that, I mean, everyone kind of needs to open their eyes to everything. It's kind of a general problem we have in our society. People are kind of too close minded right about everything. But I mean spiders they mostly eat insects. They're important in that way. Their silks are spectacular, strongest things ever, right, their strongest biomaterials known to man. Just crazy. They have intricate biologies. You just have to want to learn a
little bit more about all spiders. And once you start learning more about them, they're They're cool animals that have really cool lifestyles.
I think the less anthrocentric we are, perhaps we start thinking of what is the spider going to do to me that spider probably doesn't give a shit about you unless it thinks you're going to kill it, right.
Yeah, no, that's exactly right. You just have to kind of think of them as little animals doing their thing, right, and then they're doing their thing and much interesting ways, using silk in particular the cool.
Just appreciate them as critters.
Yeah right. If you have to say what good do they do for humanity? Which I don't think you have to. You can just appreciate them for themselves. But for humanity, they are providing all of this natural insect biocontrol. That's what they do. They eat insects, But beyond that, they make these silks that we can use for other things. And they're actually their venoms are actually used for therapeutics. So they have a lot of potential to directly impact
humanity positively. We just have to be open to it.
Not to mention what would Halloween be without them? Come on, it's my favorite, my favorite Spider season. What about the one? Last two questions? I always ask the hardest thing about your job, most annoying thing about being an aerachnologist. It could be anything. It can be petty. It can be big. It could be the fact that people hate spiders. Whatever.
I don't see it that way. Yeah, yeah, I have an awesome job.
There's got to be one thing. I ask you your favorite after this, But there's got to be one thing that sucks about your job. Is it parking on campus? Because that's what I think sucks the most about your job.
I don't like to complain about my position. I'm very fortunate. I don't see it that way.
Sorry, Now, I love not a single complaint from someone who works with spiders. This is the first time in three hundred and fifty episodes anyone's ever said I don't have a single complaint, and you're the guy that works with spiders. I think that should tell people a lot that you're not like I hate it when spiders assault me in some way.
Doesn't hap well, that doesn't happen to me. And if people don't like spiders, that doesn't annoy me. I mean, I think it's like an opportunity for me to maybe help them get over that. I don't get upset about that kind of stuff.
You're a bigger person than me, because if someone doesn't like spiders, I feel like I want to sit them down and lecture. What about your favorite thing?
My favorite thing about my job? H I mean I love I kind of love everything about it. I get to go into the field a lot, and the field is wonderful. I really like to teach, so I get to teach a lot in my position. It's inspiring for me to try to inspire other people. Kind of a beautiful thing. Fundamentally. I love learning about biodiversity. I kind of think of it as I'm trying to explore and discover and describe the biological world around me. Really not
for people, but for like this greater thing. It's weird. I don't know how to describe it.
That's an important purpose, right.
I like a if there was like a spider god, they would smile upon my actions. Yeah. I think it is really important to kind of learn stuff now and pass it on to the next generation. And it's not even that. It's just kind of telling the stories of the spiders that the spiders can't tell the stories themselves, so I kind of help the spiders tell their story.
It's beautiful that you're an advocate and that you're literally helping them be seen.
Yeah, no, exactly, that's it helping them be seen, right, Like there's a new species that lives up by Kernville, but no one knew about it, But now they know about it because I kind of I found them and wrote a paper about them.
You are the pr that they need.
That's right, That's right, And it's not about me. That's That's the other thing I don't I don't really care. I mean, I don't do this for myself. I'm doing it for this this greater good, right. But I'm really fortunate to have a job that allows me to do that. Well.
Same, I'm lucky that I get to tell people about what you know about spiders. They appreciate them. I'm going to send you some pictures of the spiders that cohabitate in my office. Okay, I'll let you know who's in.
There chain then mo for me. That's right. Find as many as you want.
So ask spider people, not smart questions, because oh the stories. You thought a spider was an anonymous little being invented by Ghoul to destroy your sanity. But the joke's on you because they are vast, colorful, cute, smart, and they eat roaches for you. And ninety nine point nine eight percent of them are harmless if I did that math right now. You can find out more about doctor Hadeen at the links in the show notes, as well as the cause he chose. We are at ologies on Blue
Sky and Instagram. I'm Ali Ward with one L on both, and we do have those shorter kid friendly episodes called Smologies in their own feed, which is linked in the show notes. You can get merch at ologiesmerch dot com, and to submit your questions before we record, you can sign up at patreon dot com Sashologies. Thank you to BFFs and s Kindergarten, Aaron Talbert for admitting Theologies podcast Facebook group, and her and Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Feltis
for their support as I'm off to shoot tomorrow. Aveline Malick makes the professional transcripts Kelly ar Dwired does a website. Noel Dilworth is our nimble scheduling producer. Susan Hale our managing director. Overseas it all with only two eyes. Jake Chafe weaves it all together as an editor and slinging the sticky bits is lead editor Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn wrote art theme music, And if you stick around it till the very end of the episode, I
tell you secret. This week, I will tell you that I just got back from rehearsal tonight at thirty Rock and which, by the way, I got into a cab and I was like, is it thirty Rockefeller Center or is it just called thirty Rock? I don't know how to tell, So I was like, thirty Rock, And then I was like, is that douchey, like when people call San Francisco Frisco. I don't know. Don't tell me because I can't change it now. Then anyway, I was at
thirty Rockefeller or whatever. I was at the studios and I was practicing and stuff, and I spent also the day holding this huge taless whip scorpion and mantids and these little tiny fast roaches, and tomorrow I'll be handling a tarantula too. And if you asked me if I would rather have giant, leggy, spiny insects and spiders on my skin on essentially live TV, or sing karaoke in any random bar, it would be the roaches and the spiders on me. On television. Karaoke terrifies me. Can't do it.
Which means I should do it and I should get it over with. That is the lesson we learned today. Okay, thank you for being here. You did great. All right, but right pacodermatology, hobology, cryptozoology, lithology, technology, meteorology, feratology, anthology, seriology, selology. Trust me, Wilbur.
People are very gullible.
They'll believe anything they see in print.
Hey Mark, how are you?
I'm not great sore throat.
I think I'm coming down to cold.
Oh no, you should try a Vogel sore throat spray. It's a natural remedy. With ecination and stage I can treat symptoms of coals and flus, including source throats.
Perfect.
I give that a try.
So we leave soort throats symptoms with a vogel A Quena four sore throat spray made from Echinaesia sage herbs and designed to reach irritated parts of the throat, available from health stores and pharmacies nationwide. Always read the leaflet.