Araneology (SPIDERS) with Marshal Hedin

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 14. Correct. Your pod father, 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 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. 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 arachnid friends. And side note, this episode is not called arachnology because there are different types of arachnids that are not spiders. But the scientific distinction for spiders comes from the Greek root, Aranea. So hence,

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. 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 38,000 known spider species in the world and about 100 species have venom that's detrimental to humans. So that is 0.0025. so let's start there and continue okay but first thank you so much to all the patrons at patreon.com ologies for supporting the show for as little as a dollar a month and sending in your questions

thank you to everyone wearing ologies merch from ologiesmerch.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, LadyLentia04, 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 you, thank you for making this space possible. LadyLentia04.

Glad you're here. Happy to do it. I hope you like spiders or I hope you fear them because this episode will cure arachnophobia, 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 in their own feed. Wherever you get podcasts, you can subscribe to that. That show is called Smologies. It's also linked in the show notes. We made them for delicate ears. 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 a 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 scene. I'm nearly 20 minutes late to this interview. Nightmare. Some of you are very afraid of spiders. This is my actual nightmare. It's 100 degrees.

224 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. I cannot believe how bad 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? Do you know where the Life Science Building is South? I believe it's down there.

Yes, I'm not 100% sure 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. Marshall, he's a science spider guy. Thank you so much for the escort. Ah, you're an angel. Thank you so much. Am I dead? Is this heaven? A little red in the face. Yeah, it's 100 out there. There are people just straight up in bikinis.

It's 100, if not a little bit more. And I talked to... Disgusting. Yeah, it's... I'm disgusting, but that's okay. So I'm so sorry. Can I use the ladies room 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, 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 radiologist, Dr. Can you pretend like you're doing karaoke? Just like pretend you're either... Seinfeld or karaoke Celine Dion One of the two. Marshall Hedin. Hedin? Hedin. Okay. A lot of people call you Hedin probably. Yes. Yeah, you get that a lot. I'm glad you said it. Haddeen. Haddeen. Okay, perfect. And now, do people call you Dr. Spider ever?

Rarely. Really? Yeah. That's a missed opportunity, to be honest. Can I call you Dr. Spider? You can call me Dr. Spider. Hell yeah. And you are an arachnologist. I am. Right? Big time. Big time. 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 arachnids. If you just work on spiders, I mean, you're kind of sort of an arachnologist, but if you work on spiders and other arachnids, 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 arachnid. Spiders have in their fangs, they have venom glands. 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. So the daddy long legs that you're used to seeing, those may not even be spiders. There are these creatures called opilliones, and we are going to exonerate them in a moment. No, I don't get too upset about it.

So there are daddy long-legged spiders, which are cellar 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 arachnid with a little round body and long legs and people call those daddy long legs those are apiliones not spider

And epiliones don't have venomous glands or cells? That's correct, yeah. And their body segments just one ball of a body? That's right. They don't have a two-part body plan, yeah. But there's another myth because some people think that Opelionis, what they call daddy longlegs, 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 these non-spider daddy long legs are dangerous, but they just don't have fangs, a total horse monkey garbage stock. And even the cellar 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-leg spider, it's not really dangerous either. Myth number one, crushed. Blim, flam, busted. 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? Well, tell me about it. One thing you should know about me right off the bat is I love bugs. This is good. Bug collection. 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 it crawl on me and then rehome it outside.

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 when you were a kid? No, I was outside a lot when I was a kid.

A lot, but I was interested in mammals mostly. Really? Yeah. 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 in... or northern california turn loose it's good for the microbiome yeah get a tetanus 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 in grad school? When I was a master's 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 just got interested and kind of floated around. found arachnids 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?

spiders yeah fifty thousand fifty thousand fifty thousand described that's so many but there's probably twice as many as that actually 100k 100 100 000 spider species species of 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? I mean, I think that film's kind of so old that people don't watch that anymore. 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 a herpetologist and said the same thing about snakes. It's just conditioned.

See that herpetology episode with Dr. David Steen about reptiles and how children don't start to fear them until they see their elders spook. 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 for 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 virology episode with Dr. Mary Poffinroth, 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 50,000 known species are a danger to humans? About 50.

50 out of 50,000. Pretty small percentage. Yeah. Human beings are probably much more dangerous to other human beings. I always talk about this in my class. You can show a slide of animals that kill people. Spiders aren't on the list, right? Yeah. They don't kill people, essentially, effectively. They're not on the top 50 list. It's like mosquitoes, people.

from what i understand like there's mosquitoes and then people and then a bunch of actually dangerous animals like dogs or whatever yeah yeah right and here i've i have one in my bed every night that's right but if some people see a spider outside So yes, I have a killer in my bed every night and her name is Gremlin.

statistically dogs kill 25 000 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-borne diseases. They're responsible for roughly a million human deaths. annually and they're not spiders.

There are over 200 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 mosquitoes fault that they are just lousy with parasites who use them for a ride but then number two

animal-caused death. Mosquitoes number one, dogs number four, snakes number three. Coming in at 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. 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 scary or 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 think that's not the problem of hearing the word spider. That's right. We're going to be saying it a lot. pretty annoying. Yeah, exposure therapy is the way to go. But what was your graduate work in spiders? What part of arachnology was that? Well, it was pretty awesome. I went to grad school in Missouri, but I did my work in southern Appalachians. Wow. And I worked on... that like to live in caves?

It's 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 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 in generally Appalachia? 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. and the field is the best people like us are you kidding turn us out with a bucket and a flashlight it's so awesome it's 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 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? I've been everywhere, literally in California and a lot in the western United States, a lot in the 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 yeah.

but it's not just australia that has giant spooders oh i had a giant crab spider that i just found in arizona i should have brought it in 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

Yeah, their legs are sort of set back a little bit, right? This giant crab spider, or Oleos giganteus, 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 apariology 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 from 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 10 years has exploded. Tell me. I'm actually part of that, but we're using 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 species sample sent to look at its genies under a microscope and its mouth parts and stuff to determine who it was, what was what species.

And if it was a novel find 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 350 million years ago so that's in the paleozoic 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 gonna 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 of the spider world? Like a living fossil. Yeah, yeah. We do in California. What are those? Well, there's a genus called Hypokylis. Okay. so hypokylas have been around since before the dinosaurs and they're what's called an iranomorph or a true spider and iranomorphs or true spiders

are most of the spiders in the world, about 90% 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 in flowers, and those orb weavers that make those gorgeous classic spider webs. But another type of spider is what's called a megalomorph, which means shrewshape. And megalomorphs are typically burrow-dwelling, so they hide in little holes, and they include tarantulas and Australia's funnel-web spiders, which we're going to get to later.

And instead of being crisscross, megalomorph fangs point straight down like a little tiny cute little vampire. So yeah, true spiders are just the iraniomorphs. 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, Hypokylis spider that Marshall loves. But Hypokylis 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 lampshade spiders. So they build a web that looks like this flimsy, beautiful lampshade. And then they sit. on the rock kind of behind their lampshade and they have a morphology that's very cryptic they blend in with the rock but their morphology hasn't evolved really kind of its morphological stasis what does that mean They just have stayed there the entire time.

They're spectacular spiders. It'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. and a persisting these little long-legged babes build webs that are kind of conical and when the light catches them in dark spaces they take on this glow of a lampshade and they're some of the more primitive newer species and marshall

loves them, I think it's safe to say. And I love that. A 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 Hypokyalis a couple of years ago. Really? From the far southern Sierra Nevada from up near Kernville. Did you get to name it? Yeah. What did you name it? It's called the Hypochylos homoidae.

Which is an indigenous name. Oh, that's great. What does it mean? Omote. It means from the south. Oh, that's beautiful. And according to a newspaper article titled, His spidey sense must have been tingling. SDSU biologist discovers new species. This newly discovered beauty is brown, orange, and black with these iridescent blue and green specks. 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 40 times of their body length which is the equivalent of you jumping over 200 feet that's from one tip of a 747 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 100,000 years old, while others are 100 million years old. What about sizes? What's the biggest spider? Take a spider's 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 ate a bird Michael, he ate a bird. He ate 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 yeah, 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. Some of the species that live at either high elevations or extreme latitudes must have an antifreeze. There are spiders that are active on the snow. Spider antifreeze, you ask the heavens.

spider antifreeze so according to the 2004 study antifreeze 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 I don't. And well, 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 torso. They are thinking with their whole chest. What about anatomy of a spider? We've got the fangs up front going back to the basics i like this yeah because like let's get to no spiders okay um we got the fangs up front typically two

always two always two so chelicerae are up front and those are the jaws of a spider and they're tipped with little fangs now next to those chelicerae are some short leggy looking things called palps or pedipalps. 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 Dr. Lauren Esposito, and to my delight and shock, I learned that scorpions' pinchers are technically pedipal. Pedipalps? Pedipalps. Are those technically legs or are they just modified legs into mouth parts? Yeah, they're technically legs. They are. 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 a function in a sensory way The spider uses the pedipalps to kind of sense its environment. Unless you're a male spider, in which case the pedipalps 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 so technically a spider has six pairs of appendages going from front to back the chelicerae are paired appendages but they're not walking legs obviously and the pedipalps are paired appendages and then the four pairs of walking legs Yeah, so spiders have 12 appendages. Only eight of them are legs.

And the other four are mouth legs and their fang area. But even though they have fangs or chelicerae in their head, you might say that spiders kind of have two business ends.

because of course one lies at the base of their little finger butts if you glance down at the derriere of a spider very closely it may seem to be like if an old lady was knitting on a porch and just wave like hello and then what about spinnerets in the back those are modified abdominal appendages those are actually very cool because you can see them as appendages like when a tarantula plays out some silk you can see them moving independently

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 bidronology episode we did to learn all about spider webs and spider silk and how they are putting genes 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 their thorax together. Yep. Insects are hexapods. They have six legs. Arachnids have, well, they have... 12 legs but they have 8 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. It squirts out. Things are just bathed. That's right. It's an open circulatory system. 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 be nice to them. And then they have hemolymph that pumps through the body. And then the book lungs just lie in contact with that hemolymph. And then there's respiration across that surface.

the book lungs of course include these sheets of cuticle there's extremely high surface area it's like the inside of a lung but it's cuticular So yes, a usually blue colored juice called a hemolymph instead of blood. Splishy splashes just around inside their body just transporting nutrients and keeping things slippery and kind of an open concept circulatory system. But according to the 2022 paper, take a deep breath. The evolution of the respiratory system of some phytonathoid spiders

there are no less than 22 different respiratory configurations in this certain kind of spider. And by the way, that's just one family of one in for order. And that's 22 different respiratory system configurations. So it varies. Marshall says that a lot of spiders lose their book lungs with evolution.

Like tarantulas and other megalomorph spiders, which tend to be older in the evolutionary scheme of things, they have four muck lungs, which are structures kind of like pages in a book that have increased surface area for gas exchange. but most iraniomorph true spiders have moved away from that some of their brook 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 and exactly it's like a capillary system so you have that kind of clunky open system and if you're my gallim or 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 Dr. Sebastian Ivarici, which is all about how spiders dance seductively and it also includes a bonus electronica track made of spider thumb

composed by Jason Scartamalia. It's so good. Yeah, they are jumping around all the time, but you never see a tarantula doing much more than lumbering. And like a trapdoor spider, it just sits in its... 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 gonna sit in this boat but it's super duper efficient yeah lifestyle they can persist in the landscape They can outweight 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 trapdoor spiders, the one who hang out in a burrow and then seal it with a little cork-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 backdoor, front door, made of spider butt. Can we talk about trapdoor spiders?

Now, trapdoor spiders I think are amazing because they've got absolutely bonkers camouflage. They've shown that female trapdoor spiders can live for 45 years. In the wild. What? How? That's right. Again, it's kind of life in the slow lane. Wow! Yeah. In Australia, there's 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 45 years for such a small bodied animal is really really cool and it's very different from other arthropods and then finally one day they walked into the forest and they found her trap door had a hole in it the wasp had finally got her 45 years I must have been pretty sad, actually, to find that.

but it's still cool and for more on this you can see the 2018 study the longest lived spider megalomorphs dig deeper and persevere which reports that this legendary trapdoor lady who went by the title of number 16, was observed from her first spring as a spiderling up until her death in 2016, living to be 43 years old. 43, a spider in her 40s. And her principal watcher was the Australian Lady of the Spiders and arachnologist Dr. Barbara York Main.

who worked into her 80s motivated she had said by seeing how long number 16 would stay alive and dr york main she died of complications from alzheimer's just months after that final paper was published And Barbara's mentee, Leanna Mason, who took over the fieldwork, has said that in Dr. York Main's advanced memory loss, she remembered number 16, but perhaps mercifully forgot that number 16 had died. Now they are in the beyond. hopefully hanging out together.

the ether and waiting for bugs and so what was the secret to the long life of number 16 at least so studies on these slow-moving arachnids cite 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 jujitsu'd with jizz. So like, as much as I like to glean strength from nature,

As your internet dad, uncle, I urge you, do not use trapdoor spiders as a physical or a mental health model. It's such a cool study, and to be able to follow an individual spider for 45 years is really awesome. And are those wasps those tarantula hawk wasps? Probably, yeah, like a spider wasp. I've seen some of those in our backyard.

Because I know we have trapdoor spiders. Get away from my trapdoor spiders. I know, I know. Stinkers. Gorgeous insects. But I'm also like, no, not the trapdoor spiders. What kind of trapdoor spiders do you have? Um, oh, that's such a great question. California tropical spiders. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. When it rains twice or three times, they've tried to come into the house and a couple have perished that way. 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. I'm going. 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. You've got ladies to meet. That's the ridiculous thing about male traptor spiders. So they live in their burrow, let's say, for five or six years, and they're molting, and they're getting bigger. They're in their borough. 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.

so if we see one inside again returning them to the hillside is the best i'll 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. Things in the venom in their web. In 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?

Wow, you have like the bolus spider. You know about the bolus spider? I don't think I do. You don't know about the bolus spider? I don't think so. Is this a joke? No. Oh, okay. I was like, that's a punchline. A bolus spider is derived. orb-weaving spider okay like a charlotte's web spider oh okay yes but 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 bolus means ball. And these bolus spiders, according to your BFF workpedia, 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 the bowl of spider sits in one place. and they attract mobs this is happening at night And then when the moth is attracted, they whip their bolus and catch it with the sticky glue. No. That's pretty specialized. No one's ever 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 a 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's just all going on undercover of night and maybe from a tree branch. That's right. They are our waving spiders.

No longer make an orb web. Wow, they're like webs are so five minutes ago. I'm on to this new stuff. What about funnel web spiders? Okay, so there are two kinds of funnel web spiders, and one is a harmless Sweetie Petie. One is not. that's good to clarify so australian funnel web spiders are my gallimorphs and those are the most medically dangerous to human spiders in the world

And the females and the males, they use 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 males same idea multi maturity and then they go look for females but they have evolved venoms to protect themselves from predators when they're wandering around oh 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 going to be walking out at night. I've got 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 antivenom?

So a journal of toxicology paper titled Anti-Venom Treatment in Arachnidism says that the spiders that would cause you the most problems are the widows, the recklaces, and that wandering Brazilian spider. Anyone with writer's block, feel free to use Recluse Widow, Wanderous to Brazil as a prompt. Go make a novel. but antivenom 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 antivenom 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 1980s.

And one of its developers, Emil von Behring, also won the Nobel Prize for helping to develop the diphtheria 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 you're thrown a curve ball 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 webs fighter is. Yeah, I'm sure. I actually picked one up back in the day when 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 Gallimor spiders. It was wonderful.

but i found a funnel 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 your call obviously you're survived Congratulations on that. It's like you won. What about a sexual dimorphism? Because I know with the orb wavers, it's beautiful to see this ginormous, beautiful female. And then there's like, there's like a little dude hanging out in the corner. 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? Yeah. but the females are gigantic like if you go to costa rica you'll see this gigantic female and the male is literally like oh one one hundredths of her size It's like a tuba versus a kazoo. It's like, what is going on here? Not even that. It's worse than that. I know. Males have very different lives than females. Their morphology is often very different. Is it because I just don't need to capture as many nutrients to create offspring? Or 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 to look for her. And again, they don't care about food once they molt 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 Hypokalus.

I love the idea of apocalis. I can take you to see Apokalas. I know. I want to go see some. Let me know. If you want to go see them. Are you kidding? Field trip to see spiders? Heck yeah. So these are those little ancient lampshade spiders that we chatted about earlier. And one of perhaps the rarest lives right outside of LA in the San Bernardino Mountains. That's called Hypocallus 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. Are you 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 43,000 acre fire in the same mountains. thwarted our plants now the spiders 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 distribution. I asked him how he does it and he said a lot of field work. Do you have really good hiking boots?

I have multiple pairs. I bet. Three pairs, actually. I bet you get good mileage on them. I do. Typical, like, Fitbit day for you would be like 20,000 steps, I'm guessing, when you're in the field. Something crazy. When I'm in the field. 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 to kind of see what's going on. Speaking of seeing, what about their eyes? What kind of eyesight? I know at various species, some probably need their eyes in low-light conditions. Yeah, jumping spiders can see really well.

And in color. Many of them can see in color. Full spiders, 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?

All right, so don't go anywhere because your questions are next. But first, we'll donate to a cause of theologist's 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 equipment and supplies and the donation was made possible by sponsors of the show.

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 8 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.

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 yeah there's spiders less than a millimeter in size yeah full grown full-grown adults kind of ridiculous and 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 pedipalp

aren't they all that's right a walking intermittent organ they got one job that's right 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 Patu marblesi is a species of small spider endemic to Samoa. It is considered the smallest spider in the world as male leg span 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 talked about book lungs. Anna Dillon, Ellie 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? Why are there... Why are there beautiful butts so large? Good question. That is a good question.

Yeah, no, like a big adult female would be doing both. She would have her spider babies in there. And that's where all of her silk glands are. And of course, if you're talking about an orb-weaving spider, then they have multiple different types of silk glands. So their abdomen is technically just... packed full of all these glands that are making silk proteins. Oh. 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 web. 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 75 babies at once So patrons, Lisa Gorman and Michaela Shaughnessy, in Michaela's words, who asked, How much am I ruining their day when I accidentally sweep up their nest?

Like, probably a lot. It's the only thing they live for. But to patrons Aaron White, Dave Brewer, 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 3,000 babies at a time, and very few are 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 dog hair for a living and Christina Kraft wanted to know what's up with having a backpack made of your children. Some of them have live babies on their backs. What's going on with that? Yeah, I mean, they're good little, they're good mothers, so like a wolf spider will carry around her egg sac like a white disc.

for a long time and then the spiderlings will come out of that egg sack and then they crawl onto the female's back and do that for a couple more molts. And they don't eat each other? 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 Daniela 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 are a little sneaky snack.

Now let's say that you're a red-backed Australian widow spider. If you're male, only 20% of you will have a chance to mate. so when you follow the scent of other man 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 eat you.

But otherwise you would die a virgin. And 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 title.

spider behaviors include oral sexual encounters which detail 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 genitalia 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. Roslyn Hesby for Colin Hesby 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 frass it's not like a 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, at last count, eight spiders that live in there. I check on them from time to time. They eat a lot of ants. Eight individuals? I'll say one over in that corner, one over 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 identify them for five bucks. Hell yeah. Five bucks. Five bucks. Pitch. Megathor. $4.75 with a 25 cent tip.

So patrons Emma O.E. 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 recluse.

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.

or 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 going to 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 text 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, Anna Dillon, Jacob Shepard, Denny, Karina Reagan, Carrie Walker, Nita Chen, Hannah Goring, Caitlin, Melendorf, Derek Pelequin, Rachel Hartshorn, Melanie Metzger, and Issa Burlard. 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, some house spiders just can't make it out there on their own. But if it's between that and squishing it, 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. those bugs without any fear and release them harmlessly outside where they belong okay it sounds like mean but for functionality and kindness to bugs i give it a 12 out of 10 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 spooders, such as patrons Natalie Parsons, Tamara Cotino, 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 we'll 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 body fat asked about their fur and emma kelly brown

Jason Ganley, Body Fat, Bjorn Fredberg want to know why are they so hairy? Now that's not fur though, right? That's... No. Seti? Seti, 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 a tarantula certainly has a lot of setae that make them look kind of but it's certainly not a 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 2018 paper the sensory equipment of a spider a morphological survey of different types of sensillum in both sexes of archiope brunetti

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, Stacey 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. That's right. We really want to get into it. Then again, there are true spiders that are not called true spiders. We have a major branding problem. That true spider thing is problematic. So true bugs belong to an order of insects called Hemiptera, which are shield-shaped like a stink bug.

And patrons Annalise DeYoung and tarantula lover Wynne Constantini asked about tarantulas not being true spiders. And yes, that is technically true because their order is a bit older and they have some anatomical differences. But once again, this spider expert thinks that sucks. Also, patron Yngwie wanted to know what's up with the word tarantula. And I'm glad you asked because I didn't know and 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 having to just wiggle it out. But yeah. There are some word origins with a side of eight legs. Tarantulas.

Not called true 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 hemipteron. No luck. Sometimes no. Eating dog hair for a living. Danny C. and Emma O. E. 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 U.S. federally endangered. 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 Sicurina baronia, 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 anymore so we don't really know it's kind of weird huh yeah but there's a lot of texas cave spiders that are endangered and there's us special little micro tarantula that lives on mountain tops in southern Appalachia 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. while according the paper assessing the impacts of balsam woody adelgid an anthropogenic disturbance on the stand culture and mortality of fraser fur in the black mountains north carolina

This small European wingless thing, and adelgid'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, I hate those balsam woody adelgid.

So the forest kind of Died off and that exposed the moss mats where the spider likes to live but that 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 and then the spiders might go away

So be kind to spiders. They've been through so much, but some species have been around for 100 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 Paxton 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 petibus jumping spiders and they like that. Because Phidipus 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. i don't know if i don't i wouldn't recommend it for everyone um you mentioned something about jumping spiders having personality gina ninja lb wants to know if they have feelings or show personalities jacob shepherd do spiders have personalities earl of gremelkin mouse paxton

david the altruistic misanthrope and vanessa adams all want to know uh little tiny personalities that you notice yeah no for sure and some people have actually studied whether or not individual spiders have different personalities That's a thing. And according to the 2014 paper, animal behavior, task differentiation by personality in spider group. The researchers support the idea that spiders have personalities.

they looked at that indian cooperative spider that lives in colonies and shared that quote Certain individuals specialize in bringing the food, while others rarely or never help out. which means that spiders, I 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 C 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 Mims wants to know why the preponderance of venomous 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 it's just that one lineage yeah and they're big you know they're sydney funnel web spiders and they're relative And this is the family Ultra City. 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 you. I'm just being honest. Now in North America, again, funnel web spider.

has the unfortunate same name but they are harmless little grass binders that make tubes out of silk it's like having the same Legal name is a serial killer and it's not fair. But in the popular zeitgeist, listener Annalise DeYoung suggested the 1967 children's book, Be Nice to Spiders. Ginger Ninja LB said, please see the book. Spider by Lydia Monk.

to help your fears. And many people, Danielle Sutra, Blake Baird, Mac, and Adam Weaver mentioned the book Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. 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 tailless whip scorpion and calling it a spider. I also think that's egregious.

Now, patrons Rachel M. and Omenich 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 spidey powers. Does that mean it was probably not radioactive?

and other Spider-Man question patrons such as Anjali Himali and Andrew McVeigh wanted to know about spiders in the media. Is there any pop culture that gets it right? Charlotte's Web, Children of Time, Harry Potter, Lucas the 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 sheds 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 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 yeah yeah i know exactly that's pretty spectacular that's amazing Aki wants to know, do spiders communicate with each other? If so, how? Popsicle Emperor wants to know, do any spiders connect and bond with other spiders? I imagine they have to because there's spider babies everywhere. Yeah, sure. They communicate using vision, some of them. They communicate using acoustics, sound, vibrations, chemicals, multifaceted.

yeah they're communicating uh janica maki 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, yeah. 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 2008 study, Commensalism in Microhylid 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 frog safe from the heat, and the frog eats the ants that would eat the spider's egg sack. So yes, it's a commensal relationship. It benefits them both.

but we can also call them best friends if we want to, especially when the world feels like trash and we have to imagine them chilling in a hole together, having a good time. Sebastian Echeverry, who we have already spoken about. Sebastian's on here wants to know where to spider go. Where to spider? Is this whole thing live? It's not. No. Weirdest spider. Spitting spiders are pretty awesome and kind of weird. Spitting spiders? What are they spitting?

They spit a combination of glue and venom. 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. It immobilizes their prey. If you look at a slow-mo video of the spitting spider, it's moving its chelicerae like in a zigzag pattern. The glue comes out literally like this. Marshall kind of motioned some finger guns.

sticks to like a like a fly or something it's 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? No. Can you imagine?

A couple of spinnerets down there, just a hole in his body suit. I think that would freak people out. That'd be so great. What's with his wrists? Come out the other end. That's right. Maybe that's the business end of it. Tobey Maguire's like, not. While I'm playing Spider-Man, let's talk about repellent.

Some people said Megan Walker, Robin R, Michael Anderson, Daniela Napoliano, Claire Maurer, and Robert Audette. Robert has a boatload of cat-faced spiders in the back of their rental home in Flagstaff. They keep knocking down webs. Megan 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 spiders like.

If you wanted to aromatically discourage them from taking up residence 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 have. Come to my office hours, spiders. I'm interested in the opposite. and in case you were not marshall i looked into this for you and according to the 2018 paper natural compounds as spider repellents fact or myth

Volatiles released by mint oil and chestnuts may be effective in deterring spider settlement in two different families of spiders. But lemon oil as a repellent is a myth. roasted chestnuts, mint, lemon cocktails. Maybe you're hungry. We're going to fix that because Allie Brown, Allen, Allie and Julian, and Haley 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 2016 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 1990s as a columnist named Lisa Burgett Holst warned about the dangers of misinformation, spreading via email.

and use this particular example as a sad illustration of how we sometimes do not use our brains to question pretty much anything. Now, 20 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 an april fool's day prank that they waited decades to reveal at the spine's expense.

mind you so please tell 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 time 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 45 years, they don't go anywhere.

Just chilling. They just do what they do. In fact, they like the winter. Like a California trapper 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're just chilling 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 dunes 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 a radical? That's so cute. And speaking of hiding, Liz Gleyland 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 spidey 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're 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? 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,

basically are none of those spiders. There are no established populations of those recluse 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 a lot of those are just straight up staph infection from a cut exactly yeah that happened to me where i thought i got a spider bite turns out i was just hauling wood

Literally gave myself an infection that went into my veins. Oh, sorry. Huge, huge PSA from your dad ward. 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 happen 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 maybe caught yourself on a fence or something yeah it's a medical misdiagnosis problem

It's not fair. I'm telling you, 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 Brittany 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 R. 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 50 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 Tsai, Rowan Tree, Helena, and Felix Cosmo. And here I would like to quote,

chief dan george of the slowitude 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. That's kind of a general problem we have.

our society people are kind of too close-minded right about everything but i mean spiders they mostly ate insects so they're important in that way their silks are spectacular strongest things ever right the strongest biomaterials known to man it's crazy they have intricate biologies you just have to you just have to want to learn a little bit more about all spiders and once you start learning more about them they're cool animals that have

really cool lifestyles i think the less anthro-centric we are perhaps We start thinking of, what is a 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? They're doing their thing in such interesting ways, using silk in particular. They're 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're 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 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 him? Come on. It's my favorite. My favorite spider season. What about the one last two questions I always ask, hardest thing about your job, most annoying thing about being an arachnologist? it can be anything it can be petty it can be big it can 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've asked 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. No, I love not a single complaint from someone who works with spiders. This is the first time in 350 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. That doesn't happen. 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... set them down and lecture what about your favorite thing my favorite thing about my job 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. That's weird. I don't know how to describe it. That's an important purpose. 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. 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 the other thing. I don't really care.

i don't do this for myself i 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 so that 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. Cha-ching. Then mow for me.

so ask spider people not smart questions because oh the stories you thought a spider was an anonymous little being invented by ghouls to destroy your sanity but the joke's on you because they are vast colorful cute smart and they eat roaches for you and 99.998 percent of them are harmless if I did that math right. Now you can find out more about Dr. 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 Allie 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.com. And to submit your questions before we record, you can sign up at patreon.com slash ologies.

Thank you to BFF since kindergarten, Erin Talbert for adminning the Ology's podcast Facebook group and her and Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Peltis for their support as I'm off to shoot tomorrow. Aveline Malik makes the professional transcripts. Kelly Ardwired is a website. Noelle Dilworth is our nimble scheduling producer. Susan Hale, our managing director, oversees it all with only two eyes.

Jake Chafee weaves it all together as an editor and slinging the sticky bits is lead editor Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn wrote our theme music. And if you stick around until the very end of the episode, I'll tell you a secret. This week, I will tell you that I just got back from rehearsal tonight at 30 Rock.

and i which by the way i got into a cab and i was like is it 30 rockefeller center or is it just called 30 rock i don't know how to tell so i was like 30 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 but anyway i was at 30 rockefeller when i was at the studios and i was practicing and stuff and i spent also the day holding

this huge tailless 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 insect. 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.

Trust me, Wilbur. People are very gullible. They'll believe anything they see in print.