4 ms·
I don’t think you realistically can milk a spider. ...another sentence I never thought I’d say.
by jf- 8y ago
I don’t think you realistically can milk a spider.
...another sentence I never thought I’d say.
- Sharlin 8y agoSame problem with spider silk. An awesome material but slightly difficult to harvest on an industrial scale.
- amelius 8y agoCan't we engineer the spiders to grow bigger? Or transplant the milk-gene to, say, tarantulas? (I'm not a biologist, so no idea if these are good ideas or even make sense)
- EGreg 8y agoWhat’s this desire to treat animals as just expendable biological machines as soon as you figure out they can secrete a substance you like? What about the consequences affecting the animals themselves from all those fattening antibiotics, being chained up or whatever?
- drngdds 8y agoThey don't matter very much here because unlike cows, spiders probably can't experience suffering.
- vibrato 8y agoIt’s called being a human. We are intelligent apex predators who exploit everything we possibly can.
- felipemnoa 8y agoWith an emphasis on predators.
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y agoFor the record, we're not the only species who farms other animals. E.g. carpenter ants famously farm aphids (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_ant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_ant). And of course our skill at exploiting other animals for sustenance is nothing compared to that of parasites.
- EGreg 8y agoHoneypot ants farm their own, interesting.
- walrus66 8y agoLet's not engineer bigger spiders, please
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago>> Can't we engineer the spiders to grow bigger? Well, if we can we should make them really big, like cows, then we can use them as vehicles. Imagine riding a spider up a vertical surface, would be dead cool. I'd call mine Larry.
- the8472 8y agoThat wouldn't work due to the cube-square law. Spiders can't even get enough oxygen at cow sizes due to their book lungs.
- dsnuh 8y agoPump pure oxygen into the grow-domes.
- codeisawesome 8y agoYou are only making them look more awesome by suggesting attached oxygen tanks.
- jf- 8y agoWorld: We need a solution to climate change! HN: Ok, picture this - gigantic, genetically engineered, milkable tarantulas!
- codeisawesome 8y agoI’m actually proud of how far along this sub thread people have kept a straight face!
- conanbatt 8y agoWe were so worried about what we could do, that we didn't consider what we should do. - Anon, before the tarantula massacre
- NicoJuicy 8y agoLol, this made my day :D
- Shivetya 8y agolikely you would breed them to the point they create milk and then crush and strain the results, repeating in huge batches. Industrialized farming has many traits some would find distasteful if they understood it.
- TallGuyShort 8y agoOh you can milk anything with nipples.