6 ms·

Researchers are discovering surprising capabilities among a group of arachnids

45 points by _Microft 5y ago

ncmncm 5y ago
Money quote: "...finding the right strategy is especially important when pursuing spiders that also eat jumping spiders." Like the meta-meta-mercenary who only kills meta-mercenaries who only kill mercenaries.
schwartzworld 5y ago
Kind of off-topic, but this seems like a good time to recommend Children of Time by Adrian Tchaicovsky
- perelin 5y ago
  Loved it, still hate spiders, but might accept them as overlords at some point.
- cookieswumchorr 5y ago
  yup, it's even featuring the same spiders (portia) as the article
- CodeGlitch 5y ago
  I've never looked at spiders the same way after reading that book.
codeulike 5y ago
Peter Watts (author of Blindsight) wrote about the processing capabilities of Portia spiders on his blog https://rifters.com/real/2009/01/iterating-towards-bethlehem.html https://rifters.com/real/2009/01/iterating-towards-bethlehem... and used some of the concepts in Echopraxia. But it's not just this flexible behavioral repertoire that's so amazing. It's not the fact that somehow, this dumb little spider with its crude compound optics has visual acuity to rival a cat's (even though a cat's got orders of magnitude more neurons in one retina than our spider has in her whole damn head). It's not even the fact that this little beast can figure out a maze which entails recognizing prey, then figuring out an approach path along which that prey is not visible (i.e., the spider can't just keep her eyes on the ball: she has to develop and remember a search image), then follow her best-laid plans by memory including recognizing when she's made a wrong turn and retracing her steps, all the while out of sight of her target. No, the really amazing thing is how she does all this with a measly 600,000 neurons— how she pulls off cognitive feats that would challenge a mammal with seventy million or more. She does it like a Turing Machine, one laborious step at a time. She does it like a Sinclair ZX-80: running one part of the system then another, because she doesn't have the circuitry to run both at once. She does it all sequentially, by timesharing. She'll sit there for two fucking hours, just watching. It takes that long to process the image, you see: whereas a cat or a mouse would assimilate the whole hi-res vista in an instant, Portia's poor underpowered graphics driver can only hold a fraction of the scene at any given time. So she scans, back and forth, back and forth, like some kind of hairy multilimbed Cylon centurion, scanning each little segment of the game board in turn. Then, when she synthesizes the relevant aspects of each (God knows how many variables she's juggling, how many pencil sketches get scribbled onto the scratch pad because the jpeg won't fit), she figures out a plan, and puts it into motion: climbing down the branch, falling out of sight of the target, ignoring other branches that would only seem to provide a more direct route to payoff, homing in on that one critical fork in the road that leads back up to satiation. Portia won't be deterred by the fact that she only has a few percent of a real brain: she emulates the brain she needs, a few percent at a time.
bradrn 5y ago
As an Aussie I get to see a lot of spiders, and they are absolutely amazing creatures. I can spend ages watching an orb weaver spider carefully constructing its web by ziplining down single threads at a time to get every part of the web to just the right spot in 3D space. They do other amazing things as well: for instance, funnelweb spiders can survive underwater by trapping air around them. (As a result of which we need to check pools very carefully before swimming.) I am thoroughly unsurprised that spiders are as intelligent as the article reports.
eternalban 5y ago
I once saw a spider hoist himself up 2 stories in a most elegant way. I was sitting outside on the porch and a gentle breeze was blowing. I noticed this shimmering line floating and it went up until it latched unto the roof and then this little creature just floated up from the porch and a few seconds later, was on the roof. It was almost like a dance. I remember being very impressed with that little spider and admiring it.
- _Microft 5y ago
  Some spiders even use threads as a sort of sail that can carry them around. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballooning_(spider) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballooning_(spider)
  - hermitcrab 5y ago
    I did some amateur research on this years ago. I couldn't understand how a spider can 'fly' with a thread of gossmer, than has no aerodynamic lift. The most likely explantion is that the spider is falling in a rising column of convective air, but (in some cases) the thread allows it to fall slower than the air is rising.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Nope! It's electrostatic repulsion.
      - hermitcrab 5y ago
        How does that work when they are 10m+ in the air?
        ncmncm 5y ago
        The electric field gradient of the earth is 100V/m all the way to the stratosphere. It is why lightning can find and release so much energy.
barrenko 5y ago
Pretty much every species is smarter than humans think. Life is amazing. We have eons of new technology development ahead of us just figuring out how certain animals function natively.
hermitcrab 5y ago
Jumping spiders also look pretty amazing. See: https://www.demilked.com/jumping-spiders-macro-photography-thomas-shahan/ https://www.demilked.com/jumping-spiders-macro-photography-t...
- stronglikedan 5y ago
  They're the only ones allowed to stay in my house.
ginko 5y ago
I opened that link thinking "it's going to be jumping spiders, isn't it?"
hungryforcodes 5y ago
I simply hate them sorry. If they were any larger, they would prey on us in the same way that they prey on their own scale creatures -- and that is simply frightening.
- matt_kantor 5y ago
  I'm not sure if your second sentence was meant to be the sole justification for the first, but unless you're bothered by other small predators (cats, bullfrogs, mantises, etc) then there's got to be something else behind it.
  - hungryforcodes 5y ago
    Well I am bothered by those other predators -- and you have inadvertently proven my point: Large cats such as lions or tigers are fearless predators of people. But you are right. It's the whole trap your unsuspecting victim in a giant immobalazing web, wrap them up in silk and then : "As a first step in eating, the spider will literally vomit digestive fluid over the prey. Then the prey is chewed with the "jaws" (chelicerae), and the fluid is sucked back into the mouth together with some liquefied "meat" from the prey" https://www.burkemuseum.org/collections-and-research/biology/arachnology-and-entomology/spider-myths/myth-spiders-only-suck https://www.burkemuseum.org/collections-and-research/biology...
RattleyCooper 5y ago
Yooo, when I was in grade school there was a jumping spider on the monkey-bars so I started throwing bark ships up at it trying to scare it off so I could swing around... The little fucker jumped off the monkey-bars right onto my elbow and bit me. Spiders know what they're doing lol

45 points by _Microft 5y ago

Money quote: "...finding the right strategy is especially important when pursuing spiders that also eat jumping spiders." Like the meta-meta-mercenary who only kills meta-mercenaries who only kill mercenaries.

schwartzworld 5y ago

Kind of off-topic, but this seems like a good time to recommend Children of Time by Adrian Tchaicovsky

perelin 5y ago
Loved it, still hate spiders, but might accept them as overlords at some point.
cookieswumchorr 5y ago
yup, it's even featuring the same spiders (portia) as the article
CodeGlitch 5y ago
I've never looked at spiders the same way after reading that book.

codeulike 5y ago

Peter Watts (author of Blindsight) wrote about the processing capabilities of Portia spiders on his blog https://rifters.com/real/2009/01/iterating-towards-bethlehem.html https://rifters.com/real/2009/01/iterating-towards-bethlehem... and used some of the concepts in Echopraxia. But it's not just this flexible behavioral repertoire that's so amazing. It's not the fact that somehow, this dumb little spider with its crude compound optics has visual acuity to rival a cat's (even though a cat's got orders of magnitude more neurons in one retina than our spider has in her whole damn head). It's not even the fact that this little beast can figure out a maze which entails recognizing prey, then figuring out an approach path along which that prey is not visible (i.e., the spider can't just keep her eyes on the ball: she has to develop and remember a search image), then follow her best-laid plans by memory including recognizing when she's made a wrong turn and retracing her steps, all the while out of sight of her target. No, the really amazing thing is how she does all this with a measly 600,000 neurons— how she pulls off cognitive feats that would challenge a mammal with seventy million or more. She does it like a Turing Machine, one laborious step at a time. She does it like a Sinclair ZX-80: running one part of the system then another, because she doesn't have the circuitry to run both at once. She does it all sequentially, by timesharing. She'll sit there for two fucking hours, just watching. It takes that long to process the image, you see: whereas a cat or a mouse would assimilate the whole hi-res vista in an instant, Portia's poor underpowered graphics driver can only hold a fraction of the scene at any given time. So she scans, back and forth, back and forth, like some kind of hairy multilimbed Cylon centurion, scanning each little segment of the game board in turn. Then, when she synthesizes the relevant aspects of each (God knows how many variables she's juggling, how many pencil sketches get scribbled onto the scratch pad because the jpeg won't fit), she figures out a plan, and puts it into motion: climbing down the branch, falling out of sight of the target, ignoring other branches that would only seem to provide a more direct route to payoff, homing in on that one critical fork in the road that leads back up to satiation. Portia won't be deterred by the fact that she only has a few percent of a real brain: she emulates the brain she needs, a few percent at a time.

bradrn 5y ago

As an Aussie I get to see a lot of spiders, and they are absolutely amazing creatures. I can spend ages watching an orb weaver spider carefully constructing its web by ziplining down single threads at a time to get every part of the web to just the right spot in 3D space. They do other amazing things as well: for instance, funnelweb spiders can survive underwater by trapping air around them. (As a result of which we need to check pools very carefully before swimming.) I am thoroughly unsurprised that spiders are as intelligent as the article reports.

eternalban 5y ago

I once saw a spider hoist himself up 2 stories in a most elegant way. I was sitting outside on the porch and a gentle breeze was blowing. I noticed this shimmering line floating and it went up until it latched unto the roof and then this little creature just floated up from the porch and a few seconds later, was on the roof. It was almost like a dance. I remember being very impressed with that little spider and admiring it.

_Microft 5y ago
Some spiders even use threads as a sort of sail that can carry them around. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballooning_(spider) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballooning_(spider)
- hermitcrab 5y ago
  I did some amateur research on this years ago. I couldn't understand how a spider can 'fly' with a thread of gossmer, than has no aerodynamic lift. The most likely explantion is that the spider is falling in a rising column of convective air, but (in some cases) the thread allows it to fall slower than the air is rising.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Nope! It's electrostatic repulsion.
    - hermitcrab 5y ago
      How does that work when they are 10m+ in the air?
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        The electric field gradient of the earth is 100V/m all the way to the stratosphere. It is why lightning can find and release so much energy.

barrenko 5y ago

Pretty much every species is smarter than humans think. Life is amazing. We have eons of new technology development ahead of us just figuring out how certain animals function natively.

hermitcrab 5y ago

Jumping spiders also look pretty amazing. See: https://www.demilked.com/jumping-spiders-macro-photography-thomas-shahan/ https://www.demilked.com/jumping-spiders-macro-photography-t...

stronglikedan 5y ago
They're the only ones allowed to stay in my house.

ginko 5y ago

I opened that link thinking "it's going to be jumping spiders, isn't it?"

hungryforcodes 5y ago

I simply hate them sorry. If they were any larger, they would prey on us in the same way that they prey on their own scale creatures -- and that is simply frightening.

matt_kantor 5y ago
I'm not sure if your second sentence was meant to be the sole justification for the first, but unless you're bothered by other small predators (cats, bullfrogs, mantises, etc) then there's got to be something else behind it.
- hungryforcodes 5y ago
  Well I am bothered by those other predators -- and you have inadvertently proven my point: Large cats such as lions or tigers are fearless predators of people. But you are right. It's the whole trap your unsuspecting victim in a giant immobalazing web, wrap them up in silk and then : "As a first step in eating, the spider will literally vomit digestive fluid over the prey. Then the prey is chewed with the "jaws" (chelicerae), and the fluid is sucked back into the mouth together with some liquefied "meat" from the prey" https://www.burkemuseum.org/collections-and-research/biology/arachnology-and-entomology/spider-myths/myth-spiders-only-suck https://www.burkemuseum.org/collections-and-research/biology...

RattleyCooper 5y ago

Yooo, when I was in grade school there was a jumping spider on the monkey-bars so I started throwing bark ships up at it trying to scare it off so I could swing around... The little fucker jumped off the monkey-bars right onto my elbow and bit me. Spiders know what they're doing lol