6 ms·

Jumping Spiders

133 points by rolph 2y ago

dreamcompiler 2y ago
Most spiders have relatively poor eyesight. Jumping spiders are an exception. They will chase a laser spot like a cat.
- 0x1062 2y ago
  I once had a jumping spider on top of my computer monitor and it would chase the cursor around as I moved the mouse. I have a video that I should post online somewhere
jillesvangurp 2y ago
I just read Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It's a nice bit of science fiction about the evolution of hyper intelligent jumping spiders on a terraformed planet.
- onthewall 2y ago
  Excellent book. This reminds me that I need to get on with reading the sequels, so thank you.
- globnomulous 2y ago
  Great recommendation. The second and third books leave something to be desired, in my opinion, but no other sci fi authors I'm aware of are as good as he is at what he does. His sci fi speculates about biology and ecology, and extrapolates outward from them, the way most sci fi speculates about technology and society.
  - yencabulator 2y ago
    Yeah, same thing with his Final Architecture series, promising but in the end middling. Great alien/synthetic mind concepts, but as the story goes on most of them behave just like humans except with funny ways of talking. Tchaikovsky's concepts are amazing, but he needs to pair up with another author who's better at aliens as characters.
    - globnomulous 2y ago
      That's a terrific point, and I agree completely. This also explains my most recent sci-fi misadventure: a novel by Christopher Paolini, Fractal Noise, that earned glowing praise from Tschaikovsky. It is a dreadful novel -- wooden, stilted, repetitive, unimaginative -- but, hey, the concept is mildly interesting, so I guess it gets the Tschaikovsky seal of approval. Peter F. Hamilton doesn't get a ton of praise for characterization (and I found his latest novel strangely, uncharacteristically vulgar and puerile), but I think he has a lot of the chops that Tschaikovsky lacks -- especially when it comes to language. Tschaikovsky's writing is at times awfully clunky. Hamilton's prose, by contrast, in my view at least, is in its own category among living sci-fi writers for its polish and effective use of the countless tools the language offers.
      - HelloMcFly 2y ago
        Interesting. I basically feel the opposite - I love Hamilton's ideas and plotting but really think he writes characters that don't feel real, they feel too much like archetypes. I can think of a few exceptions to this, but almost all of his characters feel like programmed automatons to me. And boy has he MISSED BIG when writing female characters at times. Unlike the others, I think Tchaikovsky's best writing is in Children of Ruin. I know it's not as popular as Children of Time, but I admired the way he didn't rinse/repeat and instead created a wholly different view of humanity's legacy intersecting with alien life. I though the "antagonist" in that book was far more alien and creative.
        globnomulous 2y ago
        Man, I'm impressed by the quality of the responses my offhand comments have received in this thread. I keep getting corrected and find myself agreeing with the corrections. You're absolutely right that female characters are, uh, not his strength, and mostly I think you must be right about characterization in his work as a whole. That being said, when I ignore the male characters who seem like wish fulfillment of some adolescent power fantasy (Nigel Sheldon -- immortal genius, intergalactic industrialist, undisputed patriarch, and virile keeper of the harem? Please.) and the female characters who are, you know, young, "nubile," and hyper-sexual, the remaining roster is, I think, solid. Even the characters who are archetypes worked for me. (Edit: sorry, I confused Children of Ruin and Children of Memory.) And I find myself agreeing with your assessment of Children of Ruin. In some ways I think it's not well constructed, sort of stumbling through the mystery, winding up much longer than it needed to be, but the main character (no spoilers) has a psychological richness that I can't recall encountering in his other books and is the only of his characters to whose fate I've felt emotionally attached. The ending, too, is among the best and most affecting I've read in quite a while. And, yes, the antagonist and setting is, I think, incredibly well conceived and well drawn. So maybe I've changed my mind. Despite some structural issues that, I think, weaken the novel (and I think recall feeling that the 'reveal' came too early or just that the clues leading up to it were too obvious), it may be my favorite book in the series. Its more modest cosmic stakes and narrower field of view, than a lot of the other work of his that I've read, enable Tschaikovsky to develop it into something quite special.
  - atombender 2y ago
    You may enjoy Peter Watts, especially Blindsight and its sequel, Echopraxia. Watts is himself a biologist, with a refreshingly unromantic perspective on humanity's place in the universe. (His other great story sequence, The Freeze-Frame Revolution, is some of the darkest sci-fi I've read since Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream".)
    - alistairSH 2y ago
      Good call. That said, it was only on a second reading of each, a few years after the first, that those two books clicked for me.
    - globnomulous 2y ago
      This is an excellent recommendation! I read Blindsight earlier this year. Easily one of my favorite sci-fi novels. It and Canticle for Leibowitz are in a class by themselves when it comes to sci-fi that deals with "philosophical" issues. I'll check out The Freeze-Frame sequence next, thanks! First I just need to finish Consider Phlebas, which I'm finding pretty weak. Transference is also on the to-do list. Watts says it is almost diametrically the opposite, intellectually, of Blindsight, but he also praises it.
      - atombender 2y ago
        The Freeze-Frame stories are officially called the Sunflower series. While different, they have the same alien creepiness that Watts is so good at, the extreme time frame (millions of years) makes it all the more chilling. It's a novel plus one prequel short story ("Hotshot"), two sequels ("The Island" and "Giants"), and two short fragments. All the shorts can be found on his web site, I believe. I also really enjoyed Echopraxia, the sequel to Blindsight. I think some people thought it was too different from what they expected; it doesn't pick up Siri Keaton's story, but tells a vaguely concurrent one. There's a Portia connection there too, by the way. Consider Phlebas is one of my favourite Banks novels, but I know many people dislike it. If this is your first Banks book, don't write off Banks completely. Finishing Phlebas is a great stepping stone to read Look to Windward, which I personally think is Banks' best Culture novel. What's Transference? The Ian Patterson book?
  - enriquto 2y ago
    > The second and third books leave something to be desired Also got this feeling on the first read... but now I remember them very fondly! I like to think that this trilogy happens in the same universe as Dune, being a prequel to the events of Dune. The homage to the Dune universe by the author is obvious (the names of the books, the notion of "other memories", etc). But many notions fit together, with some effort in your imagination. The second book of the trilogy provides a mechanism to explain the other memories in the form of nodal biology. The octopi ftl technique is reminiscent of the guild navigators. The third book hints subtly at a reason why the butlerian jihad could have happened.
  - geden 2y ago
    I thought the second and third books were also great, but different flavours, he didn’t just repeat. The second goes for more of a horror angle and has some incredible moments. The third is one of the most ambitious books SF novels I’ve read. Blurry and confusing on purpose, which is a fine line to tread (reminiscent of the latter Jeff Vandermeer Southern Reach books). Recently went to a book reading and Q&A for his new one Shroud, really smart and humble chap. Deeply into his research. Also, notably, he wrote a book a year for 17 (one seven) years before being published. And then it took 12? more novel before he had a hit with Children Of Time. He didn’t seem to have a shred of resentment about that which felt remarkable and and incredible example of perseverance and enjoyment of process over result. A fourth Children Of book is imminent.
    - globnomulous 2y ago
      My exchange with another commenter in this thread led me to reconsider the Children of Time series, and I'm now inclined to agree with you, putting the second and third books, books, particularly the third, ahead of the first. (And as I said elsewhere in the thread, I'm really impressed, and delighted, by the quality of the responses people have offered to my offhand comments). "Because we're going on an adventure." Funny, it hadn't occurred to me to think of the second book as horror, but you're right. I had no idea Tschaikovsky's career arc was so grueling. I agree that he seems incredibly smart. I just, for the life of me, can't understand why he had anything nice to say about Fractal Noise. That misfire alone (Just the result of his good manners, politics, or kindness to fellow writers?), I think, tarnished my view of his work. I'll add Vandermeer to my to-read list, thanks!
- Matumio 2y ago
  The book makes a reference to Portia, which seem to be quite intelligent jumping spiders in reality, in the sense that they can plan long convoluted paths and may be able to count. Research article: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.568049/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....
  - BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
    I learned about them from echopraxia.
thenthenthen 2y ago
TIL spiders ‘molt’ wow.
- adrian_b 2y ago
  Molting their chitinous exoskeleton is a shared characteristic of a huge group of animals, which is named using a Greek word for this feature (Ecdysozoa) and which includes not only spiders and all other arachnids, but also all insects and crustaceans and all other arthropods, and also other animals related to arthropods, i.e. velvet worms, tardigrades, roundworms and several kinds of marine worms. Molting is one of the features that makes difficult for arthropods to reach great sizes (because their skeleton and tegument cannot grow between moltings; it only is exchanged with a bigger external skeleton during molting), but otherwise it has been an important factor for the success of this group of animals, by allowing them to live in any environment, because their bodies are better separated and protected from the environment than for most other animals.
  - andrewflnr 2y ago
    Depends what you mean by "great size"? I guess? Maybe they'll never reach elephant size, but Arthropleura was pretty dang big.
    - adrian_b 2y ago
      There is an overlap in size between the biggest arthropods and the smallest vertebrates, but neither arthropods can be as big as the bigger vertebrates, nor vertebrates can be as small as the smaller arthropods. Some arthropods could reach greater sizes than today during times when they had less competition from vertebrates and when the air was richer in oxygen, but that has become impossible later. Arthropods have been the first terrestrial animals and then the first flying animals. In each case there has been a long time when they had no competition from vertebrates, so they could be significantly bigger than later, when they had to regress to their smaller optimum size. A very big arthropod would become much slower than a vertebrate of the same size, due to difficulties in respiration and circulation that would not be able to supply the muscles with enough oxygen and fuel for sustained effort and due to the need for requiring very thick nerves for an acceptable speed of propagation for the nervous signals. Molting creates problems because reaching a great size requires a very large number of moltings. Each molting is a time when the animal is extremely vulnerable, being unable to move or defend itself. Many moltings create many opportunities for being killed by some predator, and for a bigger animal it would be more difficult to find a hiding place during molting. Arthropleura was very long and thin, which alleviated the respiration problems, but even so it must have been a slow animal. Fortunately for it, at that time there were few terrestrial predators and they were still small. When that has changed, nothing approaching the size of Arthropleura has ever evolved again.
Galatians4_16 2y ago
I wish they were larger. I'd keep one and feed it rats & geckos.
weard_beard 2y ago
https://pressbooks.pub/anansi/chapter/chapter-1/ https://pressbooks.pub/anansi/chapter/chapter-1/
vharuck 2y ago
Jumping spiders make great pets. The ones I've kept build silk tubes in the upper corners of their terrariums to hide and sleep in, meaning I could see them most of the time. They actively hunt, which is fun to watch. And even the common phidippus audax has bright coloring. They only live a year or two, but it's cool to watch them grow. Beyond the facts in this article, jumping spiders have also shown spatial reasoning. When they see prey on another leaf behind their jumping range, they'll climb down and find a path to the prey's leaf, even if the prey isn't visible during this detour. They remember it's relative location and seemingly "choose" the best route to get there. Edit: You can also "hand feed" your jumping spider with a cotton swab dipped in sugar water. They drink flower nectar in the wild, so my wife and I tried this and it worked!
- vharuck 2y ago
  The Peckham Society is an informal group that shares research on jumping spiders: http://peckhamia.com/ http://peckhamia.com/
- greeneggs 2y ago
  > Edit: You can also "hand feed" your jumping spider with a cotton swab dipped in sugar water. They drink flower nectar in the wild, so my wife and I tried this and it worked! But don't they need live protein, like flightless fruit flies? I feel like the need to raise prey is the biggest downside to having a jumping spider pet.
  - pixl97 2y ago
    Being the the previous poster was talking about their hunting practices it sounds like that is how they get water that has a bit of nutrient value.
  - vharuck 2y ago
    They do need protein. Nectar is an extra and easy source of energy. And my wife is the kind of person who wants to play with her pets, no matter the species. The Q-tip was the only thing I agreed to, because I didn't want to terrify the spider by picking it up. For sustenance, we gave them meal worms, crickets (their size or smaller), and sliced fruit. Not sure if they drank much fruit juice, but it kept the crickets happy.
bashmelek 2y ago
I used to see these in Florida a lot when I was a kid. What happened?
- Xiol32 2y ago
  We did.
- sejje 2y ago
  You grew up
headsupernova 2y ago
Three times, while photographing these little critters, I've had them jump straight onto the camera lens. A startling experience!
giantg2 2y ago
I remember being a kid and we had a small jumping spider living in our car for about a week. It would actually jump onto our hands and let us look at it. Then we'd move our hand to another part of the car in the direction it was moving and it would jump onto whatever was close there. Now I find very large mostly black jumping spiders under my beehive top lid. No doubt they are well fed on some of the bees (I've seen one eating/drinking one).
- cryptonector 2y ago
  > Now I find very large mostly black jumping spiders under my beehive top lid. No doubt they are well fed on some of the bees (I've seen one eating/drinking one). Same here! Hives that have an inner cover sometimes have several of these, and they get to be really big. I imagine they snack on a bee a day or so.
every 2y ago
My introduction to jumping spiders was as a child on a long, boring drive in the back seat of a Buick. One emerged from somewhere down in the door and crawled onto the glass. When I moved closer it would back away. When I moved back it would follow me. When I tilted my head to get a better look it tilted in response. We kept this nonsense up for the rest of the trip...
fipar 2y ago
We had one as a friend-pet for a while a few years ago. We went outside one day and found one leaf in our plum tree was tube-shaped with some spiderweb and after some waiting, off she came (I have no idea if it was male or female but Spanish is a gendered language and spiders are female, so we always referred to it as “her”). Every day around noon she’d come out of her leave and wait to catch an insect. It was amazing to see her precisely jump to get it, and watching her eat was a mix of gross and interesting. I normally dislike spiders (though I don’t kill them unless I really feel threatened) but jumping spiders are an exception and I’d actually describe them as nice, almost pet/friend material.
- nkrisc 2y ago
  Many people do keep jumping spiders as pets.
  - zabzonk 2y ago
    I used to have a zebra jumping spider living on my office windowsill - kept me amused for hours.
jtbayly 2y ago
This page kept changing to a new article as I tried to read it. Very frustrating.
- yencabulator 2y ago
  It's annoying. They use side-scrolling for prev/next navigation, and I've discovered I drag down on my touchpad at an angle.
- hermitcrab 2y ago
  Yes. Interesting article. Crap website design.
symbolicAGI 2y ago
Fascinated by spiders and insects growing up in Upstate NY - the largest jumping spider there gets 20mm long. Their eyesight and reflexes are fast enough to stalk a landed house fly and catch it on its takeoff. Still feel comfortable today in a deep squat from those days long ago.
zulu-inuoe 2y ago
A nice enjoyable read, thank you
dev_l1x_be 2y ago
I have these jumping spiders living in my apartment and my kids love them. They are natural part of life, harmless and quite fun. I was not even aware of these little animals but once I found one and started to go down the jumping spider rabbit hole, and after tha, bumm, jumping spiders everywhere. I have taken pictures of 4 species so far in my country, which a super difficult task. Anyways, jumping spiders <3. These two has wikipedia links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_spider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_spider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asianellus_festivus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asianellus_festivus
hxorr 2y ago
You can see most species of jumping spider found in your area by using iNaturalist's map search tool - example for around Miami, Florida: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?lat=25.721542439731476&lng=-80.19141939387322&radius=133.6351555855859&subview=map&taxon_id=48139&view=species https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?lat=25.721542439731... Shows 45 species
- cryptonector 2y ago
  That's a great tool!
somishere 2y ago
It's their movement that I find fascinating. It's like they just snap between positions [1]. They're incredibly fast. Not to mention exceptionally beautiful (often irridescent [2]) and entirely curious. I have thousands of happy snaps like those from around our old gaf of different pals that caught my eye or walked a web over one of us. So cool. [1] https://i.imgur.com/kVK8z2p.mp4 https://i.imgur.com/kVK8z2p.mp4 [2] https://i.imgur.com/Ig3Nob5.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/Ig3Nob5.jpeg
- j_bum 2y ago
  I love their snappy motion too. Great video/gif. After seeing this I had to look up their movement in slow mo. It’s incredible. They’re on a different time scale lol [0] https://youtu.be/FhpL5h8sEHo?si=su3BjAxpFGU0gEcf https://youtu.be/FhpL5h8sEHo?si=su3BjAxpFGU0gEcf [1] https://youtu.be/FfOrLNXIN-8?si=fzGokSi7P0Zrs2Z1 https://youtu.be/FfOrLNXIN-8?si=fzGokSi7P0Zrs2Z1
codedokode 2y ago
Spiders are scary enough even without jumping.
- cryptonector 2y ago
  Jumping spiders are adorable and no threat to humans.
  - codedokode 2y ago
    But have a venom.
HankB99 2y ago
https://photos.app.goo.gl/wEJJAqsyXVjhT5jW7 https://photos.app.goo.gl/wEJJAqsyXVjhT5jW7 Maybe jumping spider? The iridescent colors were spectacular.
nickpsecurity 2y ago
These things are neat. I like how they see us, disappear, and then reappear right above or under us. They'll also jump and spin around facing you if you try to pet them from behind. They're funny. I have two, recent examples of their disappearing act. One was on the far end of a picnic table looking at me. It slowly moved backwards to disappear under the table. I felt I just knew what it was planning. I keep my eyes open as I worked on my laptop. Eventually, the spider's head creeps out from under the table between my waist and laptop. So, I tried to pet it and it starts jumping across the table. I can't remember if it jumped off the table. My mom saw one in or around her car. It disappeared. She had a feeling she'd see it again but hopefully not while in heavy traffic. Later on, after getting in, a black form slowly descends in front of her face. It was just looking at her. I can't remember how she reacted to that. We've had multiple places with lots of brown recluses. Some said they were too big. Must be wolf spiders. They look like recluses do in all the online pictures and nothing like wolf spiders usually do. I've imagined buying a bunch of jumping spiders to throw in the attic or underneath a house like that. I wonder if they'd (a) kill brown recluses at all and (b) clear a house out. While I doubt it's practical, using my favorite spiders as a weapon against my least favorite was an amusing thought.
cryptonector 2y ago
Jumping spiders are really cute and really smart. Every one of my beehives has at least one jumping spider somewhere in or near it (typically between the lid and the inner cover, in the case of my Langstroth hives and my Langstroth to top-bar hive conversions, whereas in my from-scratch top-bar hives they typically hang out on top of the top bars). We stare at each other. Sometimes I'll flick one off its spot on an inner cover, possibly sending it very far, but no matter, they always find their way back.
yungporko 2y ago
jumping spiders are very cool but god this site sucks to use on mobile. 3 times i accidentally "swiped" to a new article while trying to scroll down before i gave up trying to finish it, at which point i realised you can't swipe to go back/forwards because they've hijacked that action for the stupid article swiping thing. 0/10 worse than plain text on a white background.
keepamovin 2y ago
Great photos in this article. I wonder what the lens is?

Jumping Spiders

133 points by rolph 2y ago

dreamcompiler 2y ago

Most spiders have relatively poor eyesight. Jumping spiders are an exception. They will chase a laser spot like a cat.

0x1062 2y ago
I once had a jumping spider on top of my computer monitor and it would chase the cursor around as I moved the mouse. I have a video that I should post online somewhere

jillesvangurp 2y ago

I just read Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It's a nice bit of science fiction about the evolution of hyper intelligent jumping spiders on a terraformed planet.

onthewall 2y ago
Excellent book. This reminds me that I need to get on with reading the sequels, so thank you.
globnomulous 2y ago
Great recommendation. The second and third books leave something to be desired, in my opinion, but no other sci fi authors I'm aware of are as good as he is at what he does. His sci fi speculates about biology and ecology, and extrapolates outward from them, the way most sci fi speculates about technology and society.
- yencabulator 2y ago
  Yeah, same thing with his Final Architecture series, promising but in the end middling. Great alien/synthetic mind concepts, but as the story goes on most of them behave just like humans except with funny ways of talking. Tchaikovsky's concepts are amazing, but he needs to pair up with another author who's better at aliens as characters.
  - globnomulous 2y ago
    That's a terrific point, and I agree completely. This also explains my most recent sci-fi misadventure: a novel by Christopher Paolini, Fractal Noise, that earned glowing praise from Tschaikovsky. It is a dreadful novel -- wooden, stilted, repetitive, unimaginative -- but, hey, the concept is mildly interesting, so I guess it gets the Tschaikovsky seal of approval. Peter F. Hamilton doesn't get a ton of praise for characterization (and I found his latest novel strangely, uncharacteristically vulgar and puerile), but I think he has a lot of the chops that Tschaikovsky lacks -- especially when it comes to language. Tschaikovsky's writing is at times awfully clunky. Hamilton's prose, by contrast, in my view at least, is in its own category among living sci-fi writers for its polish and effective use of the countless tools the language offers.
    - HelloMcFly 2y ago
      Interesting. I basically feel the opposite - I love Hamilton's ideas and plotting but really think he writes characters that don't feel real, they feel too much like archetypes. I can think of a few exceptions to this, but almost all of his characters feel like programmed automatons to me. And boy has he MISSED BIG when writing female characters at times. Unlike the others, I think Tchaikovsky's best writing is in Children of Ruin. I know it's not as popular as Children of Time, but I admired the way he didn't rinse/repeat and instead created a wholly different view of humanity's legacy intersecting with alien life. I though the "antagonist" in that book was far more alien and creative.
      - globnomulous 2y ago
        Man, I'm impressed by the quality of the responses my offhand comments have received in this thread. I keep getting corrected and find myself agreeing with the corrections. You're absolutely right that female characters are, uh, not his strength, and mostly I think you must be right about characterization in his work as a whole. That being said, when I ignore the male characters who seem like wish fulfillment of some adolescent power fantasy (Nigel Sheldon -- immortal genius, intergalactic industrialist, undisputed patriarch, and virile keeper of the harem? Please.) and the female characters who are, you know, young, "nubile," and hyper-sexual, the remaining roster is, I think, solid. Even the characters who are archetypes worked for me. (Edit: sorry, I confused Children of Ruin and Children of Memory.) And I find myself agreeing with your assessment of Children of Ruin. In some ways I think it's not well constructed, sort of stumbling through the mystery, winding up much longer than it needed to be, but the main character (no spoilers) has a psychological richness that I can't recall encountering in his other books and is the only of his characters to whose fate I've felt emotionally attached. The ending, too, is among the best and most affecting I've read in quite a while. And, yes, the antagonist and setting is, I think, incredibly well conceived and well drawn. So maybe I've changed my mind. Despite some structural issues that, I think, weaken the novel (and I think recall feeling that the 'reveal' came too early or just that the clues leading up to it were too obvious), it may be my favorite book in the series. Its more modest cosmic stakes and narrower field of view, than a lot of the other work of his that I've read, enable Tschaikovsky to develop it into something quite special.
- atombender 2y ago
  You may enjoy Peter Watts, especially Blindsight and its sequel, Echopraxia. Watts is himself a biologist, with a refreshingly unromantic perspective on humanity's place in the universe. (His other great story sequence, The Freeze-Frame Revolution, is some of the darkest sci-fi I've read since Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream".)
  - alistairSH 2y ago
    Good call. That said, it was only on a second reading of each, a few years after the first, that those two books clicked for me.
  - globnomulous 2y ago
    This is an excellent recommendation! I read Blindsight earlier this year. Easily one of my favorite sci-fi novels. It and Canticle for Leibowitz are in a class by themselves when it comes to sci-fi that deals with "philosophical" issues. I'll check out The Freeze-Frame sequence next, thanks! First I just need to finish Consider Phlebas, which I'm finding pretty weak. Transference is also on the to-do list. Watts says it is almost diametrically the opposite, intellectually, of Blindsight, but he also praises it.
    - atombender 2y ago
      The Freeze-Frame stories are officially called the Sunflower series. While different, they have the same alien creepiness that Watts is so good at, the extreme time frame (millions of years) makes it all the more chilling. It's a novel plus one prequel short story ("Hotshot"), two sequels ("The Island" and "Giants"), and two short fragments. All the shorts can be found on his web site, I believe. I also really enjoyed Echopraxia, the sequel to Blindsight. I think some people thought it was too different from what they expected; it doesn't pick up Siri Keaton's story, but tells a vaguely concurrent one. There's a Portia connection there too, by the way. Consider Phlebas is one of my favourite Banks novels, but I know many people dislike it. If this is your first Banks book, don't write off Banks completely. Finishing Phlebas is a great stepping stone to read Look to Windward, which I personally think is Banks' best Culture novel. What's Transference? The Ian Patterson book?
- enriquto 2y ago
  > The second and third books leave something to be desired Also got this feeling on the first read... but now I remember them very fondly! I like to think that this trilogy happens in the same universe as Dune, being a prequel to the events of Dune. The homage to the Dune universe by the author is obvious (the names of the books, the notion of "other memories", etc). But many notions fit together, with some effort in your imagination. The second book of the trilogy provides a mechanism to explain the other memories in the form of nodal biology. The octopi ftl technique is reminiscent of the guild navigators. The third book hints subtly at a reason why the butlerian jihad could have happened.
- geden 2y ago
  I thought the second and third books were also great, but different flavours, he didn’t just repeat. The second goes for more of a horror angle and has some incredible moments. The third is one of the most ambitious books SF novels I’ve read. Blurry and confusing on purpose, which is a fine line to tread (reminiscent of the latter Jeff Vandermeer Southern Reach books). Recently went to a book reading and Q&A for his new one Shroud, really smart and humble chap. Deeply into his research. Also, notably, he wrote a book a year for 17 (one seven) years before being published. And then it took 12? more novel before he had a hit with Children Of Time. He didn’t seem to have a shred of resentment about that which felt remarkable and and incredible example of perseverance and enjoyment of process over result. A fourth Children Of book is imminent.
  - globnomulous 2y ago
    My exchange with another commenter in this thread led me to reconsider the Children of Time series, and I'm now inclined to agree with you, putting the second and third books, books, particularly the third, ahead of the first. (And as I said elsewhere in the thread, I'm really impressed, and delighted, by the quality of the responses people have offered to my offhand comments). "Because we're going on an adventure." Funny, it hadn't occurred to me to think of the second book as horror, but you're right. I had no idea Tschaikovsky's career arc was so grueling. I agree that he seems incredibly smart. I just, for the life of me, can't understand why he had anything nice to say about Fractal Noise. That misfire alone (Just the result of his good manners, politics, or kindness to fellow writers?), I think, tarnished my view of his work. I'll add Vandermeer to my to-read list, thanks!
Matumio 2y ago
The book makes a reference to Portia, which seem to be quite intelligent jumping spiders in reality, in the sense that they can plan long convoluted paths and may be able to count. Research article: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.568049/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
  I learned about them from echopraxia.

thenthenthen 2y ago

TIL spiders ‘molt’ wow.

adrian_b 2y ago
Molting their chitinous exoskeleton is a shared characteristic of a huge group of animals, which is named using a Greek word for this feature (Ecdysozoa) and which includes not only spiders and all other arachnids, but also all insects and crustaceans and all other arthropods, and also other animals related to arthropods, i.e. velvet worms, tardigrades, roundworms and several kinds of marine worms. Molting is one of the features that makes difficult for arthropods to reach great sizes (because their skeleton and tegument cannot grow between moltings; it only is exchanged with a bigger external skeleton during molting), but otherwise it has been an important factor for the success of this group of animals, by allowing them to live in any environment, because their bodies are better separated and protected from the environment than for most other animals.
- andrewflnr 2y ago
  Depends what you mean by "great size"? I guess? Maybe they'll never reach elephant size, but Arthropleura was pretty dang big.
  - adrian_b 2y ago
    There is an overlap in size between the biggest arthropods and the smallest vertebrates, but neither arthropods can be as big as the bigger vertebrates, nor vertebrates can be as small as the smaller arthropods. Some arthropods could reach greater sizes than today during times when they had less competition from vertebrates and when the air was richer in oxygen, but that has become impossible later. Arthropods have been the first terrestrial animals and then the first flying animals. In each case there has been a long time when they had no competition from vertebrates, so they could be significantly bigger than later, when they had to regress to their smaller optimum size. A very big arthropod would become much slower than a vertebrate of the same size, due to difficulties in respiration and circulation that would not be able to supply the muscles with enough oxygen and fuel for sustained effort and due to the need for requiring very thick nerves for an acceptable speed of propagation for the nervous signals. Molting creates problems because reaching a great size requires a very large number of moltings. Each molting is a time when the animal is extremely vulnerable, being unable to move or defend itself. Many moltings create many opportunities for being killed by some predator, and for a bigger animal it would be more difficult to find a hiding place during molting. Arthropleura was very long and thin, which alleviated the respiration problems, but even so it must have been a slow animal. Fortunately for it, at that time there were few terrestrial predators and they were still small. When that has changed, nothing approaching the size of Arthropleura has ever evolved again.

Galatians4_16 2y ago

I wish they were larger. I'd keep one and feed it rats & geckos.

weard_beard 2y ago

https://pressbooks.pub/anansi/chapter/chapter-1/ https://pressbooks.pub/anansi/chapter/chapter-1/

vharuck 2y ago

Jumping spiders make great pets. The ones I've kept build silk tubes in the upper corners of their terrariums to hide and sleep in, meaning I could see them most of the time. They actively hunt, which is fun to watch. And even the common phidippus audax has bright coloring. They only live a year or two, but it's cool to watch them grow. Beyond the facts in this article, jumping spiders have also shown spatial reasoning. When they see prey on another leaf behind their jumping range, they'll climb down and find a path to the prey's leaf, even if the prey isn't visible during this detour. They remember it's relative location and seemingly "choose" the best route to get there. Edit: You can also "hand feed" your jumping spider with a cotton swab dipped in sugar water. They drink flower nectar in the wild, so my wife and I tried this and it worked!

vharuck 2y ago
The Peckham Society is an informal group that shares research on jumping spiders: http://peckhamia.com/ http://peckhamia.com/
greeneggs 2y ago
> Edit: You can also "hand feed" your jumping spider with a cotton swab dipped in sugar water. They drink flower nectar in the wild, so my wife and I tried this and it worked! But don't they need live protein, like flightless fruit flies? I feel like the need to raise prey is the biggest downside to having a jumping spider pet.
- pixl97 2y ago
  Being the the previous poster was talking about their hunting practices it sounds like that is how they get water that has a bit of nutrient value.
- vharuck 2y ago
  They do need protein. Nectar is an extra and easy source of energy. And my wife is the kind of person who wants to play with her pets, no matter the species. The Q-tip was the only thing I agreed to, because I didn't want to terrify the spider by picking it up. For sustenance, we gave them meal worms, crickets (their size or smaller), and sliced fruit. Not sure if they drank much fruit juice, but it kept the crickets happy.

bashmelek 2y ago

I used to see these in Florida a lot when I was a kid. What happened?

Xiol32 2y ago
We did.
sejje 2y ago
You grew up

headsupernova 2y ago

Three times, while photographing these little critters, I've had them jump straight onto the camera lens. A startling experience!

giantg2 2y ago

I remember being a kid and we had a small jumping spider living in our car for about a week. It would actually jump onto our hands and let us look at it. Then we'd move our hand to another part of the car in the direction it was moving and it would jump onto whatever was close there. Now I find very large mostly black jumping spiders under my beehive top lid. No doubt they are well fed on some of the bees (I've seen one eating/drinking one).

cryptonector 2y ago
> Now I find very large mostly black jumping spiders under my beehive top lid. No doubt they are well fed on some of the bees (I've seen one eating/drinking one). Same here! Hives that have an inner cover sometimes have several of these, and they get to be really big. I imagine they snack on a bee a day or so.

every 2y ago

My introduction to jumping spiders was as a child on a long, boring drive in the back seat of a Buick. One emerged from somewhere down in the door and crawled onto the glass. When I moved closer it would back away. When I moved back it would follow me. When I tilted my head to get a better look it tilted in response. We kept this nonsense up for the rest of the trip...

fipar 2y ago

We had one as a friend-pet for a while a few years ago. We went outside one day and found one leaf in our plum tree was tube-shaped with some spiderweb and after some waiting, off she came (I have no idea if it was male or female but Spanish is a gendered language and spiders are female, so we always referred to it as “her”). Every day around noon she’d come out of her leave and wait to catch an insect. It was amazing to see her precisely jump to get it, and watching her eat was a mix of gross and interesting. I normally dislike spiders (though I don’t kill them unless I really feel threatened) but jumping spiders are an exception and I’d actually describe them as nice, almost pet/friend material.

nkrisc 2y ago
Many people do keep jumping spiders as pets.
- zabzonk 2y ago
  I used to have a zebra jumping spider living on my office windowsill - kept me amused for hours.

jtbayly 2y ago

This page kept changing to a new article as I tried to read it. Very frustrating.

yencabulator 2y ago
It's annoying. They use side-scrolling for prev/next navigation, and I've discovered I drag down on my touchpad at an angle.
hermitcrab 2y ago
Yes. Interesting article. Crap website design.

symbolicAGI 2y ago

Fascinated by spiders and insects growing up in Upstate NY - the largest jumping spider there gets 20mm long. Their eyesight and reflexes are fast enough to stalk a landed house fly and catch it on its takeoff. Still feel comfortable today in a deep squat from those days long ago.

zulu-inuoe 2y ago

A nice enjoyable read, thank you

dev_l1x_be 2y ago

I have these jumping spiders living in my apartment and my kids love them. They are natural part of life, harmless and quite fun. I was not even aware of these little animals but once I found one and started to go down the jumping spider rabbit hole, and after tha, bumm, jumping spiders everywhere. I have taken pictures of 4 species so far in my country, which a super difficult task. Anyways, jumping spiders <3. These two has wikipedia links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_spider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_spider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asianellus_festivus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asianellus_festivus

hxorr 2y ago

You can see most species of jumping spider found in your area by using iNaturalist's map search tool - example for around Miami, Florida: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?lat=25.721542439731476&lng=-80.19141939387322&radius=133.6351555855859&subview=map&taxon_id=48139&view=species https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?lat=25.721542439731... Shows 45 species

cryptonector 2y ago
That's a great tool!

somishere 2y ago

It's their movement that I find fascinating. It's like they just snap between positions [1]. They're incredibly fast. Not to mention exceptionally beautiful (often irridescent [2]) and entirely curious. I have thousands of happy snaps like those from around our old gaf of different pals that caught my eye or walked a web over one of us. So cool. [1] https://i.imgur.com/kVK8z2p.mp4 https://i.imgur.com/kVK8z2p.mp4 [2] https://i.imgur.com/Ig3Nob5.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/Ig3Nob5.jpeg

j_bum 2y ago
I love their snappy motion too. Great video/gif. After seeing this I had to look up their movement in slow mo. It’s incredible. They’re on a different time scale lol [0] https://youtu.be/FhpL5h8sEHo?si=su3BjAxpFGU0gEcf https://youtu.be/FhpL5h8sEHo?si=su3BjAxpFGU0gEcf [1] https://youtu.be/FfOrLNXIN-8?si=fzGokSi7P0Zrs2Z1 https://youtu.be/FfOrLNXIN-8?si=fzGokSi7P0Zrs2Z1

codedokode 2y ago

Spiders are scary enough even without jumping.

cryptonector 2y ago
Jumping spiders are adorable and no threat to humans.
- codedokode 2y ago
  But have a venom.

HankB99 2y ago

https://photos.app.goo.gl/wEJJAqsyXVjhT5jW7 https://photos.app.goo.gl/wEJJAqsyXVjhT5jW7 Maybe jumping spider? The iridescent colors were spectacular.

nickpsecurity 2y ago

These things are neat. I like how they see us, disappear, and then reappear right above or under us. They'll also jump and spin around facing you if you try to pet them from behind. They're funny. I have two, recent examples of their disappearing act. One was on the far end of a picnic table looking at me. It slowly moved backwards to disappear under the table. I felt I just knew what it was planning. I keep my eyes open as I worked on my laptop. Eventually, the spider's head creeps out from under the table between my waist and laptop. So, I tried to pet it and it starts jumping across the table. I can't remember if it jumped off the table. My mom saw one in or around her car. It disappeared. She had a feeling she'd see it again but hopefully not while in heavy traffic. Later on, after getting in, a black form slowly descends in front of her face. It was just looking at her. I can't remember how she reacted to that. We've had multiple places with lots of brown recluses. Some said they were too big. Must be wolf spiders. They look like recluses do in all the online pictures and nothing like wolf spiders usually do. I've imagined buying a bunch of jumping spiders to throw in the attic or underneath a house like that. I wonder if they'd (a) kill brown recluses at all and (b) clear a house out. While I doubt it's practical, using my favorite spiders as a weapon against my least favorite was an amusing thought.

cryptonector 2y ago

Jumping spiders are really cute and really smart. Every one of my beehives has at least one jumping spider somewhere in or near it (typically between the lid and the inner cover, in the case of my Langstroth hives and my Langstroth to top-bar hive conversions, whereas in my from-scratch top-bar hives they typically hang out on top of the top bars). We stare at each other. Sometimes I'll flick one off its spot on an inner cover, possibly sending it very far, but no matter, they always find their way back.

yungporko 2y ago

jumping spiders are very cool but god this site sucks to use on mobile. 3 times i accidentally "swiped" to a new article while trying to scroll down before i gave up trying to finish it, at which point i realised you can't swipe to go back/forwards because they've hijacked that action for the stupid article swiping thing. 0/10 worse than plain text on a white background.

keepamovin 2y ago

Great photos in this article. I wonder what the lens is?