Spider Missing After Trip To Space Station 507
Garabito writes "A spider that had been sent to the International Space Station for a school science program was lost. Two arachnids were sent in order to know if spiders can survive and make webs in space, but now only one spider can be seen in the container. NASA isn't sure where the other spider could have gone. I, for one, welcome our new arachnid overlords."
Not necessarily (Score:5, Interesting)
All spiders can only ingest liquid food, and in fact have two filters to prevent solids from getting in.
From there it gets funnier:
- most spiders simply inject the prey with enzymes that liquefy its innards, then suck the resulting liquid lunch. In this case they'd still find the empty chitin shell of the spider.
- some actually "chew" the food while flooding it with enzymes to dissolve it, but I'm guessing even in this case they'd still find legs and whatnot from the dead spider.
I guess the big question at this point is exactly what species of spider were these two.
Dupe from 1973 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not necessarily (Score:5, Interesting)
Spiders in space... (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Spiders are not cannibals (Score:3, Interesting)
Anecdote :
When I lived out in rural farmland, our house had a spider living behind the toilet. He had a small web there and he didn't seem to bother us so we left him there. We named him Boris. We'd find other spiders in the house fairly often, and we would catch them alive and drop them on Boris' web. It was very interesting to watch the battles, since the foreign spider would instinctively(?) know that they were in danger being on someone else's web, and would freeze for long periods of time not moving a muscle. Eventually when they would try to leave, out would fly Boris from his crack in the wall and attack. After killing the other spiders he'd usually pull his prize into his hole in the wall. Fairly positive he ate them as well, but I can't say that for certain.
Not sure where you got your information but they will definitely attack each other.
Re:Where oh where? (Score:5, Interesting)
In Hawaii, only the tourists are scared of our big-as-your-palm cane spiders. [flickr.com] Everyone else doesn't mind having them in the house because they eat all the other bugs.
Re:Where oh where? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Where oh where? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not necessarily (Score:4, Interesting)
We have a small tarantula here in the high desert that gets about half as big as a man's little finger, plus legs. One summer I kept one in a jar and fed it live grasshoppers. It must not have required its food to be all that liquid -- this spider would eat a grasshopper nearly as large as itself in 15 seconds flat. Munch-munch-munch-GONE, exoskeleton, innards, and all (except it sometimes didn't eat all the legs). It almost looked like a magic trick -- "how did you stuff that big grasshopper into that little spider??"
BTW these tarantulas' vision is apparently good enough to tell when a human is approaching with lunch. If I just came up to look, it would ignore me. If I had a grasshopper in my hand, it would get excited and run round and round in its jar.
Re:Where oh where? (Score:1, Interesting)
Actually, I suspect that you are more pissed off about the holy one being lumped together with the evil one (or that the comment doesn't specifically target Bush for derision - gods, that meme is old) than you are about a sig that, while a little controversial, is hardly insightful.
Re:Where oh where? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Where oh where? (Score:3, Interesting)
That would certainly make me nervous, however the camel spiders I met during my time in 'the Iraq' nearly made me scream. I know they're not spiders per se...but they're pretty much what you would get if a spider had sex with a nightmare.
Holy [nationalgeographic.com] fucking [camelspiders.net] shit [camelspiders.net].
And here I thought the reason I never joined the military was my fear of being shot or exploded. Little did I know there was a much better reason my subconscious kept me far away!