Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio, Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Voge obamb here. Some animals have a
Speaker 1: reputation that's hard to shake. Take the camel spider. Many
Speaker 1: Americans are familiar with them, based on photos that came
Speaker 1: out of the Iraq War in the early two thousand's,
Speaker 1: a giant desert spider with a leg span somewhere between
Speaker 1: the size of a pack of cigarettes and a full
Speaker 1: grown man's calf, though the latter one turned out to
Speaker 1: be a trick of forced perspective. There were rumors they
Speaker 1: ran through the desert, screaming and jumping on camels, that
Speaker 1: they would hide an ambush and sleeping bags ready to
Speaker 1: inject you with venom. But u S military personnel are
Speaker 1: not the first to tell stories about the camel spider.
Speaker 1: In South Africa, they're sometimes called beard trimmers because some
Speaker 1: people believe that if you sleep on the ground, camel
Speaker 1: spiders will come trim your hair in your sleep and
Speaker 1: use it to line their nests. In parts of North Africa.
Speaker 1: In the Middle East, legend has it that they chew
Speaker 1: at the bellies of camels until their intestines fall out
Speaker 1: so they can eat them, or that they can lay
Speaker 1: their eggs in their stomachs. None of this is true,
Speaker 1: of course, for starters. Camel spiders are not spiders at all,
Speaker 1: but sol a few kids. These arachnids live on every
Speaker 1: continent except Antarctica and Australia, and all one thousand, one
Speaker 1: fifty species have eight legs and two body sections like spiders, scorpions, ticks,
Speaker 1: and mites, but they're different enough to belong to their
Speaker 1: own order. Secondly, they are aggressive, but they're also non venomous,
Speaker 1: and the large jaws of most species can't even break
Speaker 1: through human skin, much less at camel's belly. The largest
Speaker 1: camel spider has a leg span of around six to
Speaker 1: eight inches that's fifteen to twenty centimeters, which is big
Speaker 1: for a spider, but it's not horror movie territory, and
Speaker 1: they seem to take little to no observable interest in
Speaker 1: human hair. We spoke with Christie Reddick, founder of The
Speaker 1: Bug Chicks, an educational company that uses arthropods to teach
Speaker 1: young people about social issues like prejudice, racism, educational potential,
Speaker 1: and personal development. She said, the thing about sol a
Speaker 1: few kids is you don't really need to make stuff
Speaker 1: up about them for them to be fascinating. I was
Speaker 1: in Kenya when I first saw one, and I went
Speaker 1: to catch it, and it ran up the side of
Speaker 1: the wall, right up to my eye height. It reared
Speaker 1: back and rubbed its jaws together to stridulate. Some people
Speaker 1: say they scream, but it's more of a hissing, rasping noise.
Speaker 1: It had such an attitude I just fell in love.
Speaker 1: It would seem difficult to fall in love with an
Speaker 1: interractnet with the stage presence of a pro wrestler and
Speaker 1: the body of an animal whose parts were scavenged from
Speaker 1: the invertebrate salvage yard. But such is the allure of
Speaker 1: the camel spider. Reddick said, if you do a rapid
Speaker 1: count of what appears to be legs, they look like
Speaker 1: they have ten legs, but their first pair are actually
Speaker 1: mouth parts called pedipalps. I kind of think of them
Speaker 1: as mouth hands. They help facilitate bringing prey into their
Speaker 1: big jaws when they run. They use them kind of
Speaker 1: like antenna or long legs in the front. They also
Speaker 1: have mouth claws called chellisare which are used for a
Speaker 1: dizzying variety of purposes, one of which seems to be
Speaker 1: transferring packets of sperm from male to female camel spiders.
Speaker 1: Most solifukids are nocturnal, extremely territorial, and top predators in
Speaker 1: arid eco systems. They eat other predators in the same
Speaker 1: size range as them, or a bit larger. They even
Speaker 1: eat each other. They don't have venom. It's unnecessary because
Speaker 1: their jaws are so powerful. They can manipulate their food
Speaker 1: through their mouths by sawing their prey back and forth
Speaker 1: like an old timey cartoon character eating a cob of corn.
Speaker 1: Sol a few kids are also wildly fast, able to
Speaker 1: reach speeds of about ten miles per hour that's sixteen
Speaker 1: kilometers per hour, and seem to be able to run
Speaker 1: for as long as you care to chase them. But
Speaker 1: with that comes a metabolism that requires nearly constant fueling,
Speaker 1: so they eat a lot. But that doesn't necessarily explain
Speaker 1: one selifugid behavior, mass ant assassinations. For some reason, camel
Speaker 1: spiders will sometimes go after an ant's nest, just tearing
Speaker 1: ants in half left and right until they're surrounded by
Speaker 1: an enormous heap of rended ant carcasses. Some scientists think
Speaker 1: maybe they're killing the ants to save them as a
Speaker 1: snack for later. But Reddick published a paper in about
Speaker 1: the diet of selifu kids, and she and her co
Speaker 1: author found that they don't cularly like eating ants. Another
Speaker 1: explanation for this behavior could be that they're trying to
Speaker 1: clear out the ant nest in order to find a
Speaker 1: nice place to escape the desert sun. But it's really
Speaker 1: a mystery as to why they do this. Arettick pointed
Speaker 1: out that another possibility, though, is that camel spiders attack
Speaker 1: ant nests to get at the larva and pupa inside.
Speaker 1: She explained, these don't bite and are super soft, squishy,
Speaker 1: little protein and fat bombs. But you can add the
Speaker 1: mass murder of ants to the long list of things
Speaker 1: scientists don't understand about. Solid few kids. But remember, even
Speaker 1: though they act wild, they can't hurt you, Eretick said,
Speaker 1: just because something is a predator or even defensive or aggressive,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make it a bad or mean animal. Sol
Speaker 1: a few kids have so much great attitude and they're
Speaker 1: soft and fuzzy. When you pet one, it's like petting
Speaker 1: a little mouse, a little demon mouse. Today's episode was
Speaker 1: written by Jesselyn Shields and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain
Speaker 1: Stuff is a production of I heart Radio's House off Works.
Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other creepy Crawley topics,
Speaker 1: visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com. And
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