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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stop

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Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick

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Speaker 1: and Robert. You have seen the horror movies of the

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, I know you've delve deep into I've seen

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Speaker 1: a lot of them, and the ones I haven't seen,

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Speaker 1: I've I've watched the trailers. I mean, sometimes that's the

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Speaker 1: best way to enjoy a film. They put all the

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Speaker 1: best stuff in the trailers. But what was big then?

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Speaker 1: It was atomic age panic, right, Yeah, giant animals exactly right.

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Speaker 1: So there's nuclear testing, there's atomic radiation, and suddenly animals

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Speaker 1: become very big. And one of the animals they would

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Speaker 1: make very big, you know quite well, was the spider.

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Speaker 1: That's right. I mean with all of them, all you

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Speaker 1: need is a little camera magic, and you can make

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Speaker 1: anything look big. You didn't have to worry about having

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Speaker 1: some sort of fancy stop motion creature. You didn't have

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Speaker 1: to worry certainly with c g I or costumes. You're

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Speaker 1: just an actual spider. Yeah, film a tarantula and then

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Speaker 1: put it in the background, you know, superimposed with the

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Speaker 1: different sizes. Yeah, But so there's a sequence and pretty

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Speaker 1: much all these movies. I probably haven't seen them all,

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Speaker 1: but I've seen some of them where the spider lives

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Speaker 1: in a cave or something like that, and the people

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Speaker 1: are wandering near the cave and then somebody falls into

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Speaker 1: its web and the web is a hammock. It's just

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Speaker 1: a hann't it. It's a piece of like it's white

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Speaker 1: rope netting. Uh. And people get stuck to the hammock

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Speaker 1: and then the spiders coming. Sometimes they escape, sometimes it

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Speaker 1: eats them. It's generally a bella legostie pretends to wrestle

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Speaker 1: a rubber octopus level of awkward because you're like struggling

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Speaker 1: the hammock. Just just get up and get out of it.

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Speaker 1: You're clearly not stuck, right. But there's a part we

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Speaker 1: never see right now. Often the person gets away. If

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Speaker 1: the person gets eaten by the giant spider, we just

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Speaker 1: sort of see like a ah, and then the spiders approaching.

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Speaker 1: The music swells in. That's it. What happens after that cutaway? Well,

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Speaker 1: sometimes we find their bones later, sometimes their their their

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Speaker 1: cocoon body shows up later. But I can't think of

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Speaker 1: a film off hand that had a prolonged spider cut

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Speaker 1: death by spider death scene. I guess they really didn't

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Speaker 1: go for the intense, gross outgore scenes like that in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties. But even if they did, what would

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Speaker 1: they be showing what actually happens when a spider eats

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Speaker 1: something at that scale? And that's going to be the

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Speaker 1: topic of today's conversation. So we're gonna imagine a nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifties Roger Corman atomic radiation movie, but we're gonna take

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Speaker 1: it to the next level and go beyond that cut away.

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Speaker 1: The movie is I was eaten by a giant spider.

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Speaker 1: But I guess first I should ask, for real, what's

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Speaker 1: your favorite giant spider movie? Oh? I mean, anytime a

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Speaker 1: giant spider turns up mir in for a good time.

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Speaker 1: I tend to lean more towards the stop motion ones.

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Speaker 1: Let's see, The Giant Spider Invasion is a lot of fun.

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Speaker 1: Never seen that this one? Who was an MST? Really yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was. It's really good. They're really good. It was

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Speaker 1: a really great MST episode. They they used actual spiders,

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Speaker 1: as I recall, and there's a there's this like really

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Speaker 1: gross kind of hillbilly character in it, and giant spiders

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Speaker 1: and somebody drives a car into a giant spider. How

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Speaker 1: big are the giant spiders? They are like construction equipment

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Speaker 1: big like, so they're ridiculous in terms of size. Um.

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Speaker 1: You know, another one I remember from Mystery Science Theater

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Speaker 1: three thousand is the I think Horrors of Spider Island.

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Speaker 1: That's a good one. That one. That one's one that

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Speaker 1: was like it was black and white. It's just a

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Speaker 1: real sleezy feel to it because it's like a bunch

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Speaker 1: of babes and like one very greased up muscleman that

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Speaker 1: are trapped in the island. He turned. It's it's like

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Speaker 1: a it's like a dude who has a bunch of

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Speaker 1: ladies who work on some nightclub act and they crash

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Speaker 1: on a spider island. I haven't seen that one, fairly contrived.

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Speaker 1: Come on, I haven't seen that one in years, but

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Speaker 1: I do remember, like it's a sweaty looking movie, and

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Speaker 1: I remember watching it on VHS and a very sweaty

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Speaker 1: college dorm. So it's just like I'm just sitting there

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Speaker 1: sweating at night, get my night sweats on, and here's

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Speaker 1: this just sweaty, weird, oppressive movie. Now, of course, another

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Speaker 1: big point that I'm sure a lot of you listening

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Speaker 1: right now are screaming. Is she labbed from Lord of

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Speaker 1: the Rings. I remember that from the movies. But can

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Speaker 1: I can I admit a little secret good? I've never

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Speaker 1: actually read the Lord of the Rings books in full.

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Speaker 1: I probably like the only nerd around here who would

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Speaker 1: admit that and expect to get out alive. Well, they're good?

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Speaker 1: Is that a call? I? I can't read them again until,

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Speaker 1: you know, maybe I'll read them with my son or something.

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Speaker 1: But I kept telling myself, I'll read them again when

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Speaker 1: I get the film adaptation is kind of out of

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Speaker 1: my head because I don't want to read them again

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Speaker 1: and have those visuals and informant, though the visuals were

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Speaker 1: often very good. In fact, I would say that the

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Speaker 1: giant spider she loved in the first Lord of the

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Speaker 1: Ring film, I think the second, the third one. The

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Speaker 1: third one I can't remember because I can't remember where

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Speaker 1: that where she shows up in the she shows us

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Speaker 1: versus the movies in the third movie when the Hobbits

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Speaker 1: are here, we can okay, So the Hobbits are in

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Speaker 1: more door, the evil land where you know they're towards

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Speaker 1: the end of their journey, but a big spider attacks. Okay,

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Speaker 1: I guess it was the third movie. It's the movie

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Speaker 1: is kind of blurred together for me, but but I

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Speaker 1: thought that that scene was fabulous. Like the spider the

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Speaker 1: computer animated is just perfect. Yeah, it's like it's basically

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Speaker 1: a huge tarantula. We also, though in Lord of the Rings,

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Speaker 1: never see exactly what would happen if the spider began

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Speaker 1: to feed. We see it bite somebody and cocoon them,

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Speaker 1: but it never starts to eat anybody. I have a

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Speaker 1: vague memory that the cinematic version of Sheilab also had

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Speaker 1: confusing anatomy, but there were there were aspects about it,

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Speaker 1: and certainly it's perfectly fine for a monster spider from

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Speaker 1: a fantasy uh product to have monstrous features that don't

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Speaker 1: line up with with actual real world spider biology. Like

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Speaker 1: I think she had a stinger or something. Maybe there

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Speaker 1: was some positor acually, I'm not sure what. Yeah, stinger

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Speaker 1: where like the silk spin orrets should have been. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I remember she kind of like uh pegged Sam with

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Speaker 1: it at and that was kind of strange. But yeah, okay,

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Speaker 1: here's another one that I remember but not very well.

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Speaker 1: Doesn't doesn't Tim Curry turn into a spider at the

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Speaker 1: end of the movie? It? Yes, the uh, the the

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Speaker 1: nine TV miniseries. Uh, if you're like me, you probably

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Speaker 1: have fun and disturbing memories of this. Uh, this is

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Speaker 1: a book I read, probably too early, and then that

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Speaker 1: film came out, And of course Tim Curry is perfect

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Speaker 1: as Pennywise, the dancey clown and traumatized the whole generation. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: as we've said on this show before, any movie that

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Speaker 1: Tim Curry's in, he's the best part. Try to think

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Speaker 1: of a counter example. You can't. Yeah, he was great

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Speaker 1: and and particularly he was great in the first half

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Speaker 1: of that mini series, which was mostly the kid's stuff,

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Speaker 1: and that was the most effective part of that mini series.

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Speaker 1: I think the second part not as strong, and it

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Speaker 1: did include a big showdown with with it in a

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Speaker 1: giant alien spider form. Actually just looked it up on

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Speaker 1: YouTube and watched it before we came in here, and uh,

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Speaker 1: it's it's an impressive looking spider. It looks like a

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Speaker 1: large animatronic kind of spider. So I don't know if

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Speaker 1: it's really terrifying, but it is kind of a neat design. Okay,

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Speaker 1: definitely come out of a drain or something. They go

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Speaker 1: into a cave and then it has like it it shines,

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Speaker 1: it's dead lights through its u Torso I should I

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Speaker 1: should do some sort of like a monster the wheat

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Speaker 1: breakdown of it on the blog because it's an interesting

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Speaker 1: looking credit, but probably not another non scientifically perfect spider. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: even less so. And you know it's a it's a creature.

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Speaker 1: It's like out from the Toto's Darkness or whatever, so

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Speaker 1: you know it's it can get away with being completely alien.

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Speaker 1: But there are plenty of other cinematic giant spiders that

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Speaker 1: are look more like spiders, behave more like spiders. I

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Speaker 1: instantly think of Krul. Of course, there's a fabulous sequence

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Speaker 1: in there with a spider like she's like a spider queen,

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Speaker 1: and they're giant spiders all along the web and there's

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Speaker 1: a lot of the adventuring party has to make their

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Speaker 1: way across it gets stuck on a hammock? Is it

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Speaker 1: basically a hammock? And Krall I think think that I

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Speaker 1: want to remember it being a little more believable than

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Speaker 1: that because so many of the effects and Kral are

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Speaker 1: pretty top notch, but but I don't specifically remember. I

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Speaker 1: think it was a stop motion spider though I see

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Speaker 1: you have a note here Robert about an ewalk adventure. Yes, so, um,

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Speaker 1: we have a lot of Star Wars fans in the office. Um,

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Speaker 1: or at least we have Holly, and Holly is enough

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Speaker 1: of a Star Wars fan to like represent multiple people.

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Speaker 1: I think she's like she is. She's a true mendous

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Speaker 1: Star Wars fan, and I know that she has a

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Speaker 1: warm spound her heart for these as well. Some people

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Speaker 1: don't care for him. But there were a couple of

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Speaker 1: live action Ewok made for TV films that came out.

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Speaker 1: The first one was Urs Caravan of Courage and Ewok Adventure,

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Speaker 1: and that one features a giant some giant spiders on

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Speaker 1: a web. It's been a long time since I've seen

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Speaker 1: that one, and I remember it being good but also

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Speaker 1: kind of traumatic because there's a lot of like people

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Speaker 1: losing their family members in it. Um. But then there's

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Speaker 1: also a follow up. I think it's the Battle for Indoor,

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Speaker 1: and that one's that I have a lot of fun

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Speaker 1: memories of that one. Would watch that one over and

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Speaker 1: over again VHS because it has essentially orcs in it.

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Speaker 1: It has an evil, uh seductive like raven queen who

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Speaker 1: can turn herself into a raven with a magic ring.

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Speaker 1: There's a there's a crash spaceship and it's pilot is

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Speaker 1: Wilford Brimley, who so it's a it's a true that

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Speaker 1: that's tremendous film too, but only the first one has

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Speaker 1: a giant spider and finally a more recent giant spider.

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Speaker 1: Not two giants, but giant enough to be disturbing. If

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Speaker 1: anyone out there is currently watching the latest season of

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Speaker 1: Black Mirror on Netflix, the second episode, I believe is

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Speaker 1: is wonderful horror Halloween viewing, and does include a scene

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Speaker 1: with a monstrous spider, But I say, I'm gonna have

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Speaker 1: to check that out this weekend. Anyway, I wanted to

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Speaker 1: move on to the next thing, which is that today

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Speaker 1: we are going to be talking about people getting eaten

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Speaker 1: by giant spiders. But uh, I want to frame this

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Speaker 1: with a reminder that it is simply wrong in my

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Speaker 1: point of view to contribute to global spider panic, and

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Speaker 1: I will not allow us to contribute to global spider panic,

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Speaker 1: even if only by accident. Spiders are not your enemy.

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Speaker 1: If you're a human and the spider is a normal

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Speaker 1: sized spider, that's not you know, at least ten times

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Speaker 1: bigger than the biggest spider could ever get. Spiders are

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Speaker 1: are not something to worry about. They generally pose no

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Speaker 1: threat to humans, with the small exceptions of a few

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Speaker 1: species that even those are not something you should really

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Speaker 1: worry about. There's no good reason you need to go

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Speaker 1: around squashing spiders, and in fact, you would probably find

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Speaker 1: a world without spiders utterly intolerable. They make it okay

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Speaker 1: for us to live on this planet. Now, now, Joe,

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Speaker 1: I know some people are thinking right now and maybe

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Speaker 1: even writing the email. They're gonna say, Hey, what about

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Speaker 1: the black woodow spiders and the brown reclusives that live

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Speaker 1: in my shed? Should I not kill those on site?

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Speaker 1: Should I allow those? Why do you need to kill them?

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean a lot of people would

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Speaker 1: argue that is saying, I this is my shed, this

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Speaker 1: is where I go to get my tools. I don't

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Speaker 1: want to grab a hoe and then have a black

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Speaker 1: woo spider stingy. Well, I don't know're not sting me

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Speaker 1: rather but bite me? Sting still with his little stick

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Speaker 1: to my brain. I mean, I guess I can't argue

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Speaker 1: with what you do in your shed, but but I

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Speaker 1: I don't. We do not want to push an anti

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Speaker 1: spider message here. Spy piers, spiders perform essential services for

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Speaker 1: human beings and really all the other creatures on Earth.

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Speaker 1: I would say one of the primary things is insectivorous services.

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Speaker 1: So spiders are primary predators that prey on insects. Imagine

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Speaker 1: a world in which the primary control on insect populations

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Speaker 1: is gone. You know, we've just squashed them all because

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Speaker 1: we didn't like the way they looked, or we were

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Speaker 1: afraid of them, or something like that. I found one

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Speaker 1: article that interviewed the arachnologist Norman I. Platinik, who works

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Speaker 1: at the American Museum of Natural History in New York,

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Speaker 1: which is probably the coolest place I went this year.

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Speaker 1: Um and Platinum speculates that if spiders were to disappear

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Speaker 1: from the Earth, it's likely that human beings would face famine.

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Speaker 1: He says, without spiders, all of our crops would be

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Speaker 1: consumed by these pests, the pests that are primarily controlled

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Speaker 1: by spider predation. So it's hard to know for sure

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Speaker 1: what would happen in these weird hypothetical scenarios with ecology,

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Speaker 1: but I think that's a pretty safe bet to uh.

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Speaker 1: And you know, when it comes back to come back

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Speaker 1: to black widows for instance, sure you don't want to

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Speaker 1: be they become bitten by one, but that black widow

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Speaker 1: is there because their insects to eat, so she's doing

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Speaker 1: a service. And if you're concerned about their being an

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Speaker 1: imbalance here with too many black widows around, then I

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Speaker 1: think one possible solution would be just don't knock down

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Speaker 1: those dirt daver wasp nests because they in turn prey

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Speaker 1: on the spiders are that bring them back to their

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Speaker 1: nests anyway for their their brood to emerge from and consume.

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Speaker 1: So allow the web of life to work itself exactly exactly,

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Speaker 1: and the wasp nous of life to work it I

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Speaker 1: must add too, as in accordance with the research that

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Speaker 1: I that I was working on for this episode, even

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Speaker 1: most black widow spider bites today do not result in death. Like,

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Speaker 1: you don't want to be bitten by a black widow,

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Speaker 1: but if you get if you get a black widow bite,

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Speaker 1: seek medical attention, you will probably be all right. I

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Speaker 1: think I read that since nineteen seventy it's been like

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Speaker 1: one scent or less of people bitten by black widows

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Speaker 1: end up dying. And I think I've also read that

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Speaker 1: every night the average person consumes twenty seven black widow

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Speaker 1: spiders just in the course of sleeping. The crawl right

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Speaker 1: in there. That is a true fact. That's where we

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Speaker 1: get essential vitamins and minerals. All right, So, what are

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Speaker 1: some other reasons that we should keep the old arachnets around? Well,

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Speaker 1: beyond the fact that animals deserve to live for their

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Speaker 1: own sake, they are useful to us for plenty of

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Speaker 1: other reasons. Spiders have a lot of biommetic technological uses

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Speaker 1: that people are learning more and more about all the time.

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Speaker 1: One of the things would be their silk, for example. Yeah, indeed,

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Speaker 1: we we have to have an older episode that they

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Speaker 1: just rolls through all the various ways and reasons that

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Speaker 1: we're trying to steal the secret of the silk. And really,

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Speaker 1: I mean it goes back to ancient mythology to um,

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Speaker 1: was it Arachney who lost the bet? A weaving bet

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Speaker 1: with the gods or looming? I guess we're using a loom,

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Speaker 1: but at any rate, Uh, Yeah, the silk of the

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Speaker 1: spider is an amazing material, a true meta material. Um.

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Speaker 1: They have special glands that secrete silk proteins dissolved in

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Speaker 1: a water based solution, and the spider pushes the liquid

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Speaker 1: solution through long ducts. These ducts leaved him lead to

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Speaker 1: microscopic spigots on the spiders spinnerets, spigots. Don't you wish

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Speaker 1: you had spigots and and uh and generally there are

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Speaker 1: two or three spinner at pairs located at the rear

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Speaker 1: of the abdomen. Furthermore, each spigot has a valve that

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Speaker 1: controls the thickness and speed of the excruted material. So

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Speaker 1: the idea here is that when we're talking about the

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Speaker 1: silk of a spider, it's not just that they have

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Speaker 1: a little spool of thread in there, or that it's

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Speaker 1: just you know, a silly string type situation. There is

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Speaker 1: a manipulation of these of these proteins and the there's

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Speaker 1: a an actual weaving that takes place. They're forming a

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Speaker 1: material and they act The exact form of the material

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Speaker 1: will vary depending on what they're using the silk for.

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Speaker 1: I mean, even with with one spider individual, they may

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Speaker 1: may be producing various versions of the product depending on

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Speaker 1: what they needed for. So as the biggts pulled silk

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Speaker 1: molecules or spidrons out of the duct out of the

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Speaker 1: ducts and extrude them into the air, the molecules are

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Speaker 1: stretched out and linked together and they form these long strands,

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Speaker 1: and the the spinnerets wind these strands together to form the

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Speaker 1: sturdy silk fiber okay um. Most spiders have multiple silk

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Speaker 1: glands which secrete different types of silk material optimized for

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Speaker 1: those different purposes. So by winding different silk varieties than

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Speaker 1: together in varying proportions, spiders can form a wide range

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Speaker 1: of fiber materials, and they can also vary fiber consistency

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Speaker 1: by adjusting the biggests to form smaller or larger strands.

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Speaker 1: So they're they're true marvels. I mean, it's not just

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Speaker 1: that the material is great, but just their manipulation of

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Speaker 1: it and their creation of it like they are. There's

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Speaker 1: just a level of of of engineering and production going

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Speaker 1: on with with the spider that you know, most people

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Speaker 1: take completely for granted. And of course the silk is

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Speaker 1: very interesting. As I mentioned a mintigo to engineers for

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Speaker 1: like material science purposes to study this to see, you know,

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Speaker 1: can we make something like this at a larger scale

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Speaker 1: that would be useful in building our structures and technology. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because it's it's like a perfect material. It's it's strong,

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Speaker 1: but it's flexible. Um. It's organic in nature, so you

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Speaker 1: can use it in various bio medical properties. You can

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Speaker 1: use it. There are a lot of potential applications and

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Speaker 1: artificial limbs, artificial tissues, artificial tissues, scaffolding. UM. Have also

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Speaker 1: read possible for parachuting, like really anywhere you could use

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Speaker 1: a really remarkable, strong but flexible material. Uh, spider silk

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Speaker 1: has a potential place and spider evolution perfected it and

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Speaker 1: we just were biomemetics are just catching up with it,

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Speaker 1: you know. I have also read many stories over the

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Speaker 1: years about using spider venom for medical purposes. One story

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Speaker 1: in particular I remember was about using it to treat

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Speaker 1: erectile dysfunction. Is that correct? This is correct? Um? And

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Speaker 1: And if anyone's like, oh, spider venom, I mean really,

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Speaker 1: when you look at at medicines, the vast spectrum of

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Speaker 1: medicines that we we we take from the natural world

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Speaker 1: in a large part we're making use of poisons and venoms,

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Speaker 1: you know, just figuring out what does this poison or

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Speaker 1: venom do, and how can we interact with it at

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Speaker 1: the appropriate dosage, of the appropriate level, How can we

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Speaker 1: exploit those properties for our benefit. So in this case,

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Speaker 1: let's talk to a second about erectile dysfunction. Existing erectile

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Speaker 1: dysfunction drugs manipulate valves controlling blood flow into the penis,

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Speaker 1: but they don't always work. In fact, they don't work

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Speaker 1: on one out of every three men who require any

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Speaker 1: D drug. So we send in the spider. Specifically, we

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Speaker 1: spend in the Brazilian wandering spider, also known as the

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Speaker 1: banana spider. UH. They however, rarely crawl on bananas, which

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Speaker 1: you know that will make sense to just a second here.

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Speaker 1: So these are five inch or thirteen centimeter arachnids. They

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Speaker 1: carry a venom that can cause pain, swelling, increased heart rate,

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Speaker 1: and also preappism, which is a condition that affects those

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Speaker 1: blood flow valves that already talked about. UH, And this

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Speaker 1: results in an erection that can last for more than

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Speaker 1: four hours, is usually painful, and may happen without sexual arousal.

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Speaker 1: So we're talking about blood potentially coagulating and clotting inside

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Speaker 1: of the erection. That's how dire situation is. So obviously

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Speaker 1: that's nothing that one wants for oneself, but it's a

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Speaker 1: great example. Here's the venom. We see that it's interacting

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Speaker 1: with this area. Uh, that is that is vital for

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Speaker 1: erectile drug creation. Like, there's a lot of money to

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Speaker 1: be made in manipulating those valves, and so a lot

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Speaker 1: of research has already gotten into this. The researchers work

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Speaker 1: to identify the natural derived chemicals in the venom that

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Speaker 1: might be taken advantage up and so far they found

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Speaker 1: that p n t X two six is the active

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Speaker 1: compound in the wandering spider venom, and it's essentially a

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Speaker 1: biological version of viagra. It even appears to have fewer

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Speaker 1: side effects than existing E D drugs. Uh. However, to

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Speaker 1: conduct a proper trial, you have they have to be

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Speaker 1: able to replicate the stuff in large enough quantities. And

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Speaker 1: this is a situation we get into with both spider

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Speaker 1: venom and with spider silk. Spiders are very difficult to farm. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I remember reading a story years ago about people who

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Speaker 1: were weaving a garment out of spider silk. They were

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Speaker 1: taking these uh or or weaving spiders at the Madagascar

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Speaker 1: or somewhere uh and harvesting their silk in order to

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Speaker 1: weave this dress. That that sounds like a crazy project

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Speaker 1: to me. I'm not sure if that's well advised, but anyway,

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Speaker 1: I think they had to keep capturing and then releasing

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Speaker 1: the spiders over and over uh in order to harvest

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Speaker 1: their silk, because you can't just keep them, right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's not like a silk warrant worm, where where we

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Speaker 1: have a silk producing uh insect that we have that

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Speaker 1: we have domesticated and warped over time into just a

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Speaker 1: you know, pure silk creating organism. But with spiders, most

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Speaker 1: of them are territorial carnivores. They're highly aggressive against anything,

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Speaker 1: especially their own kind. There are social spiders that exist,

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Speaker 1: and these are actually these are actually pretty interesting. I

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Speaker 1: hadn't done a lot of reading about them before that.

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Speaker 1: They're not quite use social in the manner of bees

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Speaker 1: or ants, not team players, right, they don't have casts

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Speaker 1: or anything. They're no work or spiders, etcetera. But they

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Speaker 1: do cooperate in the rearing of young and the acquisition

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Speaker 1: of food. UH. That that being said, most of the

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Speaker 1: spiders that people seem to be looking at to potentially

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Speaker 1: farm are not social spiders. Uh So anyway, either way

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Speaker 1: you look, you shake it. Though, way too much work

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Speaker 1: would go into any attempt to raise spiders uh in

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Speaker 1: little individual enclosures, and you would still get only a

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Speaker 1: limited amount of spider venom or spider or spider silk

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Speaker 1: out of the the the effort. So it sounds like

401
00:22:09,200 --> 00:22:12,000
Speaker 1: you'd want to find another way to produce this stuff, right,

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Speaker 1: You want genetically modified spider silk or spider venom, And

403
00:22:16,280 --> 00:22:18,760
Speaker 1: in fact, that's what's led to, for instance, the creation

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Speaker 1: of the Blessed Goats spider hybrid, which we've covered on

405
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Speaker 1: this show before. I believe where you let's make a

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Speaker 1: let's let's tinker with the genetics, let's create a goat

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Speaker 1: that essentially milks uh spider silk. That's the wonders of

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Speaker 1: our modern age. So that is where researchers have been

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Speaker 1: looking with with the spider venom of our banana spider.

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Speaker 1: In two thousand fourteen, researchers successfully created a recombin vaculo

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Speaker 1: virus with the p n t X two six gene

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Speaker 1: and then they use this to infect a culture of

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Speaker 1: caterpillar cells, which produced the spider toxin. However, human trials

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Speaker 1: are still years away. But this would be the shape

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Speaker 1: of futuristic corrections, just just letting in shaped. Yeah, well

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Speaker 1: not spider shaped. Uh though, I get one can't help.

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Speaker 1: But you know that you have your sort of sci

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Speaker 1: fi horror lights go off when you start hearing about

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Speaker 1: about erect out as function drugs that are made from

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Speaker 1: from spider venom um. But I think it'll be I

421
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Speaker 1: think it'll be fine. Yeah, I've seen also research about

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Speaker 1: using spider venom in uh in anti pain medication, essentially

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Speaker 1: in analgesix. So there was a study I found in

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Speaker 1: the British Journal of Pharmacology which indicated that quote spider

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Speaker 1: venoms are a rich natural source of h in A

426
00:23:38,480 --> 00:23:42,280
Speaker 1: V one point seven inhibitors that might be useful leads

427
00:23:42,320 --> 00:23:46,000
Speaker 1: for the development of novel analg six. So the creation

428
00:23:46,080 --> 00:23:49,679
Speaker 1: of new pain killers out of naturally existing proteins and

429
00:23:49,720 --> 00:23:52,520
Speaker 1: stuff that are found in spider venoms. All right, So

430
00:23:52,680 --> 00:23:56,040
Speaker 1: I guess the take home here is that spiders are

431
00:23:56,880 --> 00:24:00,440
Speaker 1: high level produced. There. Their high level is the earns,

432
00:24:00,480 --> 00:24:04,440
Speaker 1: their high level weavers um. They have a mastery here

433
00:24:04,440 --> 00:24:08,760
Speaker 1: in these crafts that humans are severely lack. All we

434
00:24:08,800 --> 00:24:10,600
Speaker 1: can do is try and steal their secrets. And we're

435
00:24:10,600 --> 00:24:13,600
Speaker 1: still trying to steal their secrets. So we certainly should

436
00:24:13,600 --> 00:24:16,280
Speaker 1: not wipe them out because there's still so much to

437
00:24:16,400 --> 00:24:19,080
Speaker 1: learn from them, of course, and that that's only the

438
00:24:19,119 --> 00:24:22,880
Speaker 1: mercenary appeal to your self interest and in gaining new technologies.

439
00:24:22,920 --> 00:24:25,679
Speaker 1: I want to say for the record again, spiders deserve

440
00:24:25,800 --> 00:24:27,800
Speaker 1: to be here on this earth just like you do.

441
00:24:29,960 --> 00:24:33,080
Speaker 1: But okay, so back to the giant spider. I was

442
00:24:33,119 --> 00:24:40,639
Speaker 1: eaten by a giant spider. Well, what does the word

443
00:24:40,760 --> 00:24:43,600
Speaker 1: giant mean? There? I guess we should determine what we

444
00:24:43,720 --> 00:24:47,000
Speaker 1: have in mind. Now. We could start by looking at

445
00:24:47,080 --> 00:24:49,480
Speaker 1: what are the biggest spiders occurring in nature? I know

446
00:24:49,560 --> 00:24:51,800
Speaker 1: some of you at home are already trembling and hearing

447
00:24:51,840 --> 00:24:54,480
Speaker 1: about this news, but uh, there are a couple of

448
00:24:54,480 --> 00:24:57,359
Speaker 1: ways you could measure this right. One way would be

449
00:24:57,440 --> 00:25:00,959
Speaker 1: by mass. What is the heaviest spider ocurring in nature?

450
00:25:01,240 --> 00:25:04,120
Speaker 1: And I think the answer on that is is pretty solid.

451
00:25:04,440 --> 00:25:07,199
Speaker 1: There there is a pretty much universal agreement that the

452
00:25:07,240 --> 00:25:11,280
Speaker 1: answer is the theraphos of Blondie, commonly known as the

453
00:25:11,320 --> 00:25:14,399
Speaker 1: goliath bird eater. That they might be a bit of

454
00:25:14,440 --> 00:25:17,680
Speaker 1: a misnomer because it doesn't seem like they primarily prey

455
00:25:17,720 --> 00:25:19,919
Speaker 1: on birds. I think this comes from some you know,

456
00:25:20,040 --> 00:25:24,800
Speaker 1: nineteenth century illustrations and stuff like that. But uh, like

457
00:25:24,840 --> 00:25:27,439
Speaker 1: I said, there's no evidence that they regularly eat birds,

458
00:25:27,520 --> 00:25:30,520
Speaker 1: but they might on occasion. The spider can weigh about

459
00:25:30,720 --> 00:25:36,199
Speaker 1: six ounces or a hundred and seventy grams. That's heavy.

460
00:25:36,240 --> 00:25:39,320
Speaker 1: That is the weight of more than three standard sized

461
00:25:39,359 --> 00:25:44,680
Speaker 1: Snickers bars or exactly five fun sized Snickers bars. Hold

462
00:25:44,800 --> 00:25:48,639
Speaker 1: five fun sized Snickers bars in your hand. That's how

463
00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:52,520
Speaker 1: much the spider can weigh. I'm glad we're not eating

464
00:25:52,520 --> 00:25:56,280
Speaker 1: those in our sleep. I've heard I've heard stories that

465
00:25:56,359 --> 00:25:59,440
Speaker 1: you can hear these things walking. They'll walk you their

466
00:25:59,520 --> 00:26:02,959
Speaker 1: footfall balls makes sounds. Uh. Now, of course, they mostly

467
00:26:02,960 --> 00:26:05,879
Speaker 1: prey on other arthropods, but they have been known to

468
00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:10,359
Speaker 1: eat small vertebrate animals every now and then. But there's

469
00:26:10,400 --> 00:26:13,560
Speaker 1: another way you could measure the largest spider, and that

470
00:26:13,600 --> 00:26:16,240
Speaker 1: would be by leg span. Right, what's the biggest what's

471
00:26:16,280 --> 00:26:20,440
Speaker 1: the biggest spider in circumference sort of looking down from above, Well,

472
00:26:20,480 --> 00:26:23,679
Speaker 1: it appears to be the giant huntsman spider with legspan

473
00:26:23,720 --> 00:26:27,399
Speaker 1: of up to twelve inches or thirty centimeters, often described

474
00:26:27,520 --> 00:26:30,240
Speaker 1: as being quote the size of a dinner plate that

475
00:26:30,240 --> 00:26:32,240
Speaker 1: shows up a lot. Yeah, because you know, that's a

476
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:34,399
Speaker 1: wonderful image, the idea of setting down and here's a

477
00:26:34,440 --> 00:26:36,919
Speaker 1: living spider just spread out across your tinner plate. Well

478
00:26:36,960 --> 00:26:39,520
Speaker 1: it also, yeah, it suggests that it's literally on the

479
00:26:39,560 --> 00:26:42,679
Speaker 1: plate in your home. It's replaced your food somehow, or

480
00:26:43,040 --> 00:26:45,320
Speaker 1: the chef has gone mad and decided it is live

481
00:26:45,359 --> 00:26:49,960
Speaker 1: spiders for tenner um. Now, whe where do you find it?

482
00:26:50,040 --> 00:26:53,879
Speaker 1: You find this particular specimen and warm climates around the world, Asia, Australia,

483
00:26:53,960 --> 00:26:57,879
Speaker 1: South America, Africa. They're pretty fast even with their size.

484
00:26:58,119 --> 00:27:00,480
Speaker 1: They live under a loose bark on trip our bark

485
00:27:00,520 --> 00:27:05,400
Speaker 1: of trees and rocks in crevices under foliage. And they're

486
00:27:05,400 --> 00:27:08,080
Speaker 1: actually a rather social spider um, to go back to

487
00:27:08,080 --> 00:27:10,880
Speaker 1: what I mentioned earlier, and dozens of them will sometimes

488
00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:14,159
Speaker 1: sit together on dead trees or stumps, as opposed to

489
00:27:14,320 --> 00:27:18,439
Speaker 1: the sort of typical predatory, loner vibe of a spider

490
00:27:18,440 --> 00:27:20,200
Speaker 1: where it's like, if I see anybody that even looks

491
00:27:20,240 --> 00:27:23,160
Speaker 1: like me, I'm gonna eat them, even if theyre might mate. Well,

492
00:27:23,200 --> 00:27:27,440
Speaker 1: spiders just know not to pass up a good meal. Yeah, okay,

493
00:27:27,840 --> 00:27:30,280
Speaker 1: So so that's about as big as things get in nature.

494
00:27:30,320 --> 00:27:32,840
Speaker 1: And even those are pretty rare exceptions. These are the

495
00:27:32,840 --> 00:27:36,840
Speaker 1: biggest of the biggest. Obviously, that's not going to do it, right,

496
00:27:37,119 --> 00:27:39,760
Speaker 1: These spiders don't really represent a threat to humans even

497
00:27:39,760 --> 00:27:42,879
Speaker 1: though they're the biggest. So how big should our model

498
00:27:43,040 --> 00:27:47,959
Speaker 1: spider be to match the Roger Corman movie proportions? Well,

499
00:27:48,119 --> 00:27:51,200
Speaker 1: then this we get back to some some previous discussions

500
00:27:51,240 --> 00:27:55,480
Speaker 1: we've had about the morphological limits of giant creatures because

501
00:27:55,560 --> 00:27:58,119
Speaker 1: you end up going up against two things, Right, what

502
00:27:58,600 --> 00:28:02,960
Speaker 1: is technically pop stable from like a mad science this,

503
00:28:03,400 --> 00:28:08,399
Speaker 1: you know, raising giant spiders in his basement, versus like,

504
00:28:08,480 --> 00:28:12,399
Speaker 1: what is the largest thing that is sustainable? That the

505
00:28:12,480 --> 00:28:15,840
Speaker 1: largest thing that is effective in the in the battle

506
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:18,960
Speaker 1: for survival, because you know, it needs to work. It's

507
00:28:19,000 --> 00:28:21,240
Speaker 1: like a business, right, if it's it needs to it

508
00:28:21,240 --> 00:28:24,520
Speaker 1: needs to be an effect, have an effective economic flow

509
00:28:24,600 --> 00:28:27,960
Speaker 1: to it, otherwise it's not going to survive. And you know,

510
00:28:28,000 --> 00:28:30,240
Speaker 1: one way to look at it this we always we

511
00:28:30,240 --> 00:28:32,439
Speaker 1: always go in this direction. When he's saying, all right,

512
00:28:32,440 --> 00:28:34,440
Speaker 1: how called large, told this animal be well, how large

513
00:28:34,440 --> 00:28:36,679
Speaker 1: are they now? We've already answered that how large have

514
00:28:36,720 --> 00:28:39,400
Speaker 1: they been in the past. There was a time where

515
00:28:39,400 --> 00:28:42,440
Speaker 1: we thought that the largest spider to ever live was

516
00:28:42,480 --> 00:28:47,440
Speaker 1: a prehistoric um Um mega acne with a body length

517
00:28:47,480 --> 00:28:50,200
Speaker 1: of three nine millimeters or a little over a foot.

518
00:28:50,840 --> 00:28:54,200
Speaker 1: But paleontologist eventually figured out that this was a sea scorpion,

519
00:28:55,240 --> 00:28:58,760
Speaker 1: not a spider. And if you the actual fossil spiders

520
00:28:58,760 --> 00:29:02,200
Speaker 1: that we have are pretty disappointing. They're pretty small. So

521
00:29:02,680 --> 00:29:05,360
Speaker 1: we kind of get into the you know, whale territory

522
00:29:05,400 --> 00:29:07,960
Speaker 1: here where we say, well, actually the largest specimens that

523
00:29:08,000 --> 00:29:12,400
Speaker 1: we know of are what we have today. Yeah, I

524
00:29:12,400 --> 00:29:14,800
Speaker 1: I mean we've talked about this before. We talked about

525
00:29:14,800 --> 00:29:16,760
Speaker 1: this in our Science of Human Height episode. We had

526
00:29:16,760 --> 00:29:20,440
Speaker 1: a brief digression on on how large insects and spiders

527
00:29:20,440 --> 00:29:22,080
Speaker 1: and stuff like that can get. There seemed to be

528
00:29:22,120 --> 00:29:26,560
Speaker 1: a lot of limits on on the size of these creatures,

529
00:29:26,600 --> 00:29:30,320
Speaker 1: on arthropods with exoskeletons, that their their bodies are just

530
00:29:30,440 --> 00:29:33,880
Speaker 1: not designed to keep getting much bigger like nobodies are

531
00:29:33,920 --> 00:29:39,000
Speaker 1: really and it comes that we often talk about King Kong,

532
00:29:39,160 --> 00:29:42,360
Speaker 1: right like King Kong the Guerrilla as just a giant gorilla,

533
00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:45,360
Speaker 1: his legs would snap because those of a die of

534
00:29:45,360 --> 00:29:48,240
Speaker 1: heat exhaust. Yet, yeah, like that form is not is

535
00:29:48,280 --> 00:29:52,720
Speaker 1: not designed or you know, or did not evolve to

536
00:29:52,720 --> 00:29:55,800
Speaker 1: to to work at greater scales. And the same thing

537
00:29:55,840 --> 00:29:58,680
Speaker 1: is true of insects. Like in an insect level, having

538
00:29:58,680 --> 00:30:03,320
Speaker 1: an exoskeleton is fabulous because you gives you protection. It's

539
00:30:03,400 --> 00:30:06,840
Speaker 1: a lightweight um and then you tend to be rather

540
00:30:06,880 --> 00:30:09,800
Speaker 1: strong creatures too. But but they're working at a different

541
00:30:09,840 --> 00:30:12,120
Speaker 1: scale and when you start start scaling that up, you

542
00:30:12,200 --> 00:30:14,800
Speaker 1: run into problems of Okay, is the instance, a giant

543
00:30:14,800 --> 00:30:17,240
Speaker 1: spider the size of a dump truck or something probably

544
00:30:17,280 --> 00:30:19,719
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to move. She shilab would probably not

545
00:30:19,760 --> 00:30:23,960
Speaker 1: be able to move if you just just immediately like magically, Honey,

546
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:26,880
Speaker 1: I shrunk the kids scaled one up to a giant size.

547
00:30:27,960 --> 00:30:29,920
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, all right, you're gonna say,

548
00:30:29,960 --> 00:30:32,760
Speaker 1: well what if it just grew over time, Well, you're

549
00:30:32,760 --> 00:30:36,560
Speaker 1: gonna you have to remember that exoskeletons don't grow. Exoskeletons

550
00:30:36,600 --> 00:30:39,280
Speaker 1: have to be shed. You have to multiple Yeah, so

551
00:30:39,320 --> 00:30:42,440
Speaker 1: it's like soft shell crabs, et cetera. The thing is,

552
00:30:42,480 --> 00:30:47,240
Speaker 1: if you have a sufficiently large invertebrate. Then okay, it

553
00:30:47,320 --> 00:30:51,120
Speaker 1: has this this this giant exoskeleton, and it's hard and

554
00:30:51,160 --> 00:30:53,360
Speaker 1: it's rough, but somehow it's able to live with this thing.

555
00:30:53,440 --> 00:30:57,080
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe it's an immobile giant spider and like villagers

556
00:30:57,120 --> 00:31:00,400
Speaker 1: worship it and bring it, you know, virgins, a drain

557
00:31:00,520 --> 00:31:03,080
Speaker 1: or something. Okay, that's great, But then what happens when

558
00:31:03,160 --> 00:31:07,040
Speaker 1: that giant god spider has to mold. Well, then conceivably

559
00:31:07,160 --> 00:31:09,680
Speaker 1: it might have mold out of its exo skeleton and

560
00:31:09,720 --> 00:31:12,520
Speaker 1: then its body would just collapse and fall apart because

561
00:31:12,520 --> 00:31:14,680
Speaker 1: it didn't have They no longer had an exo skeleton

562
00:31:14,760 --> 00:31:17,760
Speaker 1: supported it's mass. It's just too excessive. Yeah, I mean,

563
00:31:18,000 --> 00:31:22,400
Speaker 1: it's like trying to imagine, um, I don't know. Uh,

564
00:31:22,480 --> 00:31:24,440
Speaker 1: I'm coming up with a horrible exain. Here's here's what

565
00:31:24,960 --> 00:31:27,920
Speaker 1: I tried to think of, like a you know, uh,

566
00:31:27,960 --> 00:31:32,440
Speaker 1: twenty ft wide pumpkin or cantalope or something. It's just

567
00:31:32,760 --> 00:31:35,400
Speaker 1: this is not a sustainable size. I always come back

568
00:31:35,400 --> 00:31:38,600
Speaker 1: to economics. It's like thinking of, all right, what would

569
00:31:38,600 --> 00:31:40,520
Speaker 1: it be I have a great lemonade stand? What have

570
00:31:40,640 --> 00:31:43,760
Speaker 1: I had a lemonade stand that could feed the entire country.

571
00:31:44,240 --> 00:31:46,280
Speaker 1: What if I had a McDonald's restaurant that could that

572
00:31:46,360 --> 00:31:49,720
Speaker 1: could actually feed an entire continent, or in feed they'll

573
00:31:49,720 --> 00:31:52,719
Speaker 1: feed the world. Those are just ridiculous ideas because the

574
00:31:52,760 --> 00:31:55,280
Speaker 1: form can't get people in the door. Yeah, it just

575
00:31:55,360 --> 00:31:58,880
Speaker 1: does not does not work. You're you're talking, You're talking nonsense.

576
00:31:59,000 --> 00:32:02,640
Speaker 1: And it's a more thing like a lemonade stand that feeds,

577
00:32:02,720 --> 00:32:05,640
Speaker 1: that gives lemonade to an entire country, is like a

578
00:32:05,760 --> 00:32:09,080
Speaker 1: spider the size of a building. Right, Okay, so we've

579
00:32:09,160 --> 00:32:13,800
Speaker 1: established why in an environment with our atmospheric pressure and

580
00:32:13,840 --> 00:32:16,120
Speaker 1: Earth gravity and all that kind of stuff, you would

581
00:32:16,240 --> 00:32:18,840
Speaker 1: never see a giant spider. It just wouldn't happen. Now,

582
00:32:18,840 --> 00:32:22,360
Speaker 1: in a weightless environment, genetically modified the giant spiders, I

583
00:32:22,360 --> 00:32:25,560
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of potentially Okay, maybe that's not bad.

584
00:32:25,960 --> 00:32:30,320
Speaker 1: But but let's just roll with it. Okay, we're we're

585
00:32:30,320 --> 00:32:34,760
Speaker 1: going to Roger Corman Land. Just pretend we can ignore

586
00:32:34,800 --> 00:32:37,760
Speaker 1: all that stuff and say we do have a spider.

587
00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:40,120
Speaker 1: I don't know the size of a van or how

588
00:32:40,160 --> 00:32:42,080
Speaker 1: big would a spider have to be to prey on

589
00:32:42,120 --> 00:32:45,440
Speaker 1: a human? Uh, depending on you know, it's it's predatory

590
00:32:45,480 --> 00:32:48,360
Speaker 1: strengths on its venom and stuff like that. It probably

591
00:32:48,400 --> 00:32:51,520
Speaker 1: wouldn't even have to be the size of a van, right, Yeah,

592
00:32:51,680 --> 00:32:53,960
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this and it and also I

593
00:32:54,040 --> 00:32:57,680
Speaker 1: kept running through my mind me and my son watching

594
00:32:58,160 --> 00:33:01,360
Speaker 1: a blackwood a spider on a vacation Arizona, watch it

595
00:33:01,600 --> 00:33:04,480
Speaker 1: try and catch a grasshopper in its web, and thinking

596
00:33:04,520 --> 00:33:09,600
Speaker 1: about those the size comparisons there. I think a large spider,

597
00:33:09,720 --> 00:33:12,040
Speaker 1: like a hunting spider the size of a dog would

598
00:33:12,080 --> 00:33:16,479
Speaker 1: be pretty pretty impressive, but not maybe not so large

599
00:33:16,520 --> 00:33:18,360
Speaker 1: that you would really run into a lot of just

600
00:33:19,280 --> 00:33:24,600
Speaker 1: real severe morphological limits. Okay, kind of like the dog

601
00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:27,920
Speaker 1: costumes you see where the round Halloween where the dog

602
00:33:28,000 --> 00:33:31,160
Speaker 1: is wearing a spider costume. Maybe not a puppy size spider,

603
00:33:31,240 --> 00:33:35,360
Speaker 1: but like a moderate size, too large, dog size spider. Yeah,

604
00:33:35,400 --> 00:33:37,480
Speaker 1: I would think so, you know, and if they're especially

605
00:33:37,600 --> 00:33:41,120
Speaker 1: that creature is hunting the humans with stealth as opposed

606
00:33:41,120 --> 00:33:44,160
Speaker 1: to you know, magic web. But then that's the other thing.

607
00:33:44,200 --> 00:33:46,800
Speaker 1: If scaling up the scaling up the web is an

608
00:33:46,920 --> 00:33:50,920
Speaker 1: entirely different kettle of fish. But but yeah, I think

609
00:33:50,960 --> 00:33:53,120
Speaker 1: a dog sized spider would be able to do it. Okay,

610
00:33:53,160 --> 00:33:56,000
Speaker 1: so that's our lower limit. Let's say, on the other hand,

611
00:33:56,080 --> 00:33:58,840
Speaker 1: we can keep in mind the possibility of of a

612
00:33:59,160 --> 00:34:02,520
Speaker 1: you know, moving ock sized spider or a van sized

613
00:34:02,560 --> 00:34:06,520
Speaker 1: spider that we'll we'll just have those floating in our mind. Okay,

614
00:34:06,640 --> 00:34:08,960
Speaker 1: we won't ask a lot of questions of them, but

615
00:34:09,120 --> 00:34:11,480
Speaker 1: we'll just have them there. All right. Well, let's take

616
00:34:11,520 --> 00:34:13,200
Speaker 1: a quick break and when we come back we will

617
00:34:13,239 --> 00:34:23,080
Speaker 1: discuss how they get you. All right, we're back now, Robert.

618
00:34:23,120 --> 00:34:26,360
Speaker 1: We have to talk about how these spiders catch you.

619
00:34:26,680 --> 00:34:29,960
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well, there there are so many different species

620
00:34:30,000 --> 00:34:34,160
Speaker 1: of spiders. There's so many different hunting strategies that are

621
00:34:34,239 --> 00:34:37,840
Speaker 1: utilized by spiders. The most familiar is going to be

622
00:34:37,840 --> 00:34:40,440
Speaker 1: the web. But even with the web, there are multiple types,

623
00:34:40,480 --> 00:34:42,680
Speaker 1: so you have just to roll through them real quick.

624
00:34:42,719 --> 00:34:45,799
Speaker 1: You have orb webs, the most common typical spider web.

625
00:34:46,120 --> 00:34:49,960
Speaker 1: You have triangular webs as well. You have funnel spiders

626
00:34:49,960 --> 00:34:52,160
Speaker 1: and then make sheets of silk and then wrap them

627
00:34:52,200 --> 00:34:55,280
Speaker 1: up in to make these funnel shapes. So the funnels

628
00:34:55,320 --> 00:34:57,399
Speaker 1: have one big opening to catch prey, and they also

629
00:34:57,480 --> 00:34:59,560
Speaker 1: have one small opening in the back in case the

630
00:34:59,560 --> 00:35:02,719
Speaker 1: spider and needs to escape, so it's not sticky, but

631
00:35:02,760 --> 00:35:05,239
Speaker 1: the spider can easily move through them. This is its

632
00:35:05,239 --> 00:35:08,920
Speaker 1: home turf, this is its kill room. Okay, so I

633
00:35:09,000 --> 00:35:11,239
Speaker 1: like that idea, Like somebody just wanders into one of

634
00:35:11,239 --> 00:35:13,200
Speaker 1: these and they're like, what the heck is this giant cone?

635
00:35:13,800 --> 00:35:15,880
Speaker 1: I don't know. No, oh goodness, there's a hunting spider

636
00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:18,440
Speaker 1: on the ceiling. And then they got it. Yeah. The

637
00:35:18,800 --> 00:35:21,840
Speaker 1: most common web traps we think of are these flat

638
00:35:21,840 --> 00:35:24,600
Speaker 1: ones that orb webs. But another one is the three

639
00:35:24,600 --> 00:35:29,920
Speaker 1: dimensional traps, right, yeah, yeah, they're take for instance, cobweb spiders,

640
00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:33,280
Speaker 1: so they make small, just random messes of silk string

641
00:35:33,480 --> 00:35:35,560
Speaker 1: that are attached to their surroundings by a long string.

642
00:35:36,400 --> 00:35:39,719
Speaker 1: There are mesh web spiders that make webs that are

643
00:35:39,760 --> 00:35:42,000
Speaker 1: similar to cobweb spiders that they have a little more structure,

644
00:35:42,239 --> 00:35:44,520
Speaker 1: and they're just really found in small, messy webs at

645
00:35:44,520 --> 00:35:48,000
Speaker 1: the tips of vegetation, especially in grassy fields. They can

646
00:35:48,000 --> 00:35:50,600
Speaker 1: also be found under stones and dead leaves. In the

647
00:35:50,680 --> 00:35:52,960
Speaker 1: human scenario, maybe they would show up I don't know,

648
00:35:53,000 --> 00:35:56,759
Speaker 1: in the restrooms of strip clubs, or the or the

649
00:35:56,760 --> 00:35:59,880
Speaker 1: restrooms of of gas stations. I'm thinking just the restroom

650
00:36:00,040 --> 00:36:02,160
Speaker 1: in general. A dirty restroom is a great place to

651
00:36:02,200 --> 00:36:05,320
Speaker 1: find a giant broom stall what is the perfect place

652
00:36:05,400 --> 00:36:09,040
Speaker 1: to get you? Yeah? Um, I love that as the

653
00:36:09,080 --> 00:36:14,279
Speaker 1: tagline for the resulting movie. Here sheet web spiders. They

654
00:36:14,280 --> 00:36:16,840
Speaker 1: make many kinds of webs that are formed out of

655
00:36:16,840 --> 00:36:20,240
Speaker 1: sheets of silk, and the sheets are widely wildly jumbled

656
00:36:20,280 --> 00:36:23,279
Speaker 1: together and they don't have many large gaps. There's also

657
00:36:23,320 --> 00:36:27,320
Speaker 1: an interesting sheet web spider type bowl and doily spiders.

658
00:36:27,440 --> 00:36:30,600
Speaker 1: They make really interesting structures, essentially an inverted dome shaped

659
00:36:30,640 --> 00:36:34,600
Speaker 1: web or bowl suspended over a horizontal sheet web or

660
00:36:34,920 --> 00:36:38,000
Speaker 1: doily spiders hang on the underside of the dome and

661
00:36:38,000 --> 00:36:39,840
Speaker 1: they attack the prey. So we're talking about with some

662
00:36:40,040 --> 00:36:43,879
Speaker 1: rather impressive structures. Now here's what I'm wondering if we

663
00:36:44,040 --> 00:36:47,280
Speaker 1: scaled that up, and again, with all of the reasons

664
00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:49,600
Speaker 1: that would probably never happen in nature, But if we

665
00:36:49,680 --> 00:36:52,720
Speaker 1: just imagine scaling it up, would we would we actually

666
00:36:52,760 --> 00:36:56,320
Speaker 1: stumble into webs? I mean, are the success of webs

667
00:36:56,400 --> 00:37:02,239
Speaker 1: sort of depending on the lack of sensation of insects

668
00:37:02,320 --> 00:37:04,040
Speaker 1: or something? Do you do you kind of have to

669
00:37:04,040 --> 00:37:07,400
Speaker 1: be a little bit dumber than the standard primate in

670
00:37:07,520 --> 00:37:10,879
Speaker 1: order to end up in a spiderweb. Well, I think

671
00:37:10,920 --> 00:37:14,120
Speaker 1: it's interesting to think in terms of the funnel spiders

672
00:37:14,600 --> 00:37:17,040
Speaker 1: that already mentioned in that part of this trick is

673
00:37:17,080 --> 00:37:21,680
Speaker 1: creating an alien environment that the spider has maximum control over.

674
00:37:22,080 --> 00:37:25,120
Speaker 1: So it's how you know, you might be dumb to

675
00:37:25,160 --> 00:37:27,319
Speaker 1: wander in there, but you're not dumb to not know

676
00:37:27,400 --> 00:37:30,320
Speaker 1: your way around this alien Environment's like walking into a

677
00:37:30,719 --> 00:37:34,160
Speaker 1: zenomorph five right, or into you know, a derelict alien

678
00:37:34,200 --> 00:37:36,520
Speaker 1: spaceship and not knowing which way we're to walk and

679
00:37:36,600 --> 00:37:40,160
Speaker 1: what to do. Um that whatever lives there and eats

680
00:37:40,200 --> 00:37:43,000
Speaker 1: there is going to have the advantage. Well, the kill

681
00:37:43,080 --> 00:37:45,000
Speaker 1: room analogy you had is a good one. It's also

682
00:37:45,080 --> 00:37:46,920
Speaker 1: like at the end of Silence of the Lambs when

683
00:37:47,400 --> 00:37:51,200
Speaker 1: when Joe Foster goes into Buffalo Bill's house exactly exactly

684
00:37:51,280 --> 00:37:54,760
Speaker 1: like that and then even more complixate the drop on her. Yeah,

685
00:37:54,800 --> 00:37:57,319
Speaker 1: he's got the drop, but imagine if he also had

686
00:37:57,360 --> 00:38:01,239
Speaker 1: a decoy involved as well. What because there there are

687
00:38:01,280 --> 00:38:05,800
Speaker 1: these spiders known as sly closest spiders and they create

688
00:38:06,000 --> 00:38:09,640
Speaker 1: a double of themselves. They they they essentially craft a

689
00:38:09,719 --> 00:38:14,120
Speaker 1: large spider from leaves, debris, and dead insect parts. Have

690
00:38:14,239 --> 00:38:17,040
Speaker 1: it in the web. Yeah, in this way, you know,

691
00:38:17,080 --> 00:38:20,960
Speaker 1: confuses predators specifically, So if the spider is disturbed, it

692
00:38:21,040 --> 00:38:24,600
Speaker 1: vibrates its body but once so it's primarily defensive technique

693
00:38:24,719 --> 00:38:27,719
Speaker 1: against things that want to eat the spider. But I

694
00:38:27,719 --> 00:38:29,840
Speaker 1: guess that would also be true if you had random

695
00:38:29,880 --> 00:38:35,040
Speaker 1: Jodie Foster's random Clarice starlings wandering into your kill room

696
00:38:35,040 --> 00:38:37,520
Speaker 1: and trying to apprehend you. Well, yes, I mean, Buffalo

697
00:38:37,560 --> 00:38:40,440
Speaker 1: Bill does have to defend himself against Jodie Foster. She

698
00:38:40,600 --> 00:38:42,279
Speaker 1: was there to catch him, and she has a gun.

699
00:38:43,120 --> 00:38:45,160
Speaker 1: But of course the trap stone in there. Do they

700
00:38:45,360 --> 00:38:47,880
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, they get rather complicated, especially when you

701
00:38:47,880 --> 00:38:50,919
Speaker 1: start looking at trap door spiders. Can you imagine this

702
00:38:51,080 --> 00:38:54,359
Speaker 1: on the human scale to scale? Ups wandering along some

703
00:38:54,480 --> 00:38:59,360
Speaker 1: dry ground and suddenly the ground under you shifts. What's happening?

704
00:39:00,120 --> 00:39:01,960
Speaker 1: I know? Yeah, this is perfect, this is um I

705
00:39:01,960 --> 00:39:04,000
Speaker 1: guess to put this in horror movie terms as well,

706
00:39:04,040 --> 00:39:06,399
Speaker 1: this would be like a a Saw movie kind of thing.

707
00:39:06,440 --> 00:39:09,920
Speaker 1: I can't think of anything else recent where anyone's actually

708
00:39:09,960 --> 00:39:12,960
Speaker 1: busting out a trap door. Uh you know, it used

709
00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:16,319
Speaker 1: to be the standard Bond villain thing. But yeah. Trap

710
00:39:16,360 --> 00:39:21,560
Speaker 1: door spiders prey on larger terrestrial anthropods and even occasionally

711
00:39:21,560 --> 00:39:24,480
Speaker 1: on small lizards. They build tube like tunnels in the

712
00:39:24,520 --> 00:39:29,520
Speaker 1: sides of banks, in disturbed areas, along natural insect walkways.

713
00:39:29,560 --> 00:39:31,640
Speaker 1: They dig the tunnel, reinforce it with a mixture of

714
00:39:31,680 --> 00:39:34,239
Speaker 1: earth and saliva, then a layer of silk, and then

715
00:39:34,280 --> 00:39:36,440
Speaker 1: there's a door. So there are two types. There's the

716
00:39:36,520 --> 00:39:39,239
Speaker 1: cork tight door, which is thick and fitted. The other

717
00:39:39,360 --> 00:39:41,440
Speaker 1: is a wafer type door, which is a sheet of

718
00:39:41,480 --> 00:39:45,759
Speaker 1: silk and dirt. Both are silk hinged. So they're really

719
00:39:45,840 --> 00:39:49,279
Speaker 1: creating a rather complex structures here. Now, some species keep

720
00:39:49,280 --> 00:39:52,440
Speaker 1: it simple, others craft branching tunnels with multiple doors. The

721
00:39:52,480 --> 00:39:55,440
Speaker 1: species also differ as to whether the tunnels are simple

722
00:39:55,560 --> 00:39:58,120
Speaker 1: or branching with multiple doors. So I guess it's not

723
00:39:58,200 --> 00:40:00,279
Speaker 1: so much a jigsaw kind of scenario, and that you're

724
00:40:00,280 --> 00:40:03,879
Speaker 1: falling in, but something is in there, uh, in its

725
00:40:03,920 --> 00:40:06,880
Speaker 1: little disguised k ready to jump out and get you.

726
00:40:07,160 --> 00:40:10,160
Speaker 1: That is classic horror movie fodder. That's that's good stuff.

727
00:40:10,160 --> 00:40:13,520
Speaker 1: But also, uh, we should talk about the other types

728
00:40:13,560 --> 00:40:16,880
Speaker 1: of spider predation. Now, of course, all spiders produce silk,

729
00:40:17,000 --> 00:40:19,600
Speaker 1: but not all of them use it to spin structures

730
00:40:19,600 --> 00:40:21,640
Speaker 1: with it. Some of them make I don't know what

731
00:40:21,680 --> 00:40:24,120
Speaker 1: would you even call it, more like a weapon with it.

732
00:40:25,000 --> 00:40:27,640
Speaker 1: So how how about the Bullos spider. Oh yeah, they

733
00:40:28,000 --> 00:40:30,480
Speaker 1: hunt by using a sticky capture blob of silk at

734
00:40:30,520 --> 00:40:33,160
Speaker 1: the end of a line, which scientists called bulas. And

735
00:40:33,200 --> 00:40:35,600
Speaker 1: if you see video of this, they actually spin it

736
00:40:35,680 --> 00:40:39,040
Speaker 1: around like a lasso, like it'll be hanging from a web,

737
00:40:39,160 --> 00:40:41,759
Speaker 1: spinning this line of silk around in the air and

738
00:40:41,800 --> 00:40:45,799
Speaker 1: then snagging them off with it. So, yeah, that's a

739
00:40:45,800 --> 00:40:47,880
Speaker 1: great example. It's using it like a like a grappling

740
00:40:47,880 --> 00:40:52,799
Speaker 1: hook or like like scorpions, Harpoon and Mortal Kombat. Right, Oh,

741
00:40:52,880 --> 00:40:55,359
Speaker 1: that's good. And then on top of that, you have

742
00:40:56,000 --> 00:40:59,480
Speaker 1: net casting spiders as well. When the prey approaches, the

743
00:40:59,480 --> 00:41:01,879
Speaker 1: spider will stretch the net two or three times it's

744
00:41:02,120 --> 00:41:05,759
Speaker 1: relaxed size, and then propel itself onto the prey, entangling

745
00:41:05,760 --> 00:41:07,640
Speaker 1: it with the web. So these would be like the

746
00:41:07,960 --> 00:41:10,120
Speaker 1: kind of like the gladiators with the trident. I guess

747
00:41:10,640 --> 00:41:14,319
Speaker 1: uh in uh in gladiatorial combat. Oh, would they have

748
00:41:14,440 --> 00:41:17,480
Speaker 1: like the net like the fisherman styleators? Right? They got

749
00:41:17,480 --> 00:41:20,839
Speaker 1: a net in a pokeia and in some sometimes there

750
00:41:20,880 --> 00:41:22,920
Speaker 1: are some spiders of this type that have an extra

751
00:41:22,960 --> 00:41:25,319
Speaker 1: technique that they used to help them pick out their prey.

752
00:41:25,360 --> 00:41:27,880
Speaker 1: At night. This is pretty ingenious. So you have a

753
00:41:27,920 --> 00:41:31,680
Speaker 1: particular species of the spiders that, in addition to any

754
00:41:31,719 --> 00:41:34,040
Speaker 1: kind of structure they may have built, they'll also uh

755
00:41:34,160 --> 00:41:38,200
Speaker 1: spray feces on the ground which will dry white, and

756
00:41:38,200 --> 00:41:40,560
Speaker 1: then any dark animal that has to run across it,

757
00:41:40,920 --> 00:41:43,319
Speaker 1: they're gonna stand out. Oh, I still get them. So

758
00:41:43,360 --> 00:41:47,120
Speaker 1: there's so many levels of of not only utilizing traps,

759
00:41:47,120 --> 00:41:50,960
Speaker 1: but really maximizing the environment, creating a keep coming back

760
00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:53,440
Speaker 1: to the kill zone in the kill room example, creating

761
00:41:53,440 --> 00:41:56,840
Speaker 1: a custom eyed environment that they have total mastery of.

762
00:41:57,280 --> 00:41:59,799
Speaker 1: Yet again, it's hard to imagine exactly what this would

763
00:41:59,800 --> 00:42:03,000
Speaker 1: be like scaled up to monster movie size spiders. I

764
00:42:03,320 --> 00:42:05,719
Speaker 1: don't know if it really translates, right, I Mean, it's

765
00:42:05,760 --> 00:42:08,319
Speaker 1: yet another one of those things where sometimes it's hard

766
00:42:08,360 --> 00:42:10,680
Speaker 1: to fit this to our to our weird premise. A

767
00:42:10,760 --> 00:42:13,480
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff seems to work on the small scale.

768
00:42:14,200 --> 00:42:17,240
Speaker 1: Uh Like, I don't know would would would would spring

769
00:42:17,280 --> 00:42:19,680
Speaker 1: the ground with fcs work for for a giant one

770
00:42:19,680 --> 00:42:22,960
Speaker 1: of these things? I mean, I guess we just have

771
00:42:23,040 --> 00:42:25,200
Speaker 1: to stay in the light, right I guess? And you know,

772
00:42:25,480 --> 00:42:27,920
Speaker 1: would a large spider to prey on humans have to

773
00:42:27,960 --> 00:42:31,240
Speaker 1: get even more inventive. Would it actually use its webbing

774
00:42:31,280 --> 00:42:35,239
Speaker 1: and it's decoys to create like an entire, entirely functional

775
00:42:35,760 --> 00:42:40,680
Speaker 1: um rest stop to create a party with free beer.

776
00:42:41,760 --> 00:42:43,480
Speaker 1: It's like, sorry, it's all spider silk. You don't know.

777
00:42:43,480 --> 00:42:45,440
Speaker 1: Do you go to drink it? Yeah? So there are

778
00:42:45,440 --> 00:42:48,520
Speaker 1: lots of methods of spider predation that obviously involves silk

779
00:42:48,560 --> 00:42:51,319
Speaker 1: in one way or another, creating traps and stuff like that.

780
00:42:51,360 --> 00:42:55,520
Speaker 1: But there's also the much older, simpler, more universal hunting

781
00:42:55,560 --> 00:43:00,880
Speaker 1: tactic where they just chase you down, Just run you down, bite, bite,

782
00:43:00,880 --> 00:43:02,960
Speaker 1: and subdue. Yeah, maybe jump out from behind a tree

783
00:43:03,040 --> 00:43:05,760
Speaker 1: or something. But so I was wondering about the speed

784
00:43:05,800 --> 00:43:08,480
Speaker 1: of spiders. Try to imagine we've got the scaled up

785
00:43:08,520 --> 00:43:12,319
Speaker 1: spider again, ignoring all the physics constraints, how fast would

786
00:43:12,320 --> 00:43:15,319
Speaker 1: it move if it moved relative to its speed on

787
00:43:15,360 --> 00:43:20,359
Speaker 1: the ground. The answer is hilarious. So, so I wanna

788
00:43:20,719 --> 00:43:25,600
Speaker 1: reference that. There's some papers on spider gate characteristics and

789
00:43:25,600 --> 00:43:29,040
Speaker 1: and running speed among spider species that are like these

790
00:43:29,160 --> 00:43:34,560
Speaker 1: grass funnel web spiders. Hololena is the genus, and research

791
00:43:34,600 --> 00:43:37,759
Speaker 1: has shown that under experimental conditions, a couple of species

792
00:43:37,800 --> 00:43:41,040
Speaker 1: of funnel web spinning spiders and the whole landa genus

793
00:43:41,200 --> 00:43:46,400
Speaker 1: can perform sprints occasionally faster than about fifty centimeters per second,

794
00:43:46,719 --> 00:43:50,560
Speaker 1: which works out to about seventy body lengths per second

795
00:43:50,920 --> 00:43:54,880
Speaker 1: for these spiders. Now, imagine if you could sprint up

796
00:43:54,880 --> 00:43:58,520
Speaker 1: to seventy body lengths per second. If you're six ft tall,

797
00:43:59,280 --> 00:44:02,479
Speaker 1: that's a hundred three cimeters. That means if you could

798
00:44:02,520 --> 00:44:05,640
Speaker 1: move as fast as this spider relative to your own

799
00:44:05,680 --> 00:44:08,200
Speaker 1: body size, you would be able to move a hundred

800
00:44:08,239 --> 00:44:11,520
Speaker 1: and twenty eight meters per second. That's about one point

801
00:44:11,560 --> 00:44:16,320
Speaker 1: for American football fields per second. Now, if you imagine

802
00:44:16,360 --> 00:44:19,440
Speaker 1: a predator that could kill you could sprint up to

803
00:44:19,600 --> 00:44:22,600
Speaker 1: seventy body lengths per second. If our giant spider has

804
00:44:22,640 --> 00:44:25,160
Speaker 1: I don't know, a ten meter body length and can

805
00:44:25,200 --> 00:44:29,360
Speaker 1: sprint seventy body lengths per second, that's seven d I

806
00:44:29,400 --> 00:44:32,480
Speaker 1: mean that obviously that's not going to happen in reality,

807
00:44:32,520 --> 00:44:35,239
Speaker 1: but these things would be able to chase you down

808
00:44:35,280 --> 00:44:39,600
Speaker 1: in ways that are unbelievable to the human mind. Oh wow, Yeah,

809
00:44:39,680 --> 00:44:42,160
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to even imagine how that would scale up.

810
00:44:43,600 --> 00:44:45,040
Speaker 1: The best I can do is to try and imagine

811
00:44:45,040 --> 00:44:48,160
Speaker 1: it taking place in like a tensent dragons tiled map

812
00:44:48,480 --> 00:44:51,520
Speaker 1: the grid and even then that's a ridiculous amount of speed.

813
00:44:51,840 --> 00:44:55,759
Speaker 1: Why would you have that many grid squares battlefield that big?

814
00:44:55,800 --> 00:45:01,000
Speaker 1: It's unmanageable. Contact your d m okay, So other fun

815
00:45:01,040 --> 00:45:04,759
Speaker 1: adventures in predation. There is one family of spiders that

816
00:45:04,920 --> 00:45:08,760
Speaker 1: I love, known as the labor a day the Allobrids.

817
00:45:09,440 --> 00:45:13,760
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, these guys are great because they they actually

818
00:45:13,800 --> 00:45:16,160
Speaker 1: crush you. And I say you, I'm speaking of course

819
00:45:16,200 --> 00:45:20,520
Speaker 1: to small insects, but they crushed their prey with their webbing.

820
00:45:20,520 --> 00:45:23,600
Speaker 1: They wrap them up and essentially a body crushing iron

821
00:45:23,719 --> 00:45:27,560
Speaker 1: maiden of silk. Yeah, there's a species particularly we've read about,

822
00:45:27,560 --> 00:45:31,680
Speaker 1: the philip Pinella of Assinna And yeah, they have this

823
00:45:31,800 --> 00:45:35,800
Speaker 1: method of wrapping you in silk that is so tight

824
00:45:35,920 --> 00:45:39,200
Speaker 1: that your body structures are crushed. In word, they say

825
00:45:39,200 --> 00:45:42,920
Speaker 1: that the legs snap that like the eyes buckle in.

826
00:45:44,280 --> 00:45:46,719
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty ground it. It reminds me of I

827
00:45:46,719 --> 00:45:49,160
Speaker 1: think there's a scene in color Clowns from Outer Space

828
00:45:49,480 --> 00:45:52,360
Speaker 1: where they utilize some sort of silly string contraption that

829
00:45:52,440 --> 00:45:55,680
Speaker 1: works like this. But but yeah, the researchers have apparently

830
00:45:55,719 --> 00:45:59,600
Speaker 1: observed these spiders spending a hundred times as much effort

831
00:45:59,680 --> 00:46:03,160
Speaker 1: over an hour to wrap a prey in eighty meters

832
00:46:03,239 --> 00:46:05,240
Speaker 1: of silk. So that's two d and sixty two feet,

833
00:46:06,200 --> 00:46:12,040
Speaker 1: which seems crazy. Yeah, that that's not scaled to what

834
00:46:12,080 --> 00:46:15,040
Speaker 1: we're talking about. That's just like the tiny spider. Yeah,

835
00:46:15,080 --> 00:46:17,800
Speaker 1: producing that much silk to to wrap the prey this type.

836
00:46:18,239 --> 00:46:21,120
Speaker 1: And actually I've got some more interesting stuff about how

837
00:46:21,239 --> 00:46:24,839
Speaker 1: the species eats in a bit. But so one reason

838
00:46:24,880 --> 00:46:26,920
Speaker 1: they need to do this is because these are actually

839
00:46:27,000 --> 00:46:29,759
Speaker 1: not venom producing spiders, that's right. They don't have the

840
00:46:30,080 --> 00:46:32,759
Speaker 1: powerful bite. So what do they gotta do? What do

841
00:46:32,840 --> 00:46:36,360
Speaker 1: they how do they start softening up their prey to consume.

842
00:46:36,680 --> 00:46:38,960
Speaker 1: They have to drool all over it. But you have

843
00:46:39,040 --> 00:46:42,480
Speaker 1: a strate jacket, tighten it as much as possible, and

844
00:46:42,520 --> 00:46:45,000
Speaker 1: then begin the vomiting. That seems to be the predominant

845
00:46:45,040 --> 00:46:47,840
Speaker 1: theory is that they basically they know they're gonna have

846
00:46:47,840 --> 00:46:50,240
Speaker 1: to drool over this stuff, so they want as small

847
00:46:50,239 --> 00:46:52,520
Speaker 1: a target as possible. It's just go ahead and crunch

848
00:46:52,560 --> 00:46:55,600
Speaker 1: it all up, make something small, so I'm conserving my

849
00:46:55,719 --> 00:46:58,920
Speaker 1: spider drool. Okay, well, let's get more into the details

850
00:46:59,040 --> 00:47:03,240
Speaker 1: of how they drool on you. And uh, that's maybe

851
00:47:03,239 --> 00:47:05,080
Speaker 1: even the nice way of putting it of what would

852
00:47:05,080 --> 00:47:09,320
Speaker 1: happen to you as the eating process actually begins. Now, first,

853
00:47:09,360 --> 00:47:11,960
Speaker 1: I guess we start with you being immobilized. You've been

854
00:47:11,960 --> 00:47:15,160
Speaker 1: caught in a trap by a trapdoor spider, in a web,

855
00:47:15,680 --> 00:47:18,000
Speaker 1: in a in a silk lasso, or you've just been

856
00:47:18,080 --> 00:47:21,080
Speaker 1: chased down and bitten. Uh. One of the things that's

857
00:47:21,080 --> 00:47:23,960
Speaker 1: gonna happen with pretty much all spiders except the labor

858
00:47:24,120 --> 00:47:27,920
Speaker 1: day and another genus known as or not genus another family.

859
00:47:27,960 --> 00:47:31,839
Speaker 1: I think the the hul archad today is that they're

860
00:47:31,840 --> 00:47:34,840
Speaker 1: all gonna have venom. And the venom glands are attached

861
00:47:34,880 --> 00:47:39,120
Speaker 1: to ducts that travel down the length of the collissarae,

862
00:47:39,520 --> 00:47:43,600
Speaker 1: and those are the mouth part structures right like the fangs.

863
00:47:43,680 --> 00:47:46,520
Speaker 1: You are attached to the end of the collissarae. And

864
00:47:46,560 --> 00:47:49,239
Speaker 1: then the ducts come down to a hole at the

865
00:47:49,280 --> 00:47:52,960
Speaker 1: tip of the collissarol fang, and they'll hit you with

866
00:47:53,080 --> 00:47:58,440
Speaker 1: that and rapidly contract their muscles to eject this cocktail

867
00:47:58,640 --> 00:48:01,480
Speaker 1: of venom into you. Now, the venoms vary from species

868
00:48:01,520 --> 00:48:05,160
Speaker 1: to species, and the venom cocktail is generally well, it's

869
00:48:05,160 --> 00:48:08,480
Speaker 1: a cocktail, it's heterogeneous. Right, So it means they contain

870
00:48:08,600 --> 00:48:12,640
Speaker 1: multiple different toxins and different chemicals doing different jobs. So

871
00:48:12,680 --> 00:48:16,400
Speaker 1: a common spider toxin is going to be a neurotoxic polypeptide.

872
00:48:16,400 --> 00:48:20,160
Speaker 1: It's a chain of amino acids that attacks the nervous system. Uh,

873
00:48:20,160 --> 00:48:23,400
Speaker 1: and the prey can expect to experience some distressing systemic

874
00:48:23,440 --> 00:48:26,960
Speaker 1: effects and paralysis. But different spiders are gonna gonna hit

875
00:48:27,040 --> 00:48:29,279
Speaker 1: you with different venoms. There, They're gonna be different things.

876
00:48:29,360 --> 00:48:32,200
Speaker 1: You'd have to expect. We can't. There's no one size

877
00:48:32,200 --> 00:48:35,360
Speaker 1: fits all. But from this stage it's generally going to

878
00:48:35,400 --> 00:48:38,239
Speaker 1: be on to the eating. All Right, we're gonna take

879
00:48:38,239 --> 00:48:40,759
Speaker 1: a quick break and when we come back, we will

880
00:48:40,800 --> 00:48:52,000
Speaker 1: be consumed. Alright, we're back. The spiders have captured us,

881
00:48:52,080 --> 00:48:55,239
Speaker 1: and now they're going to consume us. Right, So the

882
00:48:55,320 --> 00:48:58,840
Speaker 1: spider has you immobilized, perhaps wrapped in a cocoon of silk,

883
00:48:59,239 --> 00:49:02,840
Speaker 1: may be subdued with a venomous bite, and the purpose

884
00:49:02,960 --> 00:49:05,799
Speaker 1: of the venom is to subdue and paralyze the prey.

885
00:49:05,840 --> 00:49:07,799
Speaker 1: I've read that the fact that it often kills the

886
00:49:07,800 --> 00:49:11,640
Speaker 1: prey is technically an unnecessary side effect. Plus, we should

887
00:49:11,719 --> 00:49:14,680
Speaker 1: keep in mind that venom is designed to work primarily

888
00:49:14,680 --> 00:49:18,239
Speaker 1: against the spiders major food source, which is arthropods other

889
00:49:18,600 --> 00:49:23,279
Speaker 1: invertebrate insects. So you are not an arthropod unless you are,

890
00:49:23,320 --> 00:49:28,160
Speaker 1: in which case we're preparing Earth for your arrival. But

891
00:49:28,200 --> 00:49:31,520
Speaker 1: when the spider starts to eat you, you a mammal,

892
00:49:32,040 --> 00:49:34,239
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going to happen. Maybe you'd still

893
00:49:34,280 --> 00:49:37,040
Speaker 1: be alive and paralyzed, you might be dead. It's hard

894
00:49:37,080 --> 00:49:40,080
Speaker 1: to say. It kind of comes down to did this

895
00:49:40,080 --> 00:49:45,680
Speaker 1: thing evolved to prey on humans? How? Atomic radiation? Robert? Yeah,

896
00:49:45,719 --> 00:49:48,000
Speaker 1: but that's the thing, Like it's a it's a tool

897
00:49:48,040 --> 00:49:52,200
Speaker 1: for a particular particular purpose. And unless you're dealing with

898
00:49:52,239 --> 00:49:55,920
Speaker 1: some other worldly environment where humans and giant spiders have

899
00:49:56,040 --> 00:49:59,680
Speaker 1: co evolved for this relationship, it's gonna be a little uncertain.

900
00:49:59,680 --> 00:50:02,959
Speaker 1: It's to be a little off exactly right. So how

901
00:50:03,000 --> 00:50:06,800
Speaker 1: does it start to eat you? Well, generally spiders consume

902
00:50:07,000 --> 00:50:10,120
Speaker 1: a liquid diet. But I'm not a liquid, Robert, or

903
00:50:10,160 --> 00:50:14,279
Speaker 1: you a liquid I'm mostly liquid. But you know, I

904
00:50:14,280 --> 00:50:16,319
Speaker 1: mean if I were to go and eat you, you

905
00:50:16,320 --> 00:50:18,600
Speaker 1: would not you. I mean, your body has lots of

906
00:50:18,640 --> 00:50:21,480
Speaker 1: liquids in it, incorporated into cell structures, you can have

907
00:50:21,520 --> 00:50:27,120
Speaker 1: a lot of valid stuff. Yeah, So so something's going

908
00:50:27,160 --> 00:50:30,320
Speaker 1: to have to happen here. So what's going to happen

909
00:50:30,440 --> 00:50:33,839
Speaker 1: is that the spider begins to vomit on you. This

910
00:50:33,880 --> 00:50:35,799
Speaker 1: can happen in a couple of different ways, which we'll

911
00:50:35,840 --> 00:50:38,200
Speaker 1: get to in a moment. But the essential processes that

912
00:50:38,239 --> 00:50:42,920
Speaker 1: the spider ejects digestive fluids onto you, and these digestive

913
00:50:42,960 --> 00:50:47,680
Speaker 1: fluids contain enzymes. Uh, the fluids are truly caustic. And

914
00:50:47,719 --> 00:50:50,640
Speaker 1: here's one example to illustrate, which I thought was fascinating

915
00:50:50,680 --> 00:50:55,600
Speaker 1: from a study in the Journal of a Racknology. So

916
00:50:55,600 --> 00:50:58,800
Speaker 1: we're gonna go back to the lubri day. The spiders

917
00:50:58,840 --> 00:51:01,960
Speaker 1: that don't have their own venom glans, right, and they

918
00:51:01,960 --> 00:51:05,160
Speaker 1: crush you with that silk structure. So, uh, this is

919
00:51:05,200 --> 00:51:09,080
Speaker 1: the same species we mentioned earlier, the Filipinella vicinna. They

920
00:51:09,160 --> 00:51:13,719
Speaker 1: usually pose on their web in a strange posture if

921
00:51:13,760 --> 00:51:16,719
Speaker 1: you've ever seen this. They keep their legs folded in

922
00:51:16,960 --> 00:51:20,520
Speaker 1: against the body. And it's been hypothesized that the reason

923
00:51:20,600 --> 00:51:23,400
Speaker 1: they pose in the web like this is to avoid

924
00:51:23,520 --> 00:51:26,200
Speaker 1: visually signaling predators. So there might be a bird that

925
00:51:26,280 --> 00:51:28,520
Speaker 1: wants to eat spiders or something. It knows what a

926
00:51:28,520 --> 00:51:31,160
Speaker 1: spider looks like. But if you don't pose in a

927
00:51:31,200 --> 00:51:33,280
Speaker 1: way that gives away the fact that you're a spider,

928
00:51:33,320 --> 00:51:36,759
Speaker 1: the burden might not recognize you as prey um. But

929
00:51:37,239 --> 00:51:41,000
Speaker 1: when the elaborated begins to eat, it does something strange.

930
00:51:41,120 --> 00:51:44,520
Speaker 1: It gets out of its regular posture and spreads its

931
00:51:44,560 --> 00:51:48,080
Speaker 1: anterior legs or the front legs wide apart. It holds

932
00:51:48,120 --> 00:51:52,080
Speaker 1: them way back. Why does it do that? Well, the

933
00:51:52,120 --> 00:51:54,080
Speaker 1: authors of the study point out that, you know, the

934
00:51:54,120 --> 00:51:58,359
Speaker 1: spider's method of eating this illobred is to rapids prey

935
00:51:58,440 --> 00:52:02,080
Speaker 1: in this ridiculously tight amount of silk, compress it into

936
00:52:02,080 --> 00:52:05,360
Speaker 1: a compact package like a garbage compactor, and then just

937
00:52:05,600 --> 00:52:08,920
Speaker 1: vomit all over the entire thing. So most spiders are

938
00:52:08,920 --> 00:52:12,080
Speaker 1: going to take a slightly different route where they eject

939
00:52:12,120 --> 00:52:15,560
Speaker 1: these digestive enzymes through a small hole in the shell

940
00:52:15,680 --> 00:52:19,000
Speaker 1: of the prey insect or over a small surface at

941
00:52:19,000 --> 00:52:22,239
Speaker 1: a time when they're eating not pivicina. This will just

942
00:52:22,360 --> 00:52:27,160
Speaker 1: slather the entire thing. Essentially, it's making a huge mess.

943
00:52:27,200 --> 00:52:30,360
Speaker 1: So the researchers asks, huh, I wonder if the spider

944
00:52:30,480 --> 00:52:34,680
Speaker 1: it's is holding its anterior legs away from this mess,

945
00:52:34,719 --> 00:52:38,040
Speaker 1: because the same digestive enzymes it's using to dissolve its

946
00:52:38,080 --> 00:52:42,200
Speaker 1: prey would also dissolve its own body, and their research

947
00:52:42,239 --> 00:52:44,920
Speaker 1: found bingo, that does appear to be what's happening. The

948
00:52:44,960 --> 00:52:48,680
Speaker 1: authors found that the spider's digestive enzymes, when applied to

949
00:52:48,800 --> 00:52:53,360
Speaker 1: detached legs from the same spiders species, uh, they caused

950
00:52:53,400 --> 00:52:56,400
Speaker 1: the set a, meaning the bristles, to fall off of

951
00:52:56,440 --> 00:53:00,000
Speaker 1: the legs, and they also cause damage to the intersegment

952
00:53:00,000 --> 00:53:03,880
Speaker 1: mental membranes between the different parts of the legs. So

953
00:53:04,200 --> 00:53:08,040
Speaker 1: imagine if you had to eat by so you've got

954
00:53:08,040 --> 00:53:10,040
Speaker 1: a plate you're sitting down with, you've got a hamburger

955
00:53:10,080 --> 00:53:13,080
Speaker 1: on it, and you have to eat by vomiting Hollywood

956
00:53:13,120 --> 00:53:18,240
Speaker 1: acid all over your food. Yeah uh. And then also

957
00:53:18,360 --> 00:53:21,000
Speaker 1: that stuff would give you chemical burns if you touched

958
00:53:21,040 --> 00:53:23,520
Speaker 1: it with your own hands, so you sort of have

959
00:53:23,560 --> 00:53:26,840
Speaker 1: to like vomit all over and then hold your arms

960
00:53:26,880 --> 00:53:31,239
Speaker 1: back and slurp it up. But anyway, let's get back

961
00:53:31,280 --> 00:53:33,400
Speaker 1: to being the prey. You're not the spider in this scenario.

962
00:53:33,560 --> 00:53:36,600
Speaker 1: You're the prey, so obviously you've been immobilized. The spider

963
00:53:36,640 --> 00:53:40,080
Speaker 1: starts to apply this digestive fluid to you. Now, obviously,

964
00:53:40,120 --> 00:53:43,200
Speaker 1: if you've been attacked by a giant uh P vicinna,

965
00:53:43,520 --> 00:53:45,560
Speaker 1: you're gonna be crushed into a tiny ball with a

966
00:53:45,600 --> 00:53:48,040
Speaker 1: tight wrapping of silk, so we can basically say it's

967
00:53:48,120 --> 00:53:51,040
Speaker 1: lights out. Then the spider will dissolve your entire body

968
00:53:51,080 --> 00:53:55,080
Speaker 1: with these enzymes and suck up your liquefying body parts,

969
00:53:55,080 --> 00:53:57,600
Speaker 1: holding its legs back in a very dainty fashion as

970
00:53:57,600 --> 00:54:01,200
Speaker 1: it does so. Um, but well, what's gonna happen if

971
00:54:01,200 --> 00:54:04,000
Speaker 1: it's not this species, if we're dealing with other types

972
00:54:04,000 --> 00:54:06,040
Speaker 1: of spiders, And here a lot of my information is

973
00:54:06,080 --> 00:54:09,239
Speaker 1: going to come from a really delightful arachnology book called

974
00:54:09,280 --> 00:54:12,799
Speaker 1: The Biology of Spiders by rain or Felix. Uh So,

975
00:54:13,000 --> 00:54:16,319
Speaker 1: for most types of spiders, feeding differs significantly based on

976
00:54:16,400 --> 00:54:19,800
Speaker 1: whether or not the spider has what's called calyssral teeth.

977
00:54:20,280 --> 00:54:22,520
Speaker 1: So the spider have the calyscera, you know, these are

978
00:54:22,560 --> 00:54:24,400
Speaker 1: the mouth parts that have the fangs at the end

979
00:54:24,440 --> 00:54:29,319
Speaker 1: of them. But some spiders have have these these teeth structures,

980
00:54:29,320 --> 00:54:32,440
Speaker 1: these sort of grinding surfaces on the inside of them,

981
00:54:32,480 --> 00:54:34,600
Speaker 1: and some have very few of these or don't have

982
00:54:34,680 --> 00:54:37,840
Speaker 1: these structures at all either way, The general processes that

983
00:54:37,920 --> 00:54:42,000
Speaker 1: the spider is going to barf, it's gonna regurgitate some

984
00:54:42,120 --> 00:54:46,239
Speaker 1: digestive fluid onto the prey, wait a few seconds for

985
00:54:46,280 --> 00:54:49,200
Speaker 1: it to dissolve some tissues, and then it's gonna suck

986
00:54:49,320 --> 00:54:54,120
Speaker 1: that liquid back in and then repeat at victori um. Uh.

987
00:54:54,280 --> 00:54:57,440
Speaker 1: So what happens when the spiders don't have these teeth

988
00:54:57,480 --> 00:55:01,279
Speaker 1: I mentioned the calyssol teeth or have a few of them. Uh.

989
00:55:01,280 --> 00:55:03,400
Speaker 1: There are a few families of spiders that are like this.

990
00:55:03,520 --> 00:55:07,239
Speaker 1: So there's the terridda day, the comb footed spiders or

991
00:55:07,280 --> 00:55:10,080
Speaker 1: tangle web spiders, and this is a big family of

992
00:55:10,120 --> 00:55:13,600
Speaker 1: spiders that includes the Latrodectus genus, which are the widows.

993
00:55:14,760 --> 00:55:18,319
Speaker 1: And then also we're gonna include the thomisids with your

994
00:55:18,320 --> 00:55:22,520
Speaker 1: crab spiders. So these guys work typically by creating a

995
00:55:22,640 --> 00:55:25,799
Speaker 1: very tiny hole in the outer shell of the prey,

996
00:55:25,840 --> 00:55:30,080
Speaker 1: which they might poke with the calyscera, and then spitting

997
00:55:30,160 --> 00:55:34,120
Speaker 1: digestive fluid into the body cavity through the holes. That

998
00:55:34,200 --> 00:55:36,359
Speaker 1: makes sense. So you've got an insect with an outer

999
00:55:36,480 --> 00:55:39,640
Speaker 1: exoskeleton and you're gonna be stabbing a hole in the

1000
00:55:39,680 --> 00:55:43,080
Speaker 1: outside and then just putting some of this digestive enzyme

1001
00:55:43,239 --> 00:55:48,040
Speaker 1: inside through the hole. The process is continued until the

1002
00:55:48,040 --> 00:55:50,880
Speaker 1: prey is sort of left as a dry empty shell

1003
00:55:51,040 --> 00:55:53,840
Speaker 1: like the digestive enzymes in and then it sucks some

1004
00:55:53,920 --> 00:55:58,040
Speaker 1: fluid out. It's kind of reminiscent of some some mummification

1005
00:55:58,120 --> 00:56:00,680
Speaker 1: techniques have been employed. Really, you're gonna do about all

1006
00:56:00,680 --> 00:56:04,560
Speaker 1: that nasty stuff inside the creature? Well, you can try

1007
00:56:04,600 --> 00:56:06,799
Speaker 1: and drain it out, you can try and putrefy it

1008
00:56:07,040 --> 00:56:10,840
Speaker 1: or what have you. And this is kind of like that. Okay, yeah,

1009
00:56:10,920 --> 00:56:13,680
Speaker 1: Well you are essentially left with a dried up husk

1010
00:56:13,680 --> 00:56:16,080
Speaker 1: of a creature which is mummy like and it's and

1011
00:56:16,160 --> 00:56:20,640
Speaker 1: it's outer appearance at least, so in the end, most

1012
00:56:20,680 --> 00:56:23,760
Speaker 1: of these interior tissues are going to be dissolved, sucked out,

1013
00:56:23,800 --> 00:56:28,160
Speaker 1: and delicious. And to me, I I wonder if so,

1014
00:56:28,320 --> 00:56:31,240
Speaker 1: I was left to wonder what a spider that works

1015
00:56:31,280 --> 00:56:34,000
Speaker 1: this way would make of an animal with an indoskeleton

1016
00:56:34,160 --> 00:56:37,840
Speaker 1: rather than an exo skeleton. So does the exo skeleton

1017
00:56:37,960 --> 00:56:41,440
Speaker 1: work as an important type of container for the process,

1018
00:56:41,520 --> 00:56:44,200
Speaker 1: if that makes any sense. Would a spider like this

1019
00:56:44,960 --> 00:56:48,480
Speaker 1: trying to eat a mammal without an exo skeleton be

1020
00:56:48,560 --> 00:56:50,760
Speaker 1: kind of like if we tried to eat a bowl

1021
00:56:50,800 --> 00:56:54,880
Speaker 1: of soup without the bowl. Yeah, because it's essentially making

1022
00:56:55,120 --> 00:56:58,160
Speaker 1: you into a soup inside your own axis skeleton. Right,

1023
00:56:58,920 --> 00:57:02,400
Speaker 1: So I er, I don't know. Mammals might not be

1024
00:57:02,560 --> 00:57:06,520
Speaker 1: all that that enticing to spiders like this, but then again,

1025
00:57:06,560 --> 00:57:08,520
Speaker 1: I don't know. It could be they may find some

1026
00:57:08,560 --> 00:57:10,719
Speaker 1: way around it. I mean they they have by and

1027
00:57:10,840 --> 00:57:15,120
Speaker 1: large evolved to prey and eat up eat invertebrates, and

1028
00:57:15,360 --> 00:57:19,080
Speaker 1: that's their realm of of influence. Yes, and also we're

1029
00:57:19,080 --> 00:57:21,360
Speaker 1: gonna get to the toothy spiders in a second, but

1030
00:57:21,480 --> 00:57:24,040
Speaker 1: first I want to hit a myth, Robert. I don't

1031
00:57:24,080 --> 00:57:25,840
Speaker 1: know if you thought like this when you were a kid.

1032
00:57:25,960 --> 00:57:27,800
Speaker 1: I definitely thought this when I was a kid, and

1033
00:57:27,840 --> 00:57:30,360
Speaker 1: I know some people probably do think this, that spiders

1034
00:57:30,960 --> 00:57:35,000
Speaker 1: suck the juices out of prey animals through their fangs.

1035
00:57:35,360 --> 00:57:38,040
Speaker 1: Did you think this way? Um? I think I did.

1036
00:57:38,080 --> 00:57:40,240
Speaker 1: I don't know how much of that was, like directly

1037
00:57:40,320 --> 00:57:44,040
Speaker 1: due to science text in school or my or if

1038
00:57:44,040 --> 00:57:46,520
Speaker 1: it had to do with something I picked up elsewhere

1039
00:57:46,560 --> 00:57:49,840
Speaker 1: and cartoons or something. But vampires, I often think of

1040
00:57:49,920 --> 00:57:52,680
Speaker 1: vampires this way, or I used to that they would

1041
00:57:52,720 --> 00:57:55,400
Speaker 1: bite you with their fangs, and then it would be sucking,

1042
00:57:55,480 --> 00:57:58,200
Speaker 1: not with like the mouth, through the esophagus in the stomach,

1043
00:57:58,240 --> 00:58:00,280
Speaker 1: but the blood that they drained from me would be

1044
00:58:00,320 --> 00:58:06,240
Speaker 1: going up through the fangs somehow into a blood receiving system. Anyway,

1045
00:58:06,280 --> 00:58:08,320
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people think about spiders this way.

1046
00:58:08,360 --> 00:58:10,920
Speaker 1: This is not the case. That the presence of venom

1047
00:58:10,960 --> 00:58:14,400
Speaker 1: injecting fangs similar to hypodermic needles in a way, I think,

1048
00:58:14,440 --> 00:58:17,880
Speaker 1: could be responsible for the mistaken assumption that the fangs

1049
00:58:17,960 --> 00:58:21,800
Speaker 1: work both ways. But this is not true. That the fluid,

1050
00:58:21,920 --> 00:58:25,760
Speaker 1: so the fangs inject the venom, but the fluids that

1051
00:58:25,800 --> 00:58:27,800
Speaker 1: are coming out of the prey animal are coming in

1052
00:58:27,920 --> 00:58:32,000
Speaker 1: through the mouth parts. The fangs are injectors. The spiders

1053
00:58:32,000 --> 00:58:35,240
Speaker 1: do consume with a fluid sucking action, but this is

1054
00:58:35,280 --> 00:58:38,200
Speaker 1: done through a mouth orifice powered by an order by

1055
00:58:38,240 --> 00:58:40,919
Speaker 1: the by the pharynx, and by an organ known as

1056
00:58:41,000 --> 00:58:45,240
Speaker 1: the sucking stomach. Like that's great, It's like a pump

1057
00:58:45,800 --> 00:58:49,160
Speaker 1: that that gets you know, it creates this suction action

1058
00:58:49,240 --> 00:58:52,640
Speaker 1: that pulls all that delicious fluid up through the mouth

1059
00:58:52,720 --> 00:58:56,920
Speaker 1: parts and through the pharynx down into the digestive system.

1060
00:58:57,000 --> 00:58:59,880
Speaker 1: But anyway, back to the spiders that do have the teeth,

1061
00:59:00,200 --> 00:59:03,480
Speaker 1: So these are the ones that have these grinding surfaces

1062
00:59:03,480 --> 00:59:07,480
Speaker 1: on their calycera. They perform instead a kind of rudimentary

1063
00:59:07,680 --> 00:59:10,880
Speaker 1: grinding action with these surfaces. So in science we refer

1064
00:59:10,960 --> 00:59:13,720
Speaker 1: to this as a mastication. It's a great word, but

1065
00:59:13,760 --> 00:59:16,960
Speaker 1: it just means chewing. Uh. And so these spiders also

1066
00:59:17,200 --> 00:59:20,800
Speaker 1: do the same thing. Essentially, they work by regurgitating digestive

1067
00:59:20,840 --> 00:59:24,720
Speaker 1: fluids onto the prey that dissolves the prey tissues and

1068
00:59:24,720 --> 00:59:27,880
Speaker 1: then slurping up dissolved body tissues. But in the process

1069
00:59:28,280 --> 00:59:31,920
Speaker 1: they also use these calyssral teeth to chew and mash

1070
00:59:32,080 --> 00:59:36,600
Speaker 1: the prey animal up into a ball of unrecognizable half

1071
00:59:36,640 --> 00:59:42,040
Speaker 1: dissolved mush. So they tenderizing and supefying at the same time. Exactly,

1072
00:59:42,080 --> 00:59:45,000
Speaker 1: They're they're they're creating bullus the same way you actually

1073
00:59:45,040 --> 00:59:47,240
Speaker 1: do with your mouth. You know, they say when you

1074
00:59:47,320 --> 00:59:49,640
Speaker 1: chew food in your mouth, you sort of chew into

1075
00:59:49,680 --> 00:59:54,160
Speaker 1: a chew chewed up mash. This is really grows it

1076
00:59:54,240 --> 00:59:57,400
Speaker 1: chewed up mashed up ball of food known sometimes as

1077
00:59:57,440 --> 01:00:00,920
Speaker 1: a bullus, that you then swallow. Yeah. Next, I'm highly

1078
01:00:01,000 --> 01:00:03,160
Speaker 1: encourage anyone next time you're eating, because I think about

1079
01:00:03,200 --> 01:00:06,479
Speaker 1: this all the time from an episode we did a

1080
01:00:06,480 --> 01:00:09,720
Speaker 1: few years back on digestion. But you can, actually, if

1081
01:00:09,720 --> 01:00:12,480
Speaker 1: you're conscious of it, you'll find yourself sitting there chewing

1082
01:00:12,600 --> 01:00:17,720
Speaker 1: and just feeling as your your mouth automatically liquefies um,

1083
01:00:18,320 --> 01:00:21,040
Speaker 1: choose up and then forms all of this into a

1084
01:00:21,120 --> 01:00:24,800
Speaker 1: slurry bolus that then goes down the throat. That's yeah, great,

1085
01:00:25,520 --> 01:00:28,400
Speaker 1: But but what's it like to be that bolus? That's

1086
01:00:28,520 --> 01:00:31,240
Speaker 1: that's what we're wondering today. I guess at this point

1087
01:00:31,240 --> 01:00:33,840
Speaker 1: you're probably not aware of what's going on anymore, because

1088
01:00:34,240 --> 01:00:38,960
Speaker 1: the mastication process um and the dissolving of the digestive

1089
01:00:39,080 --> 01:00:41,880
Speaker 1: enzymes work together to sort of reduce you to an

1090
01:00:41,960 --> 01:00:46,960
Speaker 1: unrecognizable ball of gunk. Uh So, you become this mush,

1091
01:00:47,240 --> 01:00:49,880
Speaker 1: and then they consume you via the old in and

1092
01:00:49,920 --> 01:00:53,400
Speaker 1: out that we discussed before in the end, leaving behind

1093
01:00:53,560 --> 01:00:57,600
Speaker 1: only sort of indigestible parts like shells or maybe in

1094
01:00:57,720 --> 01:01:01,840
Speaker 1: some rare cases, bones and feathers. Uh So, these spiders

1095
01:01:01,880 --> 01:01:05,120
Speaker 1: also have a process for vomiting backup hard in edible

1096
01:01:05,200 --> 01:01:08,560
Speaker 1: body parts that are accidentally slurped up along with nutritious

1097
01:01:08,960 --> 01:01:13,480
Speaker 1: dissolved meat from the prey, not unlike an owl. Owls

1098
01:01:13,520 --> 01:01:17,880
Speaker 1: do that. Owl pellets are an indigestible stuff that they

1099
01:01:18,440 --> 01:01:21,120
Speaker 1: went back up vom. Oh. I always thought those came

1100
01:01:21,120 --> 01:01:23,360
Speaker 1: out the other end. No, no, no, yeah, these kind

1101
01:01:23,360 --> 01:01:25,760
Speaker 1: of these come out the mouth. No, yes, spiders actually

1102
01:01:25,800 --> 01:01:28,320
Speaker 1: they produce pellets. This has been shown in research that

1103
01:01:28,600 --> 01:01:31,520
Speaker 1: indigestible parts. They so they go down, they go down

1104
01:01:31,560 --> 01:01:33,880
Speaker 1: the mouth parts and then they get sort of like

1105
01:01:34,200 --> 01:01:36,720
Speaker 1: I believe, they get sort of caught by these uh,

1106
01:01:36,880 --> 01:01:42,120
Speaker 1: pharyngeal muscles and by sete again these bristles structures that

1107
01:01:42,200 --> 01:01:44,880
Speaker 1: sort of filter them and catch them. Stuff that's not

1108
01:01:45,000 --> 01:01:47,120
Speaker 1: good to eat gets sort of bawled up and then

1109
01:01:47,160 --> 01:01:53,880
Speaker 1: ejected back out. Interesting, delicious, But of course this brings

1110
01:01:53,920 --> 01:01:57,120
Speaker 1: us back to the question though, what about vertebrates? Yeah,

1111
01:01:57,280 --> 01:02:01,160
Speaker 1: we are vertebrates. Can we look to examples of spiders

1112
01:02:01,240 --> 01:02:05,760
Speaker 1: preying on other vertebrates? If there were a giant spider,

1113
01:02:05,800 --> 01:02:07,840
Speaker 1: would it even want to eat us? I mean, would

1114
01:02:07,840 --> 01:02:10,800
Speaker 1: it just be looking for like, where are the you know,

1115
01:02:10,960 --> 01:02:16,240
Speaker 1: equally sized insects for me to eat? Obviously, the primary

1116
01:02:16,240 --> 01:02:18,840
Speaker 1: prey animals of most spiders are going to be other

1117
01:02:19,000 --> 01:02:24,040
Speaker 1: arthropod invertebrates, mainly insects, But what happens when the food

1118
01:02:24,120 --> 01:02:28,000
Speaker 1: chain runs backwards? Do spiders ever seemed to eat vertebrates

1119
01:02:28,040 --> 01:02:31,960
Speaker 1: on purpose, even mammals. Yeah, yeah, this does happen. It

1120
01:02:32,000 --> 01:02:36,200
Speaker 1: doesn't happen that often, but it does happen. One example

1121
01:02:36,240 --> 01:02:40,080
Speaker 1: I want to look at is a paper by paper

1122
01:02:40,160 --> 01:02:44,959
Speaker 1: in Plos one by Martin Knifefeller and Miriam Nornschild, and

1123
01:02:45,280 --> 01:02:50,439
Speaker 1: this was called Bat Predation by Spiders. It's about what

1124
01:02:50,520 --> 01:02:52,960
Speaker 1: you guess it is from the title. They tried to

1125
01:02:53,680 --> 01:02:59,240
Speaker 1: catalog recorded instances of spider predation on bats. Sometimes a

1126
01:02:59,320 --> 01:03:03,080
Speaker 1: bat meets an unfortunate and it gets stuck, entangled in

1127
01:03:03,080 --> 01:03:07,560
Speaker 1: a spider web. Sometimes after that happens, the spider begins

1128
01:03:07,600 --> 01:03:10,280
Speaker 1: to eat. So the author has judged that in many

1129
01:03:10,360 --> 01:03:13,400
Speaker 1: of the recorded instances, it looked like what had happened

1130
01:03:14,080 --> 01:03:16,600
Speaker 1: when a bat died in a spiderweb was what they

1131
01:03:16,640 --> 01:03:19,720
Speaker 1: would call a non predatory death. The bat just got

1132
01:03:19,720 --> 01:03:23,240
Speaker 1: caught in there, got exhausted or dehydrated or something, and

1133
01:03:23,240 --> 01:03:26,240
Speaker 1: it died, and the spider didn't even bother feeding on it, didn't.

1134
01:03:26,240 --> 01:03:28,280
Speaker 1: He probably like he didn't even know what to do

1135
01:03:28,320 --> 01:03:31,919
Speaker 1: with it right. In other examples, however, they identified what

1136
01:03:32,000 --> 01:03:35,600
Speaker 1: they thought looked like genuine predation where the spider appeared

1137
01:03:35,640 --> 01:03:39,800
Speaker 1: to attack, kill, and then eat the captured bat. They

1138
01:03:39,840 --> 01:03:42,919
Speaker 1: also point out that these cases of bat predation, where

1139
01:03:43,040 --> 01:03:45,440
Speaker 1: it at least seemed to them that the spider was

1140
01:03:45,520 --> 01:03:49,280
Speaker 1: genuinely preying on the bat, might inform our judgment of

1141
01:03:49,320 --> 01:03:52,360
Speaker 1: a hypothesis, and this is not necessarily known, but it's

1142
01:03:52,360 --> 01:03:57,720
Speaker 1: a hypothesis in arachnology, the large rare prey hypothesis. And

1143
01:03:57,840 --> 01:04:01,600
Speaker 1: essentially what this suggests is that while most of the

1144
01:04:01,640 --> 01:04:05,800
Speaker 1: prey animals that are captured by large orb weaving spiders

1145
01:04:05,800 --> 01:04:08,520
Speaker 1: are going to be tied little insects of low nutritional

1146
01:04:08,600 --> 01:04:14,200
Speaker 1: value quote, the occasional catch of large, energetically rewarding prey

1147
01:04:14,240 --> 01:04:17,920
Speaker 1: may be essential in order to fulfill the reproductive needs

1148
01:04:18,080 --> 01:04:22,160
Speaker 1: of large orb weaving spiders. So, according to this hypothesis,

1149
01:04:22,200 --> 01:04:25,360
Speaker 1: if it's correct, you've got these spiders that most of

1150
01:04:25,360 --> 01:04:28,280
Speaker 1: what they catch is just junk, it's insect garbage. Every

1151
01:04:28,320 --> 01:04:31,280
Speaker 1: now and then they hit the jackpot. And when they

1152
01:04:31,320 --> 01:04:33,800
Speaker 1: hit the jackpot with a really large insect like a

1153
01:04:33,840 --> 01:04:37,760
Speaker 1: cicada or something, or perhaps even a mammal like a

1154
01:04:37,800 --> 01:04:42,040
Speaker 1: bat or a frog or some other small vertebrate. They

1155
01:04:42,040 --> 01:04:45,400
Speaker 1: get this huge nutritional windfall that allows them to have

1156
01:04:45,960 --> 01:04:48,960
Speaker 1: a much greater chance of reproductive success. Is that kind

1157
01:04:48,960 --> 01:04:50,439
Speaker 1: of like a criminal of this pulling off a lot

1158
01:04:50,440 --> 01:04:54,280
Speaker 1: of petty little jobs, but still has to carry off

1159
01:04:54,520 --> 01:04:58,000
Speaker 1: one big heist every so often to sustain things. It's

1160
01:04:58,040 --> 01:05:00,480
Speaker 1: like the beginning of the sting, you know, the grifters

1161
01:05:00,600 --> 01:05:02,680
Speaker 1: or knocking people over for a few bucks here and

1162
01:05:02,680 --> 01:05:05,640
Speaker 1: there by stealing their wallets, until they accidentally steal the

1163
01:05:05,640 --> 01:05:09,200
Speaker 1: wallet of a guy who's running money for an illegal casino,

1164
01:05:09,400 --> 01:05:13,000
Speaker 1: and they got these thousands of dollars. But of course

1165
01:05:13,040 --> 01:05:15,240
Speaker 1: in that scenario, the gangster then comes after them. I

1166
01:05:15,240 --> 01:05:18,560
Speaker 1: don't know if there's but this underlies the problem of

1167
01:05:18,560 --> 01:05:21,720
Speaker 1: going after larger prey. Do you see through throughout the

1168
01:05:21,800 --> 01:05:24,720
Speaker 1: animal kingdom? And that's that, Yeah, the larger prey come

1169
01:05:24,720 --> 01:05:27,120
Speaker 1: with greater risk. You gotta extend more, extend more energy,

1170
01:05:27,400 --> 01:05:31,200
Speaker 1: possibly risk injuring yourself or even dying at the hands

1171
01:05:31,200 --> 01:05:33,600
Speaker 1: of the larger prey that you're going after. It's a

1172
01:05:33,960 --> 01:05:36,920
Speaker 1: it's a risk, but that's that's what that's. Great rewards

1173
01:05:36,920 --> 01:05:41,600
Speaker 1: come with greater risk, so they do. Yeah, I was

1174
01:05:41,680 --> 01:05:52,480
Speaker 1: eaten by a giant spider. Okay, so that's what it's

1175
01:05:52,520 --> 01:05:54,640
Speaker 1: like to get eaten by a giant spider. I hope

1176
01:05:54,640 --> 01:05:57,080
Speaker 1: you enjoyed it, and I and I hope you enjoy

1177
01:05:57,240 --> 01:06:00,280
Speaker 1: being eaten by a giant spider because they are coming. Yes,

1178
01:06:01,000 --> 01:06:05,360
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, we this is actually a great opportunity. Uh,

1179
01:06:05,440 --> 01:06:08,040
Speaker 1: we just started a thing. We're experimenting with, a thing

1180
01:06:08,080 --> 01:06:11,880
Speaker 1: where we're doing Facebook live videos and looking at trailer

1181
01:06:11,880 --> 01:06:15,440
Speaker 1: footage from old films. So there might be a possibility

1182
01:06:15,520 --> 01:06:17,680
Speaker 1: here with this episode. Oh, this could be great. We

1183
01:06:17,720 --> 01:06:22,040
Speaker 1: could look at some some old nineteen fifties Spider Ma trailers. Yeah,

1184
01:06:22,400 --> 01:06:25,080
Speaker 1: let's check in on our Facebook page and see if

1185
01:06:25,080 --> 01:06:27,600
Speaker 1: that's happening. Maybe we can make that happen the Friday

1186
01:06:27,600 --> 01:06:29,920
Speaker 1: after this airs. I just wanted to clarify I was

1187
01:06:30,000 --> 01:06:32,320
Speaker 1: kidding about the spiders coming by the way, I meant

1188
01:06:32,360 --> 01:06:34,880
Speaker 1: coming from space. I didn't want to suggest that I

1189
01:06:34,920 --> 01:06:37,320
Speaker 1: think that we're there evolving in that direction. And some

1190
01:06:37,360 --> 01:06:40,200
Speaker 1: people do listen to this show as they're falling asleep,

1191
01:06:40,240 --> 01:06:43,320
Speaker 1: so I would hate for that thought to enter into

1192
01:06:43,360 --> 01:06:48,680
Speaker 1: their vulnerable, uh semi dreaming mind and plant any seeds. Yeah,

1193
01:06:48,760 --> 01:06:51,000
Speaker 1: we're not here to plant spider seeds in your head.

1194
01:06:51,240 --> 01:06:53,440
Speaker 1: That's for the twenty seven spiders that crawl into your

1195
01:06:53,440 --> 01:06:56,280
Speaker 1: mouth each night. Yeah, let me retreat and become responsible

1196
01:06:56,320 --> 01:06:58,760
Speaker 1: for a moment in my final in my final moments here,

1197
01:06:58,800 --> 01:07:01,720
Speaker 1: I want to remind you yet in spiders or your friend,

1198
01:07:01,840 --> 01:07:04,280
Speaker 1: they're not your enemy, No reason to fight them. At

1199
01:07:04,360 --> 01:07:07,400
Speaker 1: number two, there's never gonna be a giant spider on Earth.

1200
01:07:08,880 --> 01:07:10,840
Speaker 1: All right. Well, hey, if you want to learn more

1201
01:07:10,840 --> 01:07:13,360
Speaker 1: about this topic or other related topics, heading over to

1202
01:07:13,360 --> 01:07:15,280
Speaker 1: stuff to Build your Mind dot com. That's the mothership.

1203
01:07:15,320 --> 01:07:17,280
Speaker 1: That's where we will find all the episodes. You'll find

1204
01:07:17,320 --> 01:07:20,560
Speaker 1: some videos, which is our recent Monster Science U series

1205
01:07:20,560 --> 01:07:23,080
Speaker 1: that came out for Halloween this year, and we're continuing

1206
01:07:23,120 --> 01:07:25,440
Speaker 1: to celebrate Halloween pretty much throughout you had the rest

1207
01:07:25,440 --> 01:07:27,720
Speaker 1: of the year, so you can keep enjoying that ride

1208
01:07:28,040 --> 01:07:30,040
Speaker 1: with us. Also, you'll find links out to our various

1209
01:07:30,040 --> 01:07:34,520
Speaker 1: social media accounts like Facebook and Twitter and Tumbler and Instagram.

1210
01:07:34,640 --> 01:07:37,080
Speaker 1: And then of course there's the old fashioned way as well.

1211
01:07:37,240 --> 01:07:39,440
Speaker 1: Of course, you can always email us if you have

1212
01:07:39,880 --> 01:07:42,560
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, or want to

1213
01:07:42,600 --> 01:07:45,200
Speaker 1: suggest a topic for the Future at Blow the Mind

1214
01:07:45,360 --> 01:07:56,560
Speaker 1: at how stuff Works dot com. Well more on this

1215
01:07:56,760 --> 01:07:59,240
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, because that how stuff Works

1216
01:07:59,240 --> 01:08:18,920
Speaker 1: dot Com the big part to start about. Start