Speaker 1: This episode is brought to Welcome to Stuff You Should
Speaker 1: Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Yeah, there's Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there. Uh and this is Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know the podcast. That's right. How are you doing?
Speaker 1: I'm doing great? Man? Good? How are you doing? Jerry? Jerry?
Speaker 1: Oh goodness me. Good to be back in one A. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been fighters and stuff twenty four hours. Yes, last
Speaker 1: I saw one thing, um when I was watching a
Speaker 1: documentary on spiders that they said, there's never You're never
Speaker 1: more than an arm linked away from lots of spiders.
Speaker 1: And I wondered, because I've done you. I finally did
Speaker 1: your little trick with the flashlight. Did it work? Oh yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: it's horrifying. They are everywhere. But I wonder about like
Speaker 1: in this room and this it feels like hermetically sealed
Speaker 1: concrete vault. Are there spiders in here? There's one dangling
Speaker 1: above your head right now? I see No, they are pretty,
Speaker 1: they're good at hiding, they're small. So you're saying they're
Speaker 1: in here, I would guess, So, I mean, like, why
Speaker 1: why would they not be in here, like the one
Speaker 1: place in the world and they've been around for what
Speaker 1: four million years? Yeah, they're pretty durable. They've spread everywhere everywhere,
Speaker 1: and um, one of the ways that they have adapted
Speaker 1: is by generating new species. Yeah, like to the tune
Speaker 1: of forty thousand that we know about, and they're like,
Speaker 1: there may be thousands of more species, not just spiders
Speaker 1: species exactly. Um. They have a tendency to kind of
Speaker 1: take over an area because they're actually in their realm
Speaker 1: of existence, they're frequently apex predators. Yeah, I mean they're
Speaker 1: they're the uh, they're they've been lined the sharks and
Speaker 1: that they are robots that kill and eat and make
Speaker 1: baby spiders and sort of what they do in life. Yes,
Speaker 1: but they also do some pretty neat geometric designs. Their
Speaker 1: spiders are pretty fascinating, super creepy things. Yeah. That thing
Speaker 1: you sent the how they take over that? Um like
Speaker 1: that building? Yeah, the it was Baltimore's wastewater treatment plant.
Speaker 1: They took over four acres of it. It was abandoned, right,
Speaker 1: No oh really, Yeah, they just got a foothold in there.
Speaker 1: That happened while dudes were working in the building. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they said no, they noticed, but like they what are
Speaker 1: these guys gonna do? They're like wastewater treatment guys, not exterminators,
Speaker 1: So they didn't know what to doator, but they well
Speaker 1: they did. The Baltimore UM City was like, can anybody
Speaker 1: help with this week have something of a spider problem,
Speaker 1: and actually brought in some academics who determined that something
Speaker 1: like there were thirty five thousand spiders per cubic meter
Speaker 1: in that building. That is a ton of spiders, they
Speaker 1: were saying, and in this article, I think it was
Speaker 1: on why points out that these are mid career entomologists
Speaker 1: who um like have seen stuff before? Did they say? Etomologists? Entomologists? Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, um. And they were like, I've never seen
Speaker 1: anything like this before my life. So they brought in
Speaker 1: the spider version of Quint from Jaws. Probably seems like
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to move, you have to kill the queen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now I speak even he was like, where you guys
Speaker 1: gotta go? No, there's not a queen. Because I didn't
Speaker 1: realize this, but it makes sense when I hear it.
Speaker 1: Spiders lead solitary lives. They bow down to no one.
Speaker 1: They just do what they want to do yes, and
Speaker 1: spiders are not insects. They are arachnids in the class Arachneita,
Speaker 1: the order um arena. Even got told how to pronounce those.
Speaker 1: I think I think it's just a didn't that what
Speaker 1: the lady said. I think she said, like it it's
Speaker 1: pronounced like it looks okay, so it would be aaron a. Well,
Speaker 1: it's the same order as ticks that we've talked about
Speaker 1: in scorpions, which I would like to cover at some point.
Speaker 1: Scorpions and my what was that my scorpion? I thought
Speaker 1: you were gonna sing rocky like a hurricane. I've probably
Speaker 1: seen winds of change instead. Really, yeah, it's a good
Speaker 1: song man. I like a little harder. I like it
Speaker 1: all all scorpions, all the time. Alright. So spiders, because
Speaker 1: there are forty thousand species um, they obviously differ from
Speaker 1: the tiniest little thing to the the goliath bird eater
Speaker 1: of Australia, which is can be as big as a
Speaker 1: dinner plate. I think that's actually from South America. Oh
Speaker 1: is it? Uh huh? I thought those were Australian. Australia
Speaker 1: has plenty of spiders scary ones too, but the goliath
Speaker 1: bird eaters. Yeah, and it's called a bird eater because
Speaker 1: it can actually eat small birds. It does. It frequently
Speaker 1: eats some little baby birds, but those are still birds.
Speaker 1: And it's a spider eating a bird. There's a there's
Speaker 1: a video that we have on the podcast page um
Speaker 1: for this episode of a goliath spider eating a mouse
Speaker 1: and it it's it's remarkable. Yeah, dude, I saw one
Speaker 1: of a spider eating a viper snake what like the
Speaker 1: snake went into the hole and the tarantula one what
Speaker 1: And I mean they'll eat fish, they eat frogs and lizards.
Speaker 1: Insects obviously, Yeah, but they'll eat whatever. Yeah. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: do make it into a soup down it goes. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I think we've kind of laid the ground where
Speaker 1: care spiders are extraordinarily fascinating. You said they are arachnids um,
Speaker 1: which means that they're not actually insects. And the thing
Speaker 1: that differentiates them from insects is pretty simple. They don't
Speaker 1: have and a true thorax. They have a cephalothorax, right,
Speaker 1: which is the head and the thorax fused together, and
Speaker 1: then they have the abdomen. So spiders have two segments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's what makes them different. Yeah. And the the
Speaker 1: segments to me seemed what they housed seemed a little backward,
Speaker 1: like that rear segment the abdomen. I would have thought like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's where the stomach is and all that stuff. The stomach,
Speaker 1: the brain, the eyes, and the mouth are actually in
Speaker 1: the front cephalothorax, and the abdomen is where the heart
Speaker 1: and lungs, reproductive organs and digestive tract are. It seems
Speaker 1: so a little flip floppy to me. It's like a
Speaker 1: Ferrari where like the trunk is in the front and
Speaker 1: the engines in the back. Yeah, or a Volkswagen the
Speaker 1: same thing. Yeah. Yeah, well not all Volkswagons, but my
Speaker 1: old Beadle had the rear engine. It makes them go
Speaker 1: go go, yeah. Or it's air cold, so if it's
Speaker 1: super hot, it makes it stop stop stop. Yeah. Another
Speaker 1: thing that spiders have in common is they all have
Speaker 1: eight legs, although some of them it looks like they
Speaker 1: have ten pairs of legs. Oh no, I'm sorry, ten legs,
Speaker 1: five pair of legs, And what that is is actually
Speaker 1: they have something called petty palps. Oh yeah. Some of
Speaker 1: them are longer and look leggy. Right, So it looks
Speaker 1: like they have five pair of legs, but really it's
Speaker 1: four pair of legs and a pair of petty palps.
Speaker 1: And these things are basically it's like um, their four arms,
Speaker 1: their arms, it's like a squirrel. Imagine a squirrel, spidery
Speaker 1: little tiny little front arms. Yeah, eating a nut or
Speaker 1: a mouse or a viper um what else? All spiders
Speaker 1: spin silk, right yeah, but not all of them spin webs,
Speaker 1: right yeah, but they all of them are capable of
Speaker 1: creating silk, which we'll talk about. To me, that's the
Speaker 1: gold that's just amazing, and other there are other insects
Speaker 1: that can spin silk like silkworms. Nothing in nature is
Speaker 1: like spider silk, though it's strong, it's elastic. Um. For example, well,
Speaker 1: if you are a spider and you build a web,
Speaker 1: you can trap a bumblebee, a big old bumblebee at
Speaker 1: full speed, and your your um web will be able
Speaker 1: to withstand the impact. It's it's a huge, huge, massive
Speaker 1: impact and you're the tensile strength of your web is
Speaker 1: going to take it like nothing. Yeah. I think I
Speaker 1: saw one thing that said it was a hundred times
Speaker 1: stronger than a human ligament. That's strong. Yeah, stronger than
Speaker 1: steel even that's strong. But again that's a tease. We're
Speaker 1: gonna cover silk here in full. Um. But back to
Speaker 1: the body, my friend. Uh, Spiders breathe in a very
Speaker 1: basic way but fascinating. They have a trachea and what
Speaker 1: are called booklongs. Uh. Most of the species have both,
Speaker 1: some just have one. Um, but it's really a different thing.
Speaker 1: What what they do is air flows in uh through
Speaker 1: these basically slits and the exoskeleton, which is the trachea,
Speaker 1: and then there's just a lot of osmosis but diffusion
Speaker 1: bass exchange. Yeah, but it's not like I'm breathing in air.
Speaker 1: It's just air is being diffused in and CEO two
Speaker 1: is diffused out right, and the movement of the spider
Speaker 1: actually pushes air through these trichia. Yeah, it's not like
Speaker 1: a lung that breathes quote unquote. And then they do
Speaker 1: have most species have both trichia and booklongs. Um. But
Speaker 1: the booklung kind of is like an extra well, it's
Speaker 1: an extra lung. It's an extra place where gas exchange
Speaker 1: takes place. And um, they're called book lungs because it
Speaker 1: looks like an open book that's being flopped open, So
Speaker 1: there's different leads and um. Those leaves are filled with blood,
Speaker 1: but the exterior of them become in contact with air,
Speaker 1: so that's where the gas exchange takes place. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: speaking of the blood, it's called hemo lymph and it
Speaker 1: circulates O two and nutrients and hormones at all. But
Speaker 1: um again and sort of a fascinating way. It has
Speaker 1: a simple heart that's just like uh, pump in, pump out,
Speaker 1: and it basically just saturates all the organs and blood
Speaker 1: and that's where they get their oxygen. Yeah. It's not
Speaker 1: a closed system where like your your your arm is
Speaker 1: getting blood because blood vessels are are carrying or carrying
Speaker 1: blood to it. It's like your entire arm, everything beneath
Speaker 1: your skin would be full of blood. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: everything in there that needs oxygen or hormones or whatever
Speaker 1: it is getting them just from being bathed in this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty remarkable. It is brains, they've got them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they are tiny little brains, and some spiders are smarter
Speaker 1: than others, but in general, spiders, the way I read
Speaker 1: it was, are sort of like little chemically signaled robots
Speaker 1: it's just chemical signals flying all over the place that
Speaker 1: operate everything. I think the jumping spiders are the smartest one.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and it's kind of making it's puzzling science.
Speaker 1: So there's they have ganglia. They don't even have true
Speaker 1: brains spiders exactly, and they're like little nerve bundles and
Speaker 1: that's where all their impulses are originate, and that transfers
Speaker 1: the signals to the rest of their body. Um. And
Speaker 1: in a jumping spider, the ganglia amounts to about a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand neurons, just tiny, tiny, tiny amount of brain power,
Speaker 1: and yet their vision is about on par with human vision.
Speaker 1: The jumping spider jumper, yes, the great They have eight
Speaker 1: eyes with almost three hundred and sixty degree vision um
Speaker 1: and they can see very clearly their surroundings. But again
Speaker 1: they're doing this with a hundred thousand neurons. So roboticists
Speaker 1: and a lot of other smart people are looking into
Speaker 1: this to see like where this sufficiency is taking place,
Speaker 1: Like how you can generate that level of clarity and
Speaker 1: information from just a hundred thousand neurons. Yeah, they think, um,
Speaker 1: they don't think. They know that. They like to drink
Speaker 1: human blood jumping spiders, but from mosquitoes, and supposedly by
Speaker 1: looking at a mosquito they can tell if it has
Speaker 1: blood in it or not, just from vision. Um and
Speaker 1: I don't think they figured that out either, but they've
Speaker 1: seen clearly that every experiment they go to the mosquito
Speaker 1: with the blood, which is remarkable, jumping like fifty times
Speaker 1: their body length to to pounce on whatever it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So imagine being a human and jumping even one time
Speaker 1: your own body length, your height, you know, like a
Speaker 1: standing broad jump. Yeah, but right, that's not gonna happen.
Speaker 1: These guys can do fifty times, and they do it
Speaker 1: quick to super fast. Spiders are amazing. Hey, maybe that's
Speaker 1: why they called the comic the Amazing Spider Man. Oh maybe.
Speaker 1: And it's funny. When I was reading all this stuff,
Speaker 1: every like ten seconds, I was like, oh, just like
Speaker 1: Spider Man, so clearly stand like to this research. Well,
Speaker 1: what's funny is like this this article by old Tom Harris.
Speaker 1: Um old Man Harris tries to like it compares like
Speaker 1: spiders to humans throughout the whole thing. Yeah, just like
Speaker 1: human spiders have a brain, but not really Yeah. Um And,
Speaker 1: speaking of Spider Man, I guess spidy sense is sort
Speaker 1: of what's uh really going on. They do have those
Speaker 1: eyes and while this jumping spider can see really well,
Speaker 1: most spiders it's a secondary sense and they use that
Speaker 1: spidy sense that can feel vibrations like remarkably well feel it,
Speaker 1: feel it is that good vibrations. Um. So they can
Speaker 1: sense anything from like a long way away and sort
Speaker 1: of know what it is, even especially if something's in
Speaker 1: the web. So they've got hairs all over their body right, Um.
Speaker 1: They also have additional hairs called trick of both for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and those the the hairs um the rest of their
Speaker 1: body or basically like, um, it's touching the ground, so
Speaker 1: we can sense like movement on the ground or vibration
Speaker 1: of the ground or in their web or something like that.
Speaker 1: But the trick of both the hair can sense movement
Speaker 1: in the air. Like. That's how sensitive this is. And
Speaker 1: this is how spiders really sense their environment. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: they can also taste, unlike snakes um the one that
Speaker 1: we just released, um and smell. Yeah, so they pretty
Speaker 1: well defined senses and they they really enjoy the taste
Speaker 1: of mouse brains, like they really save for it mouse
Speaker 1: brain soup. Uh, speaking of feet and legs, I had
Speaker 1: no idea this was the case. Um, they have this adaptation.
Speaker 1: Like we said, there are lots of thick hairs on
Speaker 1: the legs and um, at the bottom of each hair
Speaker 1: on the feet, well our feet. Yeah, so at the
Speaker 1: end of tons of hair at the end of each
Speaker 1: leg and they have eight legs, but on the end
Speaker 1: of each hair or a bunch of feet like you say, yeah,
Speaker 1: a little feet and then they can drip onto like anything, Yeah,
Speaker 1: except the bathtub. Was that a joke or something? Or
Speaker 1: is that like a well known thing about spiders that
Speaker 1: they can't walk on bathtubs, because I don't know what
Speaker 1: that means. I think bathtubs are a place where you
Speaker 1: find spiders a lot of times because they can't get out.
Speaker 1: So you'll be like, oh, there's a spider in the bathtub,
Speaker 1: and you see it just going near and sliding back down.
Speaker 1: So I think that was a bit of a joke,
Speaker 1: and that's my guess. Have you ever had one come
Speaker 1: out of the faucet the bathtub faucet? No, huh, that's
Speaker 1: always fun. I was terrified for a brief time as
Speaker 1: a kid because I went to turn on my bath
Speaker 1: water and like put my hand down and like a
Speaker 1: spider came out. And so for several years afterward, I
Speaker 1: was petrified. Yeah, I was just a stinky little boy.
Speaker 1: And that was last year. All right, So let's take
Speaker 1: a break and then after that we will talk about
Speaker 1: the malting process and a little it about spider silk.
Speaker 1: All right, are we at the skeleton? I think we
Speaker 1: are man exoskeleton. Yes, spiders have skeleton just like humans,
Speaker 1: except it's on the outside exactly. Um, and they move
Speaker 1: using muscles, right, but strangely they only half moved using muscles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was just so interesting to me. It seems like
Speaker 1: a mal adaptation. Oh yeah, yeah, like something they should
Speaker 1: be able to do. Yeah. Um, spiders are able to
Speaker 1: contract their muscles right, so they can move their legs inward,
Speaker 1: and that's how they take a step and then to
Speaker 1: complete the step. Rather than having muscles expand to move
Speaker 1: the legs outward, again, they don't. They all have those
Speaker 1: muscles for some reason. Instead, they pump hemo lymph into
Speaker 1: their legs using hydraulic pressure to force them back out.
Speaker 1: So muscles hydraulic pressure, muscles hydraulic pressure. It's so strange
Speaker 1: it is really strange, but it clearly works well. It works.
Speaker 1: Sometimes there's a spider can suffer from dehydration basically to
Speaker 1: where it doesn't have enough hemo lymph to um which
Speaker 1: is blood again to pump in to create the hydraulic
Speaker 1: pressure necessary to make its legs move out. So if
Speaker 1: you ever see a spider on its back with its
Speaker 1: legs all curved inward, that's a dehydrated spider right there,
Speaker 1: may handsome caterade. It may not be dead yet, basically
Speaker 1: right right, and he'll tell you too, not dead yet,
Speaker 1: Just poke it and then give him a drink and
Speaker 1: send him along his way. The exoskeleton itself is um
Speaker 1: made of cuticle, and it's basically proteins like kitan and
Speaker 1: sugars like polysaccharides, and they're just stretched out and layered
Speaker 1: upon each other to make it super strong. It's like
Speaker 1: a really strong shell. It is for protection, obviously, but
Speaker 1: the problem is that shell, once it's hardened, it doesn't
Speaker 1: keep growing, although the spider does so. Much like snakes
Speaker 1: and lots of other animals, spiders have adapted revolved to
Speaker 1: mold to get rid of their old exoskeleton and um
Speaker 1: a bunch of hormones trigger this. When it's time to
Speaker 1: start growing. Uh, the spider will, I think, just like
Speaker 1: a snake, start to absorb some of the inner layer
Speaker 1: of the exoskeleton, right, and it becomes a little liquefied,
Speaker 1: and they create this um, this fluid barrier between the
Speaker 1: old exoskeleton and the new exo skeleton that they're growing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just like a little gap, basically a liquid gap, right exactly.
Speaker 1: And the as the new exoskeleton starts to get grow
Speaker 1: a little more and a little more, eventually absorbs that
Speaker 1: fluid and then now there's like a a gap, a
Speaker 1: real gap in between the all exo skeleton and the
Speaker 1: new one. Yeah, and then it's um it's basically trapped
Speaker 1: inside this old skeleton and does a little incredible hulk
Speaker 1: move where it pumps that the blood again the hemo
Speaker 1: lymph and expands the cephalothorax and it just like bust
Speaker 1: out of it and then just keeps wriggling around until
Speaker 1: it's completely out of it. But it's pants never fully
Speaker 1: rip off. That always bugged me. It's just so unlikely
Speaker 1: that a guy in like a thirty two ways can
Speaker 1: become this like tin foot giant, right, it just is
Speaker 1: like the lower calves and ankles were big enough to
Speaker 1: rip his pants into tatters down there? What about the
Speaker 1: waist and the thighs. No pulks would be naked, you know, technically, yes,
Speaker 1: And again Stanley really studied spiders, so you'd think he
Speaker 1: would know that about the hulks pants. But all right,
Speaker 1: so after they have molted um, this is when they
Speaker 1: do most of their growing because their new exoskeleton is um.
Speaker 1: It's not quite fully hard yet. It can expand a
Speaker 1: little bit at this point, but they're super vulnerable because
Speaker 1: it's not as hard at that point as well. Right,
Speaker 1: so they'll just kind of go off and be like,
Speaker 1: let me alone, let me alone, let me alone. I
Speaker 1: know him, the apex predator, but I've made a lot
Speaker 1: of enemies along the way. They are looking for me
Speaker 1: right now. So Chuck, we can't really put it off
Speaker 1: any longer. And I don't know why we would. Time
Speaker 1: to get silky. Yeah, we're gonna talk about spider silk. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. We talked already a little bit about its
Speaker 1: tensil strength, stronger than steel or kevlar um. And here's
Speaker 1: the neat thing is that it's actually a liquid when
Speaker 1: it comes out until you start stretching it and then
Speaker 1: it becomes a solid. Right, it's extruded from spiggott and
Speaker 1: the spiders um spinnerets. Right, So the spinnerets are um
Speaker 1: these little pairs of almost like arms or whatever that
Speaker 1: the spiders like this kind of yeah, As the silk
Speaker 1: is the silk which is made up of amino acids
Speaker 1: in like a water solution, like you said, when it's extruded,
Speaker 1: the spider can do all sorts of different things with this.
Speaker 1: And depending on how much um like pressure it applies
Speaker 1: that the spigot or whatever, it could be a really
Speaker 1: thin strand, it can be a thicker strand, it can
Speaker 1: be short long, it could be a thin strand encased
Speaker 1: in the thicker strand. They can do all sorts of
Speaker 1: really neat stuff with their um their silk, so much
Speaker 1: so that that researchers still aren't a hundred percent sure
Speaker 1: what the heck is going on here, but they just
Speaker 1: know that the spiders can do tons of different stuff
Speaker 1: with just the silk proteins alone and the extrusion. Once
Speaker 1: they come out, the spider can weed these things together
Speaker 1: to create even stronger thread and again, this is stuff
Speaker 1: that apparently it's uh several times stronger wait for weight
Speaker 1: than steel. Yeah, and kevlar. So it's five times as
Speaker 1: strong as an equal massive steel and twice as strong
Speaker 1: as an equal massive kevlar. And remember with them the
Speaker 1: bulletproof vest episode, we talked about using goat's milk to
Speaker 1: produce spider silk. Yeah, they're doing it. Yeah, they definitely are.
Speaker 1: They're not using it for uh, they haven't applied it yet,
Speaker 1: but they do have um goat farms. They basically found, uh,
Speaker 1: the genetic code specifically that creates the drag line. And
Speaker 1: the drag line is the um that's sort of the
Speaker 1: most common silk that it will spin. It's like a line.
Speaker 1: It's like a mountain climber's rope they'll leave behind them
Speaker 1: and in case it needs to like retreat quickly, it'll
Speaker 1: have a little rope to pull itself along. So that's
Speaker 1: the drag line. So they isolated the genetic code for
Speaker 1: this drag line, put that in the goat embryo implanet
Speaker 1: and a mama goat and the goat came out like
Speaker 1: why they don't even know? That's the beauty of it.
Speaker 1: They milk the goat and then from that point it's
Speaker 1: a little bit like making cheese um from what I saw,
Speaker 1: like they separate the they skim the fat off, and
Speaker 1: it's like separating curds from way and then potentially we
Speaker 1: could have like ligament replacement with spider or heart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're looking to regrow human hearts with this stuff. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine having a new heart grown from spider silk
Speaker 1: made from goat's milk pumping in your chest. It's pretty neat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think i'd tell people about that, be like, let
Speaker 1: me tell you about my new heart exactly. That's ado
Speaker 1: with spiders, goats and my poor diet a lot of
Speaker 1: steak um, which is not true. What do you mean
Speaker 1: misteak is not bad for you? Oh right right? Too
Speaker 1: much medic myth? Is that the deal? Yeah, fats and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Uh. They think that the silk glands
Speaker 1: originally started out as just ways to mark territory, like
Speaker 1: a scent gland, and then they realize, I'm actually can
Speaker 1: leave a substance behind that's super strong. As it turns
Speaker 1: out super strong, and again also pound for pound, it's
Speaker 1: as flexible as um rubber, natural rubber. Yeah. So it's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing stuff. And again, the spider can do all
Speaker 1: sorts of different things with it. And one of the
Speaker 1: things you said is create the drag line, which is
Speaker 1: like a trail of bread crumbs for an emergency. Yeah,
Speaker 1: most spiders, that's the most common use of spider silk,
Speaker 1: I believe, across species. Right, just like I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: fifteen feet that way, and I'm gonna leave my little
Speaker 1: drag line behind in case I need to hide. Tell
Speaker 1: it out of there. Yep. They also have other glands
Speaker 1: that can produce substances to put onto the spider silk,
Speaker 1: like sticky stuff, which is very useful in creating webs
Speaker 1: or water resistant materials. Yep. Um, basically like spray net
Speaker 1: with what's this stuff? Just blank? When like for gortex
Speaker 1: he spray uh Scotch card, Scotch card. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: Female spiders will use uh, they'll make protective cocoons. Sometimes.
Speaker 1: If you're in your basement and you see a big
Speaker 1: looks like a cotton ball full of eggs, that's a
Speaker 1: spider's sack. Yeah, it's a cocoon they've they've woven to
Speaker 1: help out their little little guys and gals survive. And
Speaker 1: then did you see the net cast? No, I'm I
Speaker 1: ran across in this article, but I haven't seen one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can just google on YouTube or whatever net casting
Speaker 1: spider And it's basically like a little uh fishing net
Speaker 1: that they'll weave between and hold it between their legs
Speaker 1: like a sheet, and then something walks by and they
Speaker 1: just throw it over their head real quick and like
Speaker 1: wrap them up in it. You can throw it in
Speaker 1: the van and drive off. Basically, So the probably the
Speaker 1: most famous and I can't believe I even just said probably,
Speaker 1: but the most famous you of spider silk in nature
Speaker 1: is to spider webs. Yeah, the most amazing thing you
Speaker 1: will see is an orb weaved web. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of the orb weaved. Is the good one that's
Speaker 1: the geometric looking. They clearly care about it. There are
Speaker 1: plenty of other spiders that really don't care what their
Speaker 1: webs look like the right. Yeah, they drink out of
Speaker 1: mugs that they're like, I hate mondays and stuff. They
Speaker 1: just don't care about their web. Like black widows actually
Speaker 1: make terrible stupid webs. Yeah, and you would think like
Speaker 1: they're sleek, they're they're vicious symbol. Yeah, but they don't
Speaker 1: care what their web looks like. And what are you
Speaker 1: gonna do. I'll bite you, yeah that's what they say.
Speaker 1: Or I'll mate with you and kill you. Right. Either way,
Speaker 1: you're getting bit. Have you ever seen you see a
Speaker 1: lot of them in your apartment or a house or
Speaker 1: what do you implying? No? Well, I mean well you
Speaker 1: don't have a basement. No, see, I go on my basement, dude.
Speaker 1: They're everywhere. Man, it's creepy. It is creepy because you know,
Speaker 1: they am brown reclusives, which we'll talk about too. They're
Speaker 1: very reclusive, hence the name for the brown recluse. But
Speaker 1: black waidows are the same. They don't want to have
Speaker 1: anything to do with you, and when you come near them,
Speaker 1: they want to get away from you. So having them
Speaker 1: in your house is not really much of an issue
Speaker 1: for you. It is for the insects in your house,
Speaker 1: but for you it doesn't really matter. But just seeing
Speaker 1: them and just knowing that it just makes you kind
Speaker 1: of shudder, right. Well, that that shiny red hourglass is
Speaker 1: just like creepy. Look they look really deadly. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I have an unfinished basement, so there are spiders everywhere
Speaker 1: in my basement, dude, everywhere? Is it like the Baltimore
Speaker 1: Wastewater treatment plant down there? It almost is like I won't, um,
Speaker 1: I won't reach into any uh darkened area of my
Speaker 1: basement to get a tool or something. That's probably smart
Speaker 1: because they would want to get away from your arm.
Speaker 1: But if you really scare them or something that they
Speaker 1: feel threatened, they'll come at you. Like It's not like
Speaker 1: they won't bite you, So I think that's that's very
Speaker 1: a good chuck. I'm going to get you shoulder length
Speaker 1: um leather gloves for Christmas. I've got some, do you yet?
Speaker 1: Not for that, but sure you should wear them when
Speaker 1: you go to reach of the well. I worry about
Speaker 1: my animals sometimes, but I read that um spider venom
Speaker 1: and we're jumping ahead a little bit, but it's not
Speaker 1: harmful to animals. Like the most deadly spider in the
Speaker 1: world is the funnel uh Sydney funnel weaver fun funnel
Speaker 1: web in Australia, of course Sydney and um they I
Speaker 1: saw a video of a cat like playing with one
Speaker 1: and it said for some reason, it like doesn't affect
Speaker 1: any animal, any mammal but humans. That's really weird, and
Speaker 1: they have no idea why because humans came along way
Speaker 1: after spiders did so then no one can figure that
Speaker 1: part out. It's really odd. Yeah, I don't think you
Speaker 1: have to worry about your pets with spider bites. That's
Speaker 1: a good ps right thing. All right, So we're back
Speaker 1: at the web. I would advise everyone at some point,
Speaker 1: I'd like you to follow along if you're at home,
Speaker 1: but go to the House Supports article on spiders. That
Speaker 1: little graphic. It's so helpful. The flash animation. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it works not on Android devices, but it just
Speaker 1: you just go to your desktop. Desktop version of the
Speaker 1: site has this the little flash where you just click
Speaker 1: next and it shows you exactly what it takes to
Speaker 1: build a spider web. Yeah, but we'll we'll talk you
Speaker 1: through it here. Um. The first thing that happens is
Speaker 1: the spider gets up on someplace high up, like a
Speaker 1: tree branch, and fires that one it's called a bridge,
Speaker 1: that one starting point down and just hope the wind
Speaker 1: attaches it to something else below it, and if it attaches,
Speaker 1: then it cinches it up really tight. And he's like,
Speaker 1: I've got this sort of like the foundation that's the baseline.
Speaker 1: The baseline, Yeah, very nice. And uh, the spider crawls
Speaker 1: across that baseline, which I think it's a bridge is
Speaker 1: what it's called. Like baseline, all right. It crawls across
Speaker 1: the base and as it does, it releases another line
Speaker 1: of silk that's um much looser, sort of dangles below it,
Speaker 1: and it attaches it at each end where the baseline
Speaker 1: is attached to those two branches to right, and like
Speaker 1: you said, it dangles below it, forming is kind of
Speaker 1: a lazy V. And the spider crawls down to the
Speaker 1: lowest point of that V and then drops another line
Speaker 1: from that point down to say another anchor point, so
Speaker 1: that forms like a tighter y. Yeah, it sort of
Speaker 1: looks like an upside down coat hanger. If the if
Speaker 1: the if the hook was straightened out exactly or why
Speaker 1: you know, a why with a line crossing the two
Speaker 1: points at top exactly. So now it's got this and again, um,
Speaker 1: it tightens everything up along the way if everything is
Speaker 1: going as planned, and then you have it has to
Speaker 1: lay out frame threads and this is when it starts
Speaker 1: going in Uh not I guess a circle, but a
Speaker 1: circle made up of straight lines. Uh, yeah, that kind
Speaker 1: of Yeah. I want to say octagon. But it's more
Speaker 1: than eight sides. It's a polygon, is it. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: more more than one gone, so it's a polygon. I
Speaker 1: thought poly meant five. No, No, I think that's a
Speaker 1: I don't think so hectagon pentagon? I think so, man, no, man,
Speaker 1: we get killed. But it's it's a it's several rhombus
Speaker 1: is put together, all right? With that? So there's a structure.
Speaker 1: Now there's like the outer structure, there's an inner structure.
Speaker 1: And the thing is getting stronger and stronger, and the
Speaker 1: spider will create um. It will start at the middle
Speaker 1: and basically create like a circular like a Nautilus motion,
Speaker 1: laying silk all around. Most people think of spiderwebs is
Speaker 1: fairly sticky. It is not sticky at this point, and
Speaker 1: for one very good reason. The spider has to move
Speaker 1: along it, so it hasn't laid down any sticky silk yet.
Speaker 1: But once it creates this um, this circular pattern, and
Speaker 1: knows where it's gonna go, it goes back around it
Speaker 1: and eats the old stuff while it lays down a silky,
Speaker 1: sticky silk in its place. Yeah, it's it's a spiral.
Speaker 1: We keep saying circle. I think spiral makes a little
Speaker 1: more sense. It's the word. So yeah, like you said,
Speaker 1: it'll it'll eat the previous one, laid down the sticky one,
Speaker 1: but it also still has an auxiliary spiral to get
Speaker 1: around on. It just knows where to walk basically, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I'm not gonna walk on the sticky one. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna walk on the other one. Right. It was pretty
Speaker 1: amazing in itself. Yeah, and then it's web is is
Speaker 1: created and that's again it's called an orb web. A
Speaker 1: lot of spiders and it's mostly from garden spiders that
Speaker 1: create orb webs in an elevated area. Beautiful. Um, Charlotte
Speaker 1: must have been a garden spider and it's clearly an
Speaker 1: orb web. The thing definitely have more than a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand neurons because it could spell Yeah. We had a
Speaker 1: big garden spider um we've won last year on our
Speaker 1: side deck attaching to our house and was in a
Speaker 1: great place that the dogs wouldn't hit it and we
Speaker 1: wouldn't hit it, and we would just go out every
Speaker 1: day and be like, you know, check it out and
Speaker 1: see how it was doing. How was it doing. It
Speaker 1: was doing great lots of lots of flies and stuff,
Speaker 1: and it was fattening up while they're not there for long. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: So generally they'll hang out in the middle of that
Speaker 1: web wait for the vibrations. And like we said, they
Speaker 1: can even tell the difference between like a wasp getting caught,
Speaker 1: which is not so great sometimes, or uh, butterfly, let's say,
Speaker 1: and which they want to eat. So they love butterfly
Speaker 1: delicious flight tastes like frog legs to them. Uh. Some
Speaker 1: other spiders will be like, I'm not waiting in the
Speaker 1: middle of this web. It's raining out. I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: hang out in my nest. And they'll they'll leave like
Speaker 1: a drag line that in this case is considered a
Speaker 1: signal line, and it's just attached to the web. So
Speaker 1: they're looking for signals like vibrations from the web. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like, uh, it's like being the laziest fisherman, the
Speaker 1: one that just throws out the thing with the bomber
Speaker 1: and then just start drinking beer and reading their outdoor
Speaker 1: readers readers digests, and then when they feel something, they're like,
Speaker 1: oh man, i'm fishing exactly. Yeah, it's that kind of spider.
Speaker 1: Uh here's the other neat thing. When a web is
Speaker 1: no longer useful, many times the spider will eat it
Speaker 1: and recycle that silk. Yeah, which is amazing. It breaks
Speaker 1: down the proteins and it uses it again later. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little recyclers. Pretty smart things. All right, Well, let's
Speaker 1: take our final break here and then we will talk
Speaker 1: about some other hunting methods that spiders use right after this.
Speaker 1: All right, so we're back and we're talking about other
Speaker 1: hunting methods. Um As, I said, this great documentary I
Speaker 1: watched said that spiders or some of the maybe the
Speaker 1: best most efficient, fully realized predator on the planet. Dude,
Speaker 1: like as well as a shark. Yeah, as good as
Speaker 1: a shark. Spider would kill a shark in a second,
Speaker 1: that he was the size of a shark. You might, definitely.
Speaker 1: And by the way we did our little p s
Speaker 1: a with snakes, you shouldn't kill spiders either, or no,
Speaker 1: I mean, like you want to leave them around because
Speaker 1: they're like taking care of a lot of pests that
Speaker 1: you don't want. I talked about mosquitoes. I hate mosquitoes.
Speaker 1: Who doesn't. I'll kill a mosquito. So a spider will
Speaker 1: eat a mosquito in a second. It's like frog legs
Speaker 1: to them. Again, nothing but rock legs. Uh. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about some of the other ways that spiders can hunt. Um,
Speaker 1: some have venom, Like they're waiting a little trap door
Speaker 1: that they've made a little hole in the ground. They
Speaker 1: build a little web web door on a hinge like
Speaker 1: a tiger pit, and they'll jump out and you can
Speaker 1: see video of this online too, or they'll let you
Speaker 1: fall into the hole and then they're on you. Like
Speaker 1: that snake. Yeah, this tarantula ate a viper man. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: And when I say ate, it like it's not like
Speaker 1: a snake eat something and it's just not there anymore. Like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it sucked out whatever it could eat from
Speaker 1: the snake after paralyzing it with its venom, which is
Speaker 1: where we are. Um. Wolf spiders, Yeah, they're land spider.
Speaker 1: They don't hunt with the web. They stalk their prey.
Speaker 1: Uh huh yeah, which is terrifying. Yeah, jumping spiders do
Speaker 1: that too. Yeah. The difference, So jumping spiders stalk their
Speaker 1: prey kind of like a cat. But when a cat
Speaker 1: is ready to pounce, it will pounce and run. A
Speaker 1: jumping spider just pounces and it lands to work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and your toast. You ever seen the wolf spider when
Speaker 1: it has all the babies on its back, No jump
Speaker 1: off and run around. That's something that I think is
Speaker 1: is worth meant in here. Yeah, it's terrifying. So you said,
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of spiders. Um, a lot
Speaker 1: of spiders will create like a cocoon for their spider
Speaker 1: lyings with silk, and a lot of spider species will
Speaker 1: just like there you go, kids, you're have a good life,
Speaker 1: and the spider mom goes off. Wolf spiders carry their
Speaker 1: cocoons around with them and then, like you're saying, even
Speaker 1: after the spiderlings hatch, the spiderlings just hit your ride
Speaker 1: on the back of their mom for a while until
Speaker 1: they're old enough to start taking care of themselves, and
Speaker 1: then they spread out, which is really unusual for spiders
Speaker 1: as far as reproduction goes. It's crazy looking. I've seen
Speaker 1: wolf spiders that, um maybe it was a noise that
Speaker 1: frightened them or something, but all of a sudden they're
Speaker 1: you know, did you see uh that vine that that
Speaker 1: dude posted from Mexico and the beginning of two thousand
Speaker 1: and fourteen that became really famous. It looks like a
Speaker 1: little to pay on like a blue plastic bin. I
Speaker 1: don't like where this is going. And he goes up
Speaker 1: in like poke, and all of a sudden, the two
Speaker 1: pages turns into about ten thousand spiders. But it's not
Speaker 1: actually spiders. They're harvestment like Daddy long legs. Daddy long
Speaker 1: legs aren't actually spiders there arachnids. Oh, is that the deal? Um?
Speaker 1: And one of the things that differentiates them is this
Speaker 1: packing clumping um instinct that they'll four. It looks like
Speaker 1: just this bad tube page just sitting there, but it's
Speaker 1: really a bunch of spiders or a bunch of harvestment
Speaker 1: and what no terrible toothpage. And what they're doing is, um,
Speaker 1: they're maintaining moisture in like a hot, dry environment by
Speaker 1: by clumping together and kind of pooling their moisture. And
Speaker 1: then as the sun goes down, they'll like spread out again.
Speaker 1: But if you go up and touch them like this
Speaker 1: guy did on vine so it's just like this ninth
Speaker 1: second loop over and over again. Um, they just separate
Speaker 1: and scatter everywhere. It's pretty neat. Have you done it?
Speaker 1: Don't be dumb on the Granddaddy long Legs supposedly being
Speaker 1: the most poisonous. I looked into it. No, I kind
Speaker 1: of ran into a wall because it's like, so this
Speaker 1: is what I found. Yes, that they they the old
Speaker 1: wives tale is that they are the most poisonous around,
Speaker 1: but their mouths are too small to puncture human skin.
Speaker 1: But if they could, they could kill you. I don't
Speaker 1: believe that. So if it's a harvestman, that's and apparently
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of different arachnids that are called Granddaddy
Speaker 1: long legs. But if it's the harvestman, then it's completely
Speaker 1: false because not only do they not have venom, they
Speaker 1: don't even have fangs because they couldn't bite you. But
Speaker 1: another caveat to that is is that although they can
Speaker 1: survive if like they lose a leg, and this is
Speaker 1: an adaptation to where like, if a predator has their leg,
Speaker 1: they'll just pull it off themselves and run off. And
Speaker 1: the guy's like, oh man, they can't regrow their legs.
Speaker 1: They can survive without them, they can't regrow them, so
Speaker 1: they'll have like just whatever seven legs. Yes, so you
Speaker 1: don't want to pull the legs off a granddaddy long
Speaker 1: legs because it's not growing back. Kids. Yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: cool to do. Yeah, the torture insects. Don't listen to Ricky,
Speaker 1: your Billy, you're Tommy or whoever is telling you that
Speaker 1: their legs are going to grow back. Now, they're going nowhere, nowhere. Um,
Speaker 1: all right, So we were talking about venom. Um. Most
Speaker 1: spiders have pretty much the same procedure when killing prey.
Speaker 1: They have um. The weapon is these a pair of
Speaker 1: jointed jaws called calorisari. I think, are you're gonna go
Speaker 1: with that? I'm going with cellisari? All right? Um? Cellisari, calorisari,
Speaker 1: cellis celli Sara Man. Some people like this stuff. Some
Speaker 1: people think it's some people are like, I'm done with
Speaker 1: these guys forever. But each part of this jaw has
Speaker 1: two parts of the basil segment, which is the bulk
Speaker 1: of it, and then these fangs, and just like snakes,
Speaker 1: these fangs act as little needles, and they have a
Speaker 1: venom duct that they'll squeeze the venom through the fang,
Speaker 1: just a snake. Yeah, it's pretty remarkable, and the venom
Speaker 1: is very frequently a neurotoxin. Paralyzes the prey like a snake,
Speaker 1: and then um, I think you're really funky with the
Speaker 1: spider after that point. So it's it's taken down a mouse,
Speaker 1: it's paralyzed it. The mouse is like, oh god, I'm
Speaker 1: locked in. I can experience everything, but I can't move.
Speaker 1: And this is horrible because now I'm being killed by
Speaker 1: a spider. It's like the anesthesia awareness exactly, you know,
Speaker 1: but even worse than that. But there's not a doctor.
Speaker 1: It's a spider. You're being operated on by a spider,
Speaker 1: and um, the spider is now injecting you know that
Speaker 1: you're paralyzed. Now it's injecting you with digestive enzymes, and
Speaker 1: you will be liquefied from the inside out because, like
Speaker 1: we said, spiders eat nothing but soup essentially, yeah, their
Speaker 1: entire life. But the soup that they eat doesn't start
Speaker 1: out as a soup. Instead, it starts out as must
Speaker 1: will in tissue and all that kind of stuff inside
Speaker 1: a mouse, and then once it liquefies, the spider will
Speaker 1: suck all that stuff out and then that's its food
Speaker 1: and it takes like frog legs to it. The actual
Speaker 1: fangs themselves, Um can work a couple of different ways.
Speaker 1: In the case of a tarantulas, um, it works like
Speaker 1: an axe the fangs swing down, and uh Irannium morphs,
Speaker 1: which are the most dominant suborder, they act as little pinchers,
Speaker 1: which is better, Yeah, because I think the tarantules need
Speaker 1: to actually pin something against something to swing those little
Speaker 1: fang axes down. Yeah, Whereas if you're an rannium morph like,
Speaker 1: your pinchers are just using the pressure created by the
Speaker 1: other pincher to puncture right your prey. So what does
Speaker 1: this mean for us? Dude, you get bit by a
Speaker 1: spider venomous spider, are you going to die? Uh? No,
Speaker 1: the chances are pretty high that you're not going to
Speaker 1: die as in a healthy adult human. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: that the across the entire world, the morbidity rate of
Speaker 1: a spider bite is like ten. But even for ones
Speaker 1: that we think are so deadly, like um, the brown
Speaker 1: recluse spider, morbidity rates were at five percent before we
Speaker 1: discovered an evenin so I'm gonna feel good. No, And
Speaker 1: there's actually some nasty, nasty videos on YouTube. There's a
Speaker 1: guy the video the worst one. He basically created a
Speaker 1: video diary of like him just filming his foot with
Speaker 1: the brown recluse bite and just talking about like how
Speaker 1: nasty it is, and he stopped because he thought no
Speaker 1: one wanted to see it. And everybody's like, where's more videos?
Speaker 1: What's going on now? So we started like posting him
Speaker 1: all the time. But I think it says um brown
Speaker 1: recluse spider bite disturbing video. After three months, put those
Speaker 1: words into YouTube and it will bring up this dude's
Speaker 1: foot and it looks like a giant cabbage patch kid
Speaker 1: and there's a it looks like have you ever seen
Speaker 1: um Requiem for a Dream? Remember the end where he's
Speaker 1: got that mess that on the top of a cabbage
Speaker 1: patch kid's foot And people wanted more, more, more, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which proves my theory that the internet is thunder dumb.
Speaker 1: But this guy is like it's so gross, like you
Speaker 1: could easily fit two fingers into this spider bite. And
Speaker 1: the reason why is because this guy's suffered necrosis, which
Speaker 1: is a a side effect of the brown recluses toxins
Speaker 1: uh and if untreated, you're probably again you're not gonna die,
Speaker 1: it's gonna hurt like crazy. He was going to a
Speaker 1: doctor through all this though, right, Yeah, he had to.
Speaker 1: You'd have to be just totally psychotic to have your
Speaker 1: foot look like this and not go seek medical. It's
Speaker 1: looking better today Thursday. Yeah. Um, but the the the
Speaker 1: you can suffer severe like scarring and tissue damage, but
Speaker 1: you're probably dobably not gonna die. But it hurts because
Speaker 1: they affect our ion channels, right yeah. Um. Kristen Conger,
Speaker 1: I think had wrote a great side article about how
Speaker 1: um deadly spiders work, on how stuff works, and for
Speaker 1: instance that the Sydney funnel web venom it's a delta
Speaker 1: um atrocotoxin and it is an amino acid chain that
Speaker 1: uh causes damage to nerve cells. Yeah, it makes our
Speaker 1: nerves cells like fire, uh excitedly, like constantly. I think
Speaker 1: it's I think some toxins, when they affect our nerve cells,
Speaker 1: it just makes them fire over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: which affects their performance. It's not what you want. And uh,
Speaker 1: as far as no susceptor cells, you are just experiencing
Speaker 1: tremendous amounts of pain. Right or before nineteen eighty when
Speaker 1: they discovered the funnel web anti vennon, you could die
Speaker 1: from it. But since then they say no one has
Speaker 1: died from it. No, and the the funnel web. This
Speaker 1: is the one that's routinely pointed out as the world's
Speaker 1: deadliest spider, although Kristen points out there's no real scientific
Speaker 1: consensus on that because there's not that many spiders that
Speaker 1: really even have a chance to be considered deadly to humans. Um.
Speaker 1: But the funnel the Sydney funnel web, which lives in
Speaker 1: the mile radius around Sydney, Australia, right in the city right,
Speaker 1: Um is is I guess if you really pressed uh science, science,
Speaker 1: almost said scientologists, he pressed a spider researcher, Um, they
Speaker 1: would probably say the Sydney funnel Web. And one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why is because it's fangs, it's pincers can
Speaker 1: pierce human toenail. Yeah, and they're aggressive, like if you
Speaker 1: want to get out of here, they may not get
Speaker 1: out of there. They may say, oh, yeah, I'm coming. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they like eat a can of spinach and come at you. Scary.
Speaker 1: I think there's one in Brazil too, called the wandering
Speaker 1: spider Brazilian wandering and it is um has been cited
Speaker 1: as the deadliest as well because it can inject up
Speaker 1: to two milligrams of venom, which is just that's a
Speaker 1: lot of venom for a spider. So it is a
Speaker 1: hunting spider as well, and it is also aggressive. So
Speaker 1: I'm glad that most venomous are the most aggressive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fine how that works out. Uh, so how do
Speaker 1: we get spiders, chuck, Where do they come from? Well?
Speaker 1: They they have sex, Yes, they do. Spider sex is
Speaker 1: pretty fascinating. Not as interesting as snake sex. Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: it is. I no, no, I don't think so let's
Speaker 1: talk about it. Okay, So what we said that spiders
Speaker 1: are almost exclusively solitary hunters. Yeah, they don't hang out
Speaker 1: with their families. So if you're a male and you're like,
Speaker 1: I gotta reproduce, I gotta pass these jeans along. Um,
Speaker 1: you're going to seek out a female spider. But it's
Speaker 1: not the easiest thing in the world to do. Now,
Speaker 1: only do you have to find a female spider, you
Speaker 1: have to find one of reproductive age and ready to reproduce. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and not eat you. But that's a big that's a
Speaker 1: big point. But in the case of the black widow,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get eaten anyway. But um, females are way
Speaker 1: bigger than the males, which is one way that males
Speaker 1: get eaten. Yeah. I saw a video of a black
Speaker 1: widows mating and it looked like a little baby spider
Speaker 1: trying to mate with a big, big spider. But it's
Speaker 1: just a male and a female, so they the female
Speaker 1: when it decides. All right, I guess I have to
Speaker 1: do this. I have to be defiled. I'm gonna lay
Speaker 1: down a drag line sort of like a snake does,
Speaker 1: covered in pheromones wherever I go. I'm just gonna leave
Speaker 1: this scented trail behind me on this drag line. Or
Speaker 1: if it's a web based spider, they may lay pheromones
Speaker 1: over the web right and just let the wind do
Speaker 1: its work. Yeah. Either way, these spiders are going to
Speaker 1: pick up on us and be like, Okay, I'm heading
Speaker 1: that direction. Yeah, I'm gonna follow this drag line. Who's
Speaker 1: pull a little self down this drag line and finally
Speaker 1: I get to the female. Uh. Although we should point
Speaker 1: out another creepy thing that spiders will do is they're
Speaker 1: so desperate to mate that they'll hang around females that
Speaker 1: are too young until they get to the right age,
Speaker 1: Like they'll hang around the playground and it's so creepy
Speaker 1: and predatory. They'll be like, oh, she's she's close. Let
Speaker 1: me wait a few weeks. So yeah, they're like, I
Speaker 1: don't feel like searching. I'm just gonna wait. So, um,
Speaker 1: when when they find the female, that's just step one.
Speaker 1: Step two is convincing her that you're not in dinner
Speaker 1: and that you're not trying to encroach on your territory. Right,
Speaker 1: You're like, I just wanted mate. Uh. And there's some
Speaker 1: different ways that spiders do this. So, like with a
Speaker 1: jumping spider and species that have like good vision, they
Speaker 1: may do a little dance, Yeah, a little look at me,
Speaker 1: look at me over here. Yeah, well spiders will do that. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then spiders again that are web based, the male
Speaker 1: may come up and like play a little a little
Speaker 1: tune on the web. Yeah, like plucking a guitar string,
Speaker 1: exactly for the female to be like, oh, I see
Speaker 1: what you're after. She's like, is that Jose Feliciano. I'm
Speaker 1: such a sucker for Jose Feliciano. So once they have
Speaker 1: convinced the female spider that they are there to have
Speaker 1: some fun, they're not food, they're not a threat. They
Speaker 1: like the tune of my guitar or the way I dance.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of work that goes into it. The
Speaker 1: female finally is like, all right, well, let me just
Speaker 1: get into position here and send you the right signal
Speaker 1: that I'm ready to go. And I might shake my
Speaker 1: web or something um if I don't like you, or
Speaker 1: I might just crawl away, but otherwise here I am. Um,
Speaker 1: let's do this right. And so, like any other animal
Speaker 1: on the planet, they copulate by putting their reproductive organs together.
Speaker 1: They don't couple. What you're being awaite, they don't couple
Speaker 1: like snakes even do. Um. The male deposits sperm onto
Speaker 1: a little web and then picks it up. It's basically
Speaker 1: like ivf yes, but with um petted palps the little
Speaker 1: forearms that the spider has. Yeah, he deposits that sperm
Speaker 1: onto the general opening of the female, and I guess
Speaker 1: the female stores it there near the ovaries. Yeah. She's like,
Speaker 1: smell you later. Yeah, if he's lucky. If he's not lucky,
Speaker 1: she turns around and eats him afterwards, right, which the
Speaker 1: male spider is fine with because all it wants to
Speaker 1: do is reproduce. But then at some point later on,
Speaker 1: the female will be like, oh, yeah, that's right, I've
Speaker 1: got that sperm stored away. I'll fertilize these eggs and
Speaker 1: there you have it. Yeah. And then they lay like
Speaker 1: we said, either um, hundreds or thousands of eggs in
Speaker 1: one go. And they may encase them like we said.
Speaker 1: They may carry him around, they may abandon the eggs
Speaker 1: entirely and just say good luck. What's crazy to me? Spiders?
Speaker 1: So they live, um, months, up to years. Apparently tarantulas
Speaker 1: can live up to twenty years, like a pet tarantula.
Speaker 1: But one thing I found was that a lot of
Speaker 1: spiders can go up to a year between feeding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: between feeding, Yes, and that's surprising. Yeah, spiders fascinating. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And Um, as I said in the Snakes one, I
Speaker 1: don't kill spiders. But nothing would terrify me more than
Speaker 1: a tarantula crawling up my arm. And that's funny too,
Speaker 1: because tarantulas are not poisonous to humans. You can have
Speaker 1: an allergic reaction to a tarantula, but in most people
Speaker 1: who are allergic to tarantulas, you're allergic to their hair.
Speaker 1: So crawling on you would would create maybe like a
Speaker 1: skin rash or something. The venom is probably not going
Speaker 1: to do much more than you might not even have
Speaker 1: a reaction to it. You could feel pain from their
Speaker 1: their fangs puncturing your skin, just like if I took
Speaker 1: like a sewing needle and puncture just gonna be that
Speaker 1: same kind of sensation. Um, I think it'd more just
Speaker 1: be being freaked out that a tarantula is attacking you
Speaker 1: would be the biggest setback from being attacked by a tarantula. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even need to be attacked just you know,
Speaker 1: you see movies where actors have to do that or
Speaker 1: let one call over their face or something. There's no way,
Speaker 1: no way, I could never ever ever do it. There's
Speaker 1: I have a great Umi story when she was a kid.
Speaker 1: She was at um one of the Smithsonians or whatever,
Speaker 1: and they brought in like a thing full of tarantulas
Speaker 1: and set them down. I think they actually dumped them
Speaker 1: in the center of the kids or whatever. You just
Speaker 1: got up and started really ran out of the room,
Speaker 1: and her teacher had to run after her to catch
Speaker 1: her again. She's like, you guys are idiots for sitting
Speaker 1: here and thinking. I mean, I'm definitely in a rachnophobe
Speaker 1: um oh, are you like died in the woold really
Speaker 1: genuine to a certain degree, Like when I see a spider,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm I don't run away screaming, but if
Speaker 1: it's proximity, if like one was on me, I would
Speaker 1: not enjoy that experience of any size. And uh yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm I'm a bit of an anaphobe. What about
Speaker 1: you? You You don't care? I mean, yeah, it's more like
Speaker 1: when I can see they're the features and everything that
Speaker 1: I'm really like because they're freaky creatures. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: loved my garden or weaver. I wasn't like that's you know,
Speaker 1: it's someone are just beautiful, like the ones that are
Speaker 1: like bright yellow and black, and like there's a lot
Speaker 1: of really fascinating spiders. But no, I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: want to be the focus of one's attention. I guess
Speaker 1: is what it comes down to. Yeah, like when I'm
Speaker 1: hiking through the woods and you walk your face walks
Speaker 1: through a spider web, that is like, yeah, I did
Speaker 1: not react. Well, yeah, like a little little girl. What
Speaker 1: about the movie Rechnaphobia like that one? Yeah it was
Speaker 1: good first time. I think I think so too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll sign off on that one. Was it Bill Pullman? Uh?
Speaker 1: Was he in that or just annuals? Which one? Jeff,
Speaker 1: Jeff Daniels and John Goodman. No, he was seeing that.
Speaker 1: Yeah he was the external. Oh yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: good flick. So that spiders everybody, Uh, if you want
Speaker 1: to know more about them, Oh, chuck, we didn't talk
Speaker 1: about the diving spider, one of the most fascinating spiders
Speaker 1: of all. Yeah, we gotta, we gotta put that in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's segues with our diving bell episode because they basically,
Speaker 1: we've a little ceiling of spider web at the surface
Speaker 1: of the water. No, underneath the water. Oh is it
Speaker 1: underneath a little bit? Totally? Okay, So they'll we've a
Speaker 1: little like ceiling, like a little parachute, and then they'll
Speaker 1: take air bubbles under the air, one by one until
Speaker 1: it's a little diving bell, right, And these spiders breathe
Speaker 1: like any other spider above land, but they live underwater
Speaker 1: almost all of their life, in this little pocket of
Speaker 1: air that it builds for itself. And those are the
Speaker 1: ones that will eat fish man. That's crazy awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of great documentaries online about spiders. They all,
Speaker 1: unfortunately are sort of salacious, you know, with the music
Speaker 1: and all this stuff. Um, it's fascinating, I think. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about spiders, you can
Speaker 1: type those words or well that word into the search
Speaker 1: part how stuff works dot com. And you can also
Speaker 1: go check out the podcast page on Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know dot com for this episode. It's got linked so
Speaker 1: most of the stuff we've talked about. Uh. And since
Speaker 1: I said, uh, search bars somewhere, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this dog blood donation. Remember in our
Speaker 1: blood Types episode, I was surprised to know that animals
Speaker 1: could donate blood as well, even though it makes perfect sense.
Speaker 1: This is from Kara um or Carra. Hey, guys, I've
Speaker 1: been listening for about four years and you guys keep
Speaker 1: me company on my long commute and when I have
Speaker 1: to drive the tractor. Uh. One year ago, we got
Speaker 1: a call from some acquaintances of ours asking how much
Speaker 1: our dog weighed. We didn't know them super well, but
Speaker 1: being open minded, we said fifty six pounds and asked, uh.
Speaker 1: They asked if we would be willing to let our
Speaker 1: dog be a blood donor for their dog because as
Speaker 1: their area was out of dog blood. Their dog had
Speaker 1: been battling in a cute autoimmune issue for several days
Speaker 1: and needed a dog over fifty pounds to be a
Speaker 1: donor to get just through the night. Being animal lovers
Speaker 1: and knowing my dog was healthy and fit, I didn't hesitate.
Speaker 1: So we brought Hatchet in and they did a quick
Speaker 1: test to see if the bloods were compatible, which was
Speaker 1: basically swirling them together. They were a match, and we
Speaker 1: proceeded with the transfusion. We didn't get to watch the process,
Speaker 1: but Hatch came out about an hour later, a little drowsy,
Speaker 1: but still his regular self to me exactly. He was
Speaker 1: a little lazy the next day or two, but made
Speaker 1: a fine recovery, and the other dog ended up making
Speaker 1: a full recovery despite a bleak diagnosis. UM, if you
Speaker 1: have a dog, I suggest finding friends with dogs fifty
Speaker 1: pounds or more would be willing to be blood donors
Speaker 1: in case of an emergency. Dog blood is often scarce.
Speaker 1: So thanks guys, you've made me a champ at the
Speaker 1: trivia table. That is Kara in Lexington, Kentucky. Thanks a
Speaker 1: lot care. That's a great p s A yeah, and
Speaker 1: she sent a little picture of Hatchet, and Hatchet looks
Speaker 1: like a fine, fine dog. It was great. If you
Speaker 1: want to let us know how your dog saved a life,
Speaker 1: you can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Speaker 1: stuff podcast, to how stuff works dot com, and you
Speaker 1: can hang out with us at our home on the
Speaker 1: web stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com