So anyone ever get this question

ErinM31

Arachnogoddess
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I share a deep respect for this genus as well, and have several billion in my concrete building in Ontario Canada. They are the only spiders with webs in the P2 parking garage, and even though they are now filled with black soot, they'll make a new one tomorrow. The pollution takes several days to stick to their non-sticky webs, so they rule supreme down there.

It's their defense thrashing technique that amazes me. It's tough to trigger, but I've been able to pull at some out-lying webs, and triggered a couple of quick corner dashes from the Pholcid. It's deliberately tugging, in case what it feels me doing is actually a lurking spider. If that spider wanders further in, she'll dash in, thrashing much faster. This is to both create chaos on it's own terms, and assess the situation. Most spiders would be thrown off by the lack of sticky webs - likely (to me) it would feel like old webbing, and have little support for the victim here.

And as I just learned, this would be where the nips would come in. Tangling their prey up, nipping whenever close enough. Those thin wiry legs can help keep a distance, or pull in. I always figured they just tangled enough to eventually get one good bite in. Nipping would help with subdue ETA.

In the event this prey is too much to handle, they fold up all their legs, and pass through the web to wherever gravity takes them. It's fun to try and catch these guys, only to have them slip like water off my hands. It actually makes them tough to show off to arachnophobic people...

"See they-- whoa hold on, gotcha-- they are harm-- whoa again, slippery little-- harmless crea-- WHOA-- that's your shirt! HarmlesscreaturesthatwouldnteventrytohurtyouSorry!"

And now everyone is running from the guy who is throwing the most poisonous spiders down the shirts of random people.
They indeed have a fascinating threat response -- fly about in a crazy circle, then if the intruder doesn't leave, drop and run. Sadly, I discovered for all of that, they are very fragile creatures. :( I tried to capture one in a vending machine area where someone might "clean it away" to bring to my desk and somehow, in putting a cup over it to capture it, I killed it. I am generally very good with this and if I ever killed a creature in my capture attempts, it was in childhood longer ago than I recall. I hoped at first this was just another stage of it's defense -- to play dead. I brought it out of its container at my desk, hoping it would suddenly take off, but it remained still. I could see no evidence of damage -- I hadn't squished it! -- and proceeded to gently touch it. Four of its legs fell off. I feel like a monster. :bag:
 

RebelWolf

Arachnosquire
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Oct 9, 2015
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60
I always hear that. All spiders are venomous but the daddy long legs and cellar spider have weak venom. It was even proven on Mythbusters and the results were the daddy long legs has the weakest venom. So clearly it's a myth. Their venom can't kill a human. I always tell people that. It does get annoying after a while
 

Nephila Edulis

Arachnoknight
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Feb 27, 2017
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201
Heard this so many times when I was little. Even the teachers said that when I was I never grade 1. Saying "a daddy long legs is the world's deadliest spider but it can't bite through your skin" is like saying "the world's biggest fish is the sardine but all the big ones live at the bottom of the ocean"
 

darkness975

Latrodectus
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The amount of widows here is staggering! Latrodectus geometricus seems the most hardy and has spread like wildfire.
That's because it is not native there and it is quickly out competing the native widows. A very upsetting scenario for us that understand the need for native species to remain where they are, even though the average clueless one would be like "ZOMG THEY'RE NOT AS DEADLY SO THIS IS A GOOD THING ZOMG."
 

The Snark

Dumpster Fire of the Gods
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There is something here I am flat out failing to understand. WHY? Why do so many people prefer TO THINK STUPID? "I WANT TO BE STUPID!!!" Could somebody please explain this?

Why do people prefer wild crazy fairy tales instead of some very basic facts?


For example, and you can find these on numerous web sites and Youtube videos.
-Jet fuel burns at X degrees. Steel melts at a much higher temperature. Therefore the World Trade Center was knocked down with explosives and yada yada conspiracy and not just by the planes crashing into it.
--Reality: Steel heated to just 1350 degrees F is not steel. It is called Austentite. Austentite has the structural strength roughly equivalent to very thick peanut butter. Stand a 12 inch I beam 20 feet long of Austentite upright and it will bend and twist just from trying to support it's own weight.
How hot is 1350 degrees F? The flame of a match at the hottest place is close to 1200 F.

-The Large Hadron Collider, LHC, will cause Armageddon - Ragnarok, whatever.. It will open the gates of hell. It is a huge satanic ritual blah blah blah.
--Reality: Take a large hammer. Swing it at and smack an object extremely fast. Observe the kersmash with two sensors similar to those that turn on the driveway lights. In a nutshell, that is the LHC.
Take a stroll through the entire LHC complex including the 20+ miles of tunnels. All you will see is:
1. A particle injector - think a very weird electromagnetic water pistol
2.. The particles injected - the hammer and the object the hammer smacks (it is actually two hammers smacking each other. The size of these hammers is pretty small. In fact you would need a pile of several hundred million or so just to see them.
3. Lots and lots and lots and lots of magnetic gadgets to help the hammer move very very fast and
4. a pair of extremely oversized and very sophisticated driveway light sensors named CMS and ATLAS. That's it.

The energy the LHC uses is pretty darned high. It would make toast evaporate into a gas. But trivial compared to the energy released when Mt. St. Helens went boom. Trivial to what Mt. Etna is cranking out right now. Ultra trivial compared to major volcanic events like Toba.

Or our little Pholcids with their oh so deadly 'poison'.

Why do people prefer to be deluded? Prefer to be stupid? The world is filled with all sorts of really amazing weirdnesses. We don't need to make up fairy tales.
 
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WeightedAbyss75

Arachnoangel
Joined
Feb 22, 2014
Messages
921
There is something here I am flat out failing to understand. WHY? Why do so many people prefer TO THINK STUPID? "I WANT TO BE STUPID!!!" Could somebody please explain this?

Why do people prefer wild crazy fairy tales instead of some very basic facts?


For example, and you can find these on numerous web sites and Youtube videos.
-Jet fuel burns at X degrees. Steel melts at a much higher temperature. Therefore the World Trade Center was knocked down with explosives and yada yada conspiracy and not just by the planes crashing into it.
--Reality: Steel heated to just 1350 degrees F is not steel. It is called Austentite. Austentite has the structural strength roughly equivalent to very thick peanut butter. Stand a 12 inch I beam 20 feet long of Austentite upright and it will bend and twist just from trying to support it's own weight.
How hot is 1350 degrees F? The flame of a match at the hottest place is close to 1200 F.

-The Large Hadron Collider, LHC, will cause Armageddon - Ragnarok, whatever.. It will open the gates of hell. It is a huge satanic ritual blah blah blah.
--Reality: Take a large hammer. Swing it at and smack an object extremely fast. Observe the kersmash with two sensors similar to those that turn on the driveway lights. In a nutshell, that is the LHC.
Take a stroll through the entire LHC complex including the 20+ miles of tunnels. All you will see is:
1. A particle injector - think a very weird electromagnetic water pistol
2.. The particles injected - the hammer and the object the hammer smacks (it is actually two hammers smacking each other. The size of these hammers is pretty small. In fact you would need a pile of several hundred million or so just to see them.
3. Lots and lots and lots and lots of magnetic gadgets to help the hammer move very very fast and
4. a pair of extremely oversized and very sophisticated driveway light sensors named CMS and ATLAS. That's it.

The energy the LHC uses is pretty darned high. It would make toast evaporate into a gas. But trivial compared to the energy released when Mt. St. Helens went boom. Trivial to what Mt. Etna is cranking out right now. Ultra trivial compared to major volcanic events like Toba.

Or our little Pholcids with their oh so deadly 'poison'.

Why do people prefer to be deluded? Prefer to be stupid? The world is filled with all sorts of really amazing weirdnesses. We don't need to make up fairy tales.
This is just my opinion, but here goes. Many people "want to think stupid" as you say, is a very harsh way to put it. Many people find the basics facts to be boring, plain, or too complicated to understand. In your explination of the LHC, I really didn't understand how it works. Haven't even gone through physics yet :). To have the wild conspiracy theories and incredible, imaginary feats are much more exciting. Excitment is fun, and people can be let down by the truth. That's why I feel many people "think stupid" and continue to believe outrageous facts, but that's just my interpretation :D To think such a spider can kill, but can't penetrate our skin IS pretty excitiing, especially to me as a 6-7 year old. Now that I have learned the real truth, it's actually quite mundane and boring. Not that I mind, but still the point still stands :D
 

The Snark

Dumpster Fire of the Gods
Old Timer
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Aug 8, 2005
Messages
11,048
@WeightedAbyss75 Correct, but wrong. People want melodrama. Television & multimedia entertainment. The dramatic music, the plot twists, the camera angles, the suspense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melodrama

For example. Melodrama cinematic. A helicopter flies overhead, looking down on people. Dramatic music in the background. The people are dropping dead everywhere, hundreds of them. A trained important sounding voice starts a dialogue filled with dramatic pauses, using catch phrases like, 'the horror is beyond imagination! An incredible holocaust!!'
The video cuts to an announcer walking along a street, bodies everywhere. Cue the dramatic close ups. The flies massing on the corpses. The music grows, a child too weak too walk lies on it's side in an alley, the camera takes a close up of his eyes slowly glazing, remaining open as he dies. People weep for the dead. Lots of room for melodrama there. Let's have a young mother with a dead baby in her arms.

That sound more interesting? 21,000 people die EVERY DAY from hunger and hunger related issues. Boring! Let's check out the Youtube video games!! I hate reality if it isn't nicely canned with a plot and suspense and all the bullcrap I've been trained by 'quality programming' to swallow wholesale. I want ultra deadly spiders'

People want stupid. Want to be told what to think. I watched a very gut wrenching cut from a video once. The dramatic voice over was replaced by a duck quaking. The dramatic music replaced by silly nursery school tunes. And all of a sudden, with the senses deprived of the hypnotizing programming the entire video was altered into bare faced facts and forced the viewers to turn on their frontal lobes. Most of the audience, preferring to be stupid and brain controlled, left.

So in keeping with the OP of this thread, how about a video of the incredible combat abilities of the average pholcid? It's a guarantee it is far better than a huge stadium filled with MMA slurp.
 
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