2 People Dead After Swarms of Venomous Spiders Invade Indian Town

The Snark

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Gag reflex approaching critical.

Due to insomnia, I web surfed for every bit of information I could find on this incident. A number of interesting tidbits became obvious.
-No authenticated photographs have been made available to the general public.
-No expert has weighed in and been cited.
-No comparisons to comparable incidents have been referenced.
In other words, the theoreticians are all, pardon, pissing up a rope. As for myself, I am quite interested in this. Not the deaths as they probably aren't related, but the possibility of a mass migration similar to those undertaken by tarantulas in the south western desert.

So may I please request that anybody who manages to come up with some hard scientific facts to post them?
 

Ciphor

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Due to insomnia, I web surfed for every bit of information I could find on this incident. A number of interesting tidbits became obvious.
-No authenticated photographs have been made available to the general public.
-No expert has weighed in and been cited.
-No comparisons to comparable incidents have been referenced.
In other words, the theoreticians are all, pardon, pissing up a rope. As for myself, I am quite interested in this. Not the deaths as they probably aren't related, but the possibility of a mass migration similar to those undertaken by tarantulas in the south western desert.

So may I please request that anybody who manages to come up with some hard scientific facts to post them?
Lol pissing up a rope. That really is the epitome of futile.
 

ijmccollum

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nothing scientific to post. I do find the "swarming/migration" reference interesting though. also curious that they are unknown to the area -- sounds like an introduction of some sort.......ooooooooo......let's add the conspiracy aspect as well.
 

AmysAnimals

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Hmmm this is an interesting story. Why must people fear so much? I don't have any information about this situation but I hope some new information pops up that actually is of use for example, an expert on the situation!

I am sorry those people lost their lives but i do not think a spider did it.
 

The Snark

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Hmmm this is an interesting story. Why must people fear so much? I don't have any information about this situation but I hope some new information pops up that actually is of use for example, an expert on the situation!

I am sorry those people lost their lives but i do not think a spider did it.
This is a very interesting comment showing deep introspection. What is with this fear? Where does it come from? We certainly aren't born with it. Why do we learn it? Why is it so hard to get over?
 

Michiel

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Fear of spiders is said to be inhibited be several behaviourists, as experiments have showed that baby's, are afraid of spiders...This is what I was told in psychopathology courses....I did not research it myself...I do know that my kids are not scared of scorpions and tarantulas, because I keep these...my 3 year old does fear flies for some reason....:) my 1 year old seems scared of baby goats and cute animals, more then spiders, so I don't know...it might differ per child, cultural bavkground etc etc....Fear is interesting stuff I tell you...
India is known for press releases like "5 year old with 4 arms and 6 legs performs brainsurgery on pregnant 98 year old grandmother" so I am not taking it too serious....:D

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Michiel

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Would somebody give Ungoliant a good hard wap, please? I hate being zapped with paradoxes pre coffee in the morning! :sarcasm:
Upon reading the story I want to roll on the floor in hysterical laughter while feeling sad about the victims.

Does anyone else visualize a bunch of witch doctors running around some primitive village, slashing people with dirty razor blades while screaming 'deadly spiders!'.

I like the oxymoron at the top of the page in that link. Foxnews.com. Fair and balanced.
This made me laugh very hard, as I immediately saw it before me, lol!

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Stan Schultz

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On June 5 Global National News (of the Canadian Global TV Network) aired a 2 minute spot about the "ASSAM TARANTULA INVASION." The broadcast version was a reasonably intelligent report without major gaffs about the incident if one allows them some slack because English is a second language for most of those interviewed, even the scientists and doctors. It clearly showed adult male theraphosid tarantulas that were not poecilotherids. And, it stressed that the deaths were not the direct results of the tarantula bites, but rather the results of local village shamans trying to drain the venom using unclean instruments and techniques.

Here is another written report by the Associated Press.

It was obviously a good year for marching males, no doubt made worse by the impending monsoon season.

While this entire fiasco did nothing to endear tarantulas in the minds of almost all viewers (it is very hard to overcome convictions ingrained by decades of propaganda), in the long run it almost surely will be forgotten by all by Canada Day/Independence Day, a fact we can all be thankful for.

BTW, I have the entire Global news clip on DVD but have no idea whatsoever how to get permission to put it on Youtube, much less how actually to go about uploading it so others can review it. By now it probably wouldn't be worth the effort anyway. Old news is no news.

Enjoy your little, 8-legged, breaking news!
 

Anonymity82

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Fox news + witch doctors + "teams" of "arachnid experts" who weren't able to find or at least identify one specimen (seeing how there were swarms viciously attacking people one would think there'd be a couple specimens lying around) = ridiculous. To be frank and honest, any anecdotal reports coming out of India get categorized into my "fiction" folder.
 

pitbulllady

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Fear of spiders is said to be inhibited be several behaviourists, as experiments have showed that baby's, are afraid of spiders...This is what I was told in psychopathology courses....I did not research it myself...I do know that my kids are not scared of scorpions and tarantulas, because I keep these...my 3 year old does fear flies for some reason....:) my 1 year old seems scared of baby goats and cute animals, more then spiders, so I don't know...it might differ per child, cultural bavkground etc etc....Fear is interesting stuff I tell you...
India is known for press releases like "5 year old with 4 arms and 6 legs performs brainsurgery on pregnant 98 year old grandmother" so I am not taking it too serious....:D

Verstuurd van mijn GT-I9001 met Tapatalk
Actually, the studies did NOT show that babies are "afraid" of spiders, only that babies showed more interest or reaction to pictures of spiders and snakes. The reaction was not one of fear or distress, however. They just seemed to take more notice of those images than of animals like cats and dogs or inanimate objects like chairs. The people who conducted the study came to the conclusion that humans' brains must be "hard-wired" to notice snakes and spiders moreso than other animals, for whatever reasons, and that this would make it easy to LEARN to be afraid of those animals at an early age IF we have a reason to connect their images with unpleasant emotional situations, like seeing a parent freak out at the sight of a spider or being punished by a parent after approaching a snake. We are not actually born being afraid of either; that fear is still learned, and since babies can't talk, all scientists have to go on with regards to a baby's emotional state is its behavior or facial expressions, which are rather limited at that stage in life.

pitbulllady
 

The Snark

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Actually, the studies did NOT show that babies are "afraid" of spiders, only that babies showed more interest or reaction to pictures of spiders and snakes. The reaction was not one of fear or distress, however. They just seemed to take more notice of those images than of animals like cats and dogs or inanimate objects like chairs. The people who conducted the study came to the conclusion that humans' brains must be "hard-wired" to notice snakes and spiders moreso than other animals, for whatever reasons, and that this would make it easy to LEARN to be afraid of those animals at an early age IF we have a reason to connect their images with unpleasant emotional situations, like seeing a parent freak out at the sight of a spider or being punished by a parent after approaching a snake. We are not actually born being afraid of either; that fear is still learned, and since babies can't talk, all scientists have to go on with regards to a baby's emotional state is its behavior or facial expressions, which are rather limited at that stage in life.

pitbulllady
Since we've hijacked this thread anyway... pitbulllady, perhaps you've encountered this or similar. I read an article long ago and I am very fuzzy on what all was in it. The jist was the human mind, being on a divergent path from the animal, operates partly from genetic code, but our more sophisticated brain is 'sensitized' (I remember that was the word used) where it has these mnemonic instructions but rather than directly utilize them, fright flight syndrome and so forth, it hands them over to other parts of the brain for us to formulate them, creating a unique, personalized instruction. Our brain is the meeting of these two divergent roads with thousands of these sensitized mnemonic situations built in, sort of primed for hyper learning, so we create our own operating manual from the mnemonics and interaction with our environment.
I suppose a fear of spiders would be an example. The baby has no direct instruction set how to deal with animal X, action=reaction, but the brain is primed by one or maybe several mnemonics, so it looks for external stimulus for the correct action.
This make any sense? If you have heard of this or similar articles could you post link(s)?
 
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PrettyHate

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And then the witch doctor, he told me what to do, he said that....Ooo eee, ooo ah ah ting tang walla walla, bing bang...
 

wesker12

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And then the witch doctor, he told me what to do, he said that....Ooo eee, ooo ah ah ting tang walla walla, bing bang...
Close, more likely he said "areh yay tho mackri may biss he or jharwani hoay ga" ;)
 

lizardminion

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I never thought I'd say this, but I'm beginning to lose faith in Fox News. I mean, even I am losing faith in them.
I hate news reporters.

If those are arachnid experts, then I'm an octopus.
 

The Snark

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I never thought I'd say this, but I'm beginning to lose faith in Fox News. I mean, even I am losing faith in them.
I hate news reporters.

If those are arachnid experts, then I'm an octopus.
I'm not going to fathom the possibility of your relationships with cephalopoda but how about this:
"He who speaks to only one man gains only that mans knowledge. He who speaks to a group of people, shares only the knowledge of that group. He who asks of every person he meets shares in the knowledge of each; but he who neither believes nor discounts what he hears gains wisdom." -Webs of Deceit-

On the other paw, I would be willing to bet that, thanks to a certain news media company, there are now several million Americans who gained the knowledge that swarms of dangerous spiders invaded a town in India.

Now riddle me this. Why is it that when truth is mandatory all information is just building blocks in a hypothesis, to be systematically challenged. Yet when watching the average mainstream media news, everything is normally taken as true and contrapuntal information from an alternative news source is usually met with cynicism? When and why did news become entertainment and scientific methodology got tossed out the window?
 
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pitbulllady

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I'm not going to fathom the possibility of your relationships with cephalopoda but how about this:
"He who speaks to only one man gains only that mans knowledge. He who speaks to a group of people, shares only the knowledge of that group. He who asks of every person he meets shares in the knowledge of each; but he who neither believes nor discounts what he hears gains wisdom." -Webs of Deceit-

On the other paw, I would be willing to bet that, thanks to a certain news media company, there are now several million Americans who gained the knowledge that swarms of dangerous spiders invaded a town in India.

Now riddle me this. Why is it that when truth is mandatory all information is just building blocks in a hypothesis, to be systematically challenged. Yet when watching the average mainstream media news, everything is normally taken as true and contrapuntal information from an alternative news source is usually met with cynicism? When and why did news become entertainment and scientific methodology got tossed out the window?
I wish I could answer that, Snark, but I've been scratching my head and asking the same question over and over myself. Even Don Henley released a hit song about it back in 1982, so by that time, news had become entertainment, and it's just gotten worse since then.
Thanks for another cool quote, though ;)

pitbulllady
 

Ciphor

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I'm not going to fathom the possibility of your relationships with cephalopoda but how about this:
"He who speaks to only one man gains only that mans knowledge. He who speaks to a group of people, shares only the knowledge of that group. He who asks of every person he meets shares in the knowledge of each; but he who neither believes nor discounts what he hears gains wisdom." -Webs of Deceit-

On the other paw, I would be willing to bet that, thanks to a certain news media company, there are now several million Americans who gained the knowledge that swarms of dangerous spiders invaded a town in India.

Now riddle me this. Why is it that when truth is mandatory all information is just building blocks in a hypothesis, to be systematically challenged. Yet when watching the average mainstream media news, everything is normally taken as true and contrapuntal information from an alternative news source is usually met with cynicism? When and why did news become entertainment and scientific methodology got tossed out the window?
Answer is simple, when Rockafeller got his fingers into the media. It has, become "entertainment tonight" ever since.
 

Stan Schultz

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Just out of curiosity, do they have any pictures of the spiders?
About 1/3 of the 2 minutes is of the tarantulas themselves in various settings and different lighting. The portion of the report shot in India is of rather low quality. I might guess that it's either shot with someone's cell phone (in which case it's remarkably good), or professionally at low resolution in PAL format, then converted to NTSC or ATSC formats so we could view it. Such a conversion can introduce a lot of garbage, especially on older equipment.

---------- Post added 06-18-2012 at 12:18 PM ----------

... When and why did news become entertainment and scientific methodology got tossed out the window?
When Adam took that apple.

Now, if you know anything about the real story (you biblical scholar types can fill in the details if you want to stick your necks out), that is a joke within a joke. The rest of you can live on in ignorance. It's safer that way.

:clown:
 

The Snark

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I wish I could answer that, Snark, but I've been scratching my head and asking the same question over and over myself. Even Don Henley released a hit song about it back in 1982, so by that time, news had become entertainment, and it's just gotten worse since then.
Thanks for another cool quote, though ;)

pitbulllady
Narcotizing dysfunction. Mindlessly staring at their programming stations while mumbling 'Yes, master'.
"They say it's quality programming... but who wants to be programmed?"

PBL, how about Zappa's 'I'm the slime'?
 
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