Article on Spider Intelligence

[Kibosh]

Interesting read. Seems some of our 8 legged friends are smarter then we thought.

Spiders are much smarter than you think

Researchers are discovering surprising capabilities among a group of itsy-bitsy arachnids.

arstechnica.com

 

[Poonjab]

Mossad has been using arachnids as spies for a while now. They are more capable than one would think.

 

[viper69]

Interesting read. Seems some of our 8 legged friends are smarter then we thought.

Spiders are much smarter than you think

Researchers are discovering surprising capabilities among a group of itsy-bitsy arachnids.

arstechnica.com

Beat me to it- just read it

 

[Kibosh]

The very idea that arthropods could have true cognitive abilities and not just instinctual responses to stimuli is fascinating.

 

[Arachnophobphile]

Nice read, just another reason to have these. I can't find any for sale anywhere and I haven't seen any wild ones in many years.

 

[MrGhostMantis]

The very idea that arthropods could have true cognitive abilities and not just instinctual responses to stimuli is fascinating.

I’ve been thinking about this - looking at mantids though. Recently caught a S. wheeleri female, compared it to my older wc female. Older one was very skittish when I caught her; as the new female is now. She has calmed down and now tong feeds. I found it curious how much she became used to me.

 

[DaveM]

It's very interesting. Aplysia californica brown sea slugs have been used for a long time as model organisms to study learning and memory; they have around 10,000 neurons. These spiders have around 10 times that many neurons. Looking around at posts on AB, it appears that spiders frequently outsmart their human keepers

 

[Kibosh]

Nice read, just another reason to have these. I can't find any for sale anywhere and I haven't seen any wild ones in many years.

It's very interesting. Aplysia californica brown sea slugs have been used for a long time as model organisms to study learning and memory; they have around 10,000 neurons. These spiders have around 10 times that many neurons. Looking around at posts on AB, it appears that spiders frequently outsmart their human keepers

I read a similar study many years ago where they observed a species of jumping spider actually remember where a prey item is on another object and climb to that location after loosing sight of it over a period of many minutes... multiple times across several specimens.

None of the researchers thought this kind of memory ability in such a tiny arthropod was even possible. Amazing how much we still have to learn about natural science.