In Chayanta, Bolivia, three brothers, ages 12, 10 and 8, came upon a black widow spider while herding goats. They poked at the spider until it bit each of them. Why? They hoped to become Spider-Man. According to a report in Telemundo, their mom found them very upset and took them to a health center that moved them to a hospital. From the New York Post:

The would-be Peter Parkers were transferred a third time, taken to the Children’s Hospital in La Paz the next day with fevers, tremors and muscle pains, according to the report.

There, they were treated and discharged last Wednesday, almost a week after they were bitten, the report says.

No word on whether they can now sling webs.

(Thanks, Rick Pescovitz!)

image: Chepyle (CC BY-SA 3.0) Read the rest

From NPR, always digging into the difficult issues:

The coronavirus lockdown has raised a conundrum for scientists around the globe: What to do with creatures they study now that research projects have come to a halt.

[…]

So when the university gave the go ahead to bring home animals that were not at risk of escaping into the wild and harming the environment, [Todd] Waters brought the [arthropod] zoo [at the University of Maryland] home with him.

The assortment included wolf spiders, assassin bugs, mantises, baby scorpions and baby tarantulas. Waters lives with four other people, which he says made things a bit uncomfortable when he showed up with the critters.

You can listen to the story below, or check it out on NPR.

Bring Home The Tarantulas? As Research Halts, Scientists Face Difficult Decisions [Apoorva Mittal / NPR]

Image: Hugo A. Quintero G. / Flickr (CC 2.0)

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The California turret spider build tiny towers on the forest floor that extend underground into a burrow. At night, they climb up into the tower and await their dinner -- beetles, moths, and other insects. Video above. From KQED's Deep Look:

While remaining hidden inside their turret, they’re able to sense the vibrations created by their prey’s footsteps.

That’s when the turret spider strikes, busting out of the hollow tower like an eight legged jack-in-the-box. With lightning speed the spider swings its fangs down like daggers, injecting venom into its prey before dragging it down into the burrow.

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When I was in elementary school, one of my classmates liked yanking the legs off Daddy longlegs spiders and popping the body into his mouth. He would likely enjoy the tarantula-topped cheesburger available on a limited basis at Durham, North Carolina's Bull City Burger and Brewery. Apparently the arachnid adds a pleasant crunch to the burger. Proprietor Seth Gross (yes, that's his last name), says his restaurants exotic meat offerings have "always been about diversity and teaching people about different types of cuisines and maybe other diets around the world." From Fox13:

Normally in the U.S. people keep spiders as a pets, but overseas, they are hunted and eaten. The creatures can be found in the forests of Cambodia and adult males can grow up to six inches - or the size of a human hand.

"There's something thrilling about eating your fear. So a lot of folks who are afraid of spiders, this is like the big one," Gross said.

(via Weird Universe) Read the rest

This female trapdoor spider, named Number 16, was the world's oldest known spider. A lifelong resident of the Australian outback, she has just died at age 43. From Curtin University:

The research, published in the Pacific Conservation Biology Journal, suggests the 43-year-old Giaus Villosus trapdoor matriarch, who recently died during a long-term population study, had outlived the previous world record holder, a 28-year old tarantula found in Mexico.

Lead author PhD student Leanda Mason from the School of Molecular and Life Sciences at Curtin University said the ongoing research has led to new discoveries about the longevity of the trapdoor spider.

“To our knowledge this is the oldest spider ever recorded, and her significant life has allowed us to further investigate the trapdoor spider’s behaviour and population dynamics,” Ms Mason said.

“The research project was first initiated by Barbara York Main in 1974, who monitored the long-term spider population for over 42 years in the Central Wheatbelt region of Western Australia.

“Through Barbara’s detailed research, we were able to determine that the extensive life span of the trapdoor spider is due to their life-history traits, including how they live in uncleared, native bushland, their sedentary nature and low metabolisms.”

Why can't you flick a tick off you or your pet's skin? The answer is in the tick's mouth that's covered with hooks evolved so the tick can hang on for a several day feast of delicious blood. From KQED's Deep Look:

...A tick digs in using two sets of hooks. Each set looks like a hand with three hooked fingers. The hooks dig in and wriggle into the skin. Then these “hands” bend in unison to perform approximately half-a-dozen breaststrokes that pull skin out of the way so the tick can push in a long stubby part called the hypostome.

“It’s almost like swimming into the skin,” said Dania Richter, a biologist at the Technische Universität Braunschweig in Germany, who has studied the mechanism closely. “By bending the hooks it’s engaging the skin. It’s pulling the skin when it retracts.”

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In elementary school, I knew a boy who would impress us by pulling the legs off a daddy longlegs and popping the body in his mouth. I think he would appreciate this Deep Look video about how daddy longlegs can drop up to three of its limbs when threatened by a predator and still survive.

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Pakistan's daily news service Dawn reports on the rise in scorpion smoking there: Read the rest

A baboon tarantula loose on a Delta plane caused a three hour flight delay in Baltimore on Wednesday that ended when the airline brought in another aircraft to fly passengers to Atlanta.

According to Delta, the spider had escaped from a cargo container. The spider was eventually found and had never made it into the passenger cabin.

"Safety and security are our top priority," the Delta spokesperson told The Baltimore Sun.

According to Wikipedia, "most baboon spiders are not considered dangerous to humans." Read the rest

Spider molting from Karli Larson on Vimeo.

Spiders don't have an internal skeleton like we do. Instead, their muscles are anchored to an exoskeleton—a sort of hard, semi-flexible shell that encases a spider's whole body. In order to grow bigger, spiders have to grow new exoskeletons and shed old ones.

Karli Larson found a spider on her window frame in the process of shedding its exoskeleton. Naturally, she filmed it and set the whole thing to music. She says:

The entire molting process took about 30 minutes to fully complete. This is the interesting part, sped up.

The camera is a little shakey, so if that bothers you, well, sorry. But I think this is still way fascinating.

Read more about spiders, their exoskeletons, and the molting process at HowStuffWorks

Thanks, Maggie Ryan Sandford!

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