DailyDirt: Our Eight-Legged Friends

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Wed, Jun 15th 2011 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Spiders are tough little invertebrates, and some of them have pretty amazing adaptations to their environments. Here are just a few more interesting links on these eight-legged creatures.

The little Argyroneta aquatica spider is the first known spider to live its entire life under water. It still needs to breathe air, so it creates a little diving bell that also seems to act like a gill. [url]
It might not be so cruel to pull a couple legs off of spiders... since spiders can survive just fine on 6 legs. Five-legged spiders, though, are definitely handicapped. [url]
About 40 new species of spiders were found in the Philippines -- along with a lot of other new species of invertebrates and fish. Apparently, "the Philippines has more diversity on land and sea than any other place on earth." [citation needed?] [url]
Here's a quick fact/fiction summary about the camel spider. First fact: the camel spider isn't really a spider. Thanks for playing. [url]
To discover more interesting biological curiosities, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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Filed Under: invertebrates, philippines, spiders

6 Comments

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Lawrence D�Oliveiro, 15 Jun 2011 @ 5:54pm

Spiders On Drugs
I love the report from several years ago about the effects of exposing spiders to different types of drugs. Some of these had really bizarre effects on their web-weaving, in particular.

I�m not sure if it was the cocaine or caffeine one that looked like the critter kept on weaving and didn�t know when to stop...
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Michael Ho (profile), 15 Jun 2011 @ 6:09pm

Re: Spiders On Drugs
Have you seen the remix?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc
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Call me Al, 16 Jun 2011 @ 12:58am

Thank for the article on the spider with its little diving bell. A really amazing creature.
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ethorad (profile), 16 Jun 2011 @ 4:47am

Camel spiders
First fact: the camel spider isn't really a spider. Thanks for playing.

But is it a camel?
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Jun 2011 @ 7:29am

So camel spiders got their name by eating the underbellies of camels, but they aren't known for eating prey larger than they are? Those must be some incredibly tiny camels then...
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Benny6Toes (profile), 16 Jun 2011 @ 7:31am

sigh...the above anonymous coward is me. It would be great if chrome actually kept me logged in from time to time...
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