I caught a spider in the bathtub a few days ago. One of the little dark ones that stay on the ground. Then I caught a daddy longlegs that had built a web in the corner. I put the plastic tub aside, intending to set them free outside later. Well, I forgot. Or I’d see the container and see that it’s raining outside and didn’t want to go out. Or I was in a hurry to get out the door. I just didn’t get round to it letting the spiders go.
I just saw the container, and the little garden spider is wrapped up and hauled up into the longlegs’s web.
I know most spiders are harmless and that in any case, I’m much bigger than they are. I merely have a visceral fear reaction. I’m too scared of them to kill them anyway. It’s all those legs and the weird way they move. Yuck. Strangely enough, I can watch spiders in their webs and think that they’re intriguing, but the minute one comes running in my direction, forget that. Cockroaches are also horrors. We have a lot of winged ones here. Even one is too many, to my mind, but we have lots.
I heard somewhere (maybe here) that small insect’s brains are simply not big enough to feel the kind of fear and pain that we might feel during severe injury or death.
On the other hand, if that is the case where does their fondness for survival come from if not from fear of horrible death?
I caught a little snake at home one evening and brought it in to school to be identified. My teacher put it in with another snake about the same size, while he looked up its markings. I came back third period for biology class and he told me some good news; my snake was actually pretty rare, especially around here, which seemed to be a big deal to herpetologists. He also had some bad news; the other snake which was common as dirt, had eaten the fancy snake. No snake = no happy herpetologists. My snake probably wasn’t thrilled either, and I still feel guilty for sending him off to be a snake snack.
I feel sorry about killing anything except ants that get into my plants or house. That’s just a declaration of war right there, that is.
Spiders and I typically get along just fine so long as they aren’t roaming around the same spaces I roam inside the house. Once they cross my path (literally), they’re fair game.
But I share some of the fondness for life that some of the rest of you expressed. There’s been a solitary spider in one corner of the bathroom who hasn’t moved more than a couple of feet in either direction for the last three months. It isn’t getting any bigger really, isn’t venturing far from its comfy spot, and I feel that we co-exist just fine. I just keep my fingers crossed that it never gets adventurous, because I’d have to pull a Garfield on it then.
There’s been a spider living outside my front door for what seems like a year. It’s been there many months, anyway. I’ve thought about relocating it, but there’s no rush. It’s not bothering me, and it keeps the insect population down.
The only thing I have ever been happy to of seen dead are millipedes, fruit flies, and my ex wife. Spiders are my friends. Milipedes (dead) bring me money. Fruit flies and The Bitch are just annoying.
I don’t see how we can know what animals or insects think, if anything.
I do know that when there is a daddy longlegs in the sink and I use a paper towel to rescue it, it runs away. They act as if they are afraid of something but who knows what?
From the very little I know about spiders, the types known as ‘daddy longlegs’ are harvestmen spiders. They don’t make webs - because they have no silk glands and are usually herbivores because they don’t have venom or fangs to subdue their prey.
I suck at C, so I’ll make up my own language as I see fit.
#include <stimulus.h>
int main()
if (object=food)
{
I=eat;
}
else if(object="large, loud, vibrating")
{
I=run;
}
Basically, insects – and probably many animals – are just little tiny machines. If there is food, it will be eaten. If there is something that is negative to their survival that they instinctly know will destroy them from thousands of years of evolution, they will react in such a way as their ancestors who survived did. Much like gold fish, really.
Yeah. I was just responding to the question about whether or not insects, etc. know about their prospective death. It really doesn’t matter, they seem to know fear. For that matter, isn’t fear of strange noises an instinctive fear for human infants? And they don’t know about their future death either.
Same here. The spiders who live on the walls & corners are safe, but any spider that crawls near me is a dead spider. This way, I discourage the instinctual tendencies of people-crawling spiders, so the only ones who survive and pass on their genes are those with the corner-dwelling tendency. It really does work wonders. Ain’t Darwin grand?
