Spiders are awesome

[Selby]

Can't remember posting these here, so here goes.  This was my garage...







Feeding time!  It was neat to actually see how fast they can move and how much they toy with their prey while it struggles to get free.  I shot video of it too since I figured I wouldn't have the opportunity to do it again later.

[Merusk]

It's a shame ants are on your KOS list, in general I think ants (along with the rest of the hymenoptera) are one of the most remarkable orders of animal in existence. Only humans, tardigrades and various extremophile bacteria can rival them in my view.

You're obviously not a homeowner.  Ants are great until you have to battle them a few times because they've built nests around your foundation, are tearing up parts of your yard or are coming into the house.  Then you start thinking of new and inventive ways to kill the fuckers.

[bhodi]

Yeah. Remarkable doesn't get you off the KoS list. Being less intrusive and damaging to my property or myself does.

[K9]

You're obviously not a homeowner.  Ants are great until you have to battle them a few times because they've built nests around your foundation, are tearing up parts of your yard or are coming into the house.  Then you start thinking of new and inventive ways to kill the fuckers.

True, I'm not a homeowner, even if I were I'm not sure that the species we have here in England are really as much a threat to structures as some of the ones y'all get.

Really you should move into a caravan and get back to marvelling at how awesome ants are.

[Johny Cee]

You're obviously not a homeowner.  Ants are great until you have to battle them a few times because they've built nests around your foundation, are tearing up parts of your yard or are coming into the house.  Then you start thinking of new and inventive ways to kill the fuckers.

True, I'm not a homeowner, even if I were I'm not sure that the species we have here in England are really as much a threat to structures as some of the ones y'all get.

Really you should move into a caravan and get back to marvelling at how awesome ants are.

This man would sell you a caravan:

[Sky]

It's a shame ants are on your KOS list, in general I think ants (along with the rest of the hymenoptera) are one of the most remarkable orders of animal in existence. Only humans, tardigrades and various extremophile bacteria can rival them in my view.

I agree. Not in my house.

[gryeyes]

It always blew me away that ants domesticate livestock,farm,enslave other species. And all this complex information is transmitted through genetics (I assume?). They are still slain on sight in my home but not nearly with the same glee as spiders. I find it hard not to consider them "conscious" when they display behaviors like that. That whip scorpion a few pages back is terrifying.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtXPmWJcuZY

The only spider i have ever seen i would consider cute.

[Sky]

Ants are amazing, they are living RTS games. I grew up in the country with very sandy soil, tons of ant nests all over the place, all kinds of ant varieties, big, small, brown, red, black, mixed, etc. It was a sick battleground and sometimes these massive battles would get underway with thick clusters of ants duking it out, flanking maneuvers, it was a lot of fun to watch the progress of the various breeds over the summer fighting back and forth.

[Lantyssa]

Cow killers were my favorite, though we didn't get a lot of them.  Real pretty red and black striping.

[FatuousTwat]

I lived in a forest as a kid and ants were everywhere... There was a 8ft across dying ceder tree that looked normal from a distance, but once you got close you could see it was teeming with piss ants.

[Broughden]

Cow killers were my favorite, though we didn't get a lot of them.  Real pretty red and black striping.

Hey we had those growing up as well! No one ever seems to know what Im talking about when I mention them. They are like, "What? Huh? Cow killers?"

You know its strange in all my time as a kid I never ever saw more than 1 at any given time, never saw them traveling in groups or even a pair. Also never ever found one of their nests or homes. Weird.

[Mrbloodworth]

[NowhereMan]

Cow killers were my favorite, though we didn't get a lot of them.  Real pretty red and black striping.

Hey we had those growing up as well! No one ever seems to know what Im talking about when I mention them. They are like, "What? Huh? Cow killers?"

You know its strange in all my time as a kid I never ever saw more than 1 at any given time, never saw them traveling in groups or even a pair. Also never ever found one of their nests or homes. Weird.

Since they're wasps and not a communal variety that has nests (they plant eggs in other creatures) this is not especially surprising. (I did have to Wiki them since I am very much one of those people who'd go, "What? Huh? Cow killers?"

[Broughden]

Cow killers were my favorite, though we didn't get a lot of them.  Real pretty red and black striping.

Hey we had those growing up as well! No one ever seems to know what Im talking about when I mention them. They are like, "What? Huh? Cow killers?"

You know its strange in all my time as a kid I never ever saw more than 1 at any given time, never saw them traveling in groups or even a pair. Also never ever found one of their nests or homes. Weird.

Since they're wasps and not a communal variety that has nests (they plant eggs in other creatures) this is not especially surprising. (I did have to Wiki them since I am very much one of those people who'd go, "What? Huh? Cow killers?"

What? Huh? Wingless wasps? Because I always thought they were big furry ants.

[Ingmar]

They're called velvet ants, but aren't ants. Kind of like amblypygids are called whip spiders but aren't spiders. The big hairy red ones you see are the females, which are wingless. The males have wings and are much more traditionally wasp-shaped.

[Trippy]

It has begun: Giant spiders invade Australian Outback town

[Xurtan]

Asked what he would do with the giant spider he caught this week, Mr Geiszler said: “I think I’m going to mount this one in acrylic to show people how big it is. It’ll make a great paperweight.”

  No, just.. no.

[Sky]

I thought about having a taxidermist friend stuff the critters I'm bagging in my backyard, then putting them out in front of my house so the lady three houses down who is feeding all the critters in her front yard can see them. I could even arrange them, so the chipmunk looked like he was giving a sermon to the squirrels.

[Righ]

They've just discovered this bad boy infesting hop farms in Ireland, apparently it's a previously unknown species.

That's not a spider, its an amblypygid.

Thanks, I was puzzling at the front legs and pincers. Never heard of those arachnids before. So Ireland's tropical now? Not bad, its got some pretty good beaches.

[Righ]

I don't know why I'm still reading about these disgusting arachnids. Apparently they can be quite large. Here's the amblypygid from the linked story:

[Sky]

I wonder if they could take out a chipmunk...might need to import some!

[Sir T]

It has begun: Giant spiders invade Australian Outback town

From the comments

Tarantulas are amazingly soft and velvety. When handling one, make sure there are no sudden movements or they will take a flying leap. Not the kind of thing one wants to see airborne in the house.

Indeed.

[Sky]

Tarantulas are amazingly soft and velvety.

[Cyrrex]

Okay, that made me lol.

And that thing up their eating the frog needs to die in a nuclear explosion.

[Lantyssa]

Die in one?  I'm pretty sure it's the result of one.

[voodoolily]

They're called velvet ants, but aren't ants. Kind of like amblypygids are called whip spiders but aren't spiders. The big hairy red ones you see are the females, which are wingless. The males have wings and are much more traditionally wasp-shaped.

Their bites are a 3.0 on the Schmidt Sting Pain Index (dunno if I posted this before).

    * 1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.
    * 1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch.
    * 1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.
    * 2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
    * 2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.
    * 2.x Honey bee and European hornet: Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.
    * 3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.
    * 3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.
    * 4.0 Tarantula hawk: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath.
    * 4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel.

[Sky]

Yeah, I've had a paper wasp more than once. Not fun times. When I was a kid, I had an allergic reaction to it, but haven't since. My hand literally swelled up like a balloon. I also caught a fleeting glimpse.

[apocrypha]

    * 1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.
    * 1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch.
    * 1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.
    * 2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
    * 2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.
    * 2.x Honey bee and European hornet: Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.
    * 3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.
    * 3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.
    * 4.0 Tarantula hawk: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath.
    * 4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel.

That's delightful. I'm guessing this Schmidt person was a genuine masochist of some kind 

[Hindenburg]

Not as much as the guy that fooled around with the irukandji jellyfish.

[voodoolily]

Yeah, I've had a paper wasp more than once. Not fun times. When I was a kid, I had an allergic reaction to it, but haven't since. My hand literally swelled up like a balloon. I also caught a fleeting glimpse.

When I was a kid I stepped on a yellow jackets' nest (stupid ground nesters). Got stung in about ten places, including my eyelid. I was completely swollen, and my mom smeared me in a paste of baking soda, meat tenderizer and water. After that, the reaction I have to bee stings is less than that of a mosquito bite (which, on me, is disproportionately more severe). I remember one time about a year after that I was wandering around in some tall weeds and got stung on the back of the leg for no reason, but it felt so mild that I thought a thistle had brushed against me.

[Sky]

[Ingmar]

Just to add more pedantry, I can't be sure but those look like harvestmen, not spiders. 

[proudft]

 
    * 2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.
    * 2.x Honey bee and European hornet: Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.

Hmm, I've been stung by honeybees (3 times) and a yellowjacket (once), and the yellowjacket hurt a HELL of a lot more.  It was behind my knee, maybe that's more sensitive or something, but it's weird they're both 2.something on this scale.

[voodoolily]

Just to add more pedantry, I can't be sure but those look like harvestmen, not spiders. 

We call those daddy longlegs around these parts.

[Lantyssa]

They're called the same here.

Just to add more pedantry, I can't be sure but those look like harvestmen, not spiders. 

It's an image macro.  Do you really expect them to have any idea what they're looking at?