Araneology (SPIDERS) with Marshal Hedin

Why would a spider have a frog best friend? Why do they love your shower? Does lemon repel them? Should you rehome them outside? Why so hairy? How do you identify the harmless ones? Which ones get kinky? Hey. This will be fun. If you’re afraid of spiders, this is the best first step to conquering that fear forever. If you love spiders, you’re in good company with Dr. Marshal Hedin, a San Diego State University professor who has dedicated his life to the diverse array of araneids. Also: why they need and deserve your love.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alie Ward?

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• 0:29Alie Ward?

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• 1:13Alie Ward?

  Aura Ring tracks more than 50 metrics from your finger, and the Aura app brings that information together to help you see patterns across your sleep and stress, activity, and more, so you can start connecting the dots and figure out what works for you. Learn more at aura ring.com. Wear your best life with Aura. Oh, hey, it's your neighbor's dad practicing golf on the lawn, Ally Ward. It's also the lady who's going to be on The Tonight Show on Wednesday, May 14th. Correct, your podfather, your internet dad, me, I'm taping The Tonight Show the very day this episode comes out. And if you're here because you saw that, welcome. I made a spider episode for you.

• 1:54Alie Ward?

  Sometimes on this show, we talk about bears, or psychology, or porcupines, or rocks, but today, it's spiders. So, thank you, everyone, for all of the support going into this taping tomorrow. I'm excited and my hands are sweaty. So first off, I'm going to say, I know Some of you are very afraid of spiders and we are gathered here today to change that. Okay, we can do this. Many psychologists assert that the best cure for apprehension and phobias is what's called exposure response prevention. So you have to fight fear with knowledge and proximity. It works. Listening to this, if you're afraid of spiders, it'll make you a stronger person. It'll make your life easier. You got it. And if you're not

• 2:38Alie Ward?

  afraid, it's just a great way to fill yourself with facts about our tiny little arachnid friends. And side note, this episode is not called arachnology because there are different types of arachnids that are not spiders. But the scientific distinction for spiders comes from the Greek root, aranea. So hence, araneology. And we have a great one for you. He is a professor and researcher at San Diego State University and so passionate about spiders, such a friend to spiders. Also, his vibes are like Ron Swanson. He's cool, not a yapper, but brimming with love and respect for these maligned and fascinating creatures. He's calm, he's collected, he's gonna take us on a journey. I personally, I love spiders and I fear them not. But I am holding your hands if you do, because it turns out you

• 3:22Alie Ward?

  were brainwashed. That's why you're afraid. So I hope you're not. If you're listening, I hope you're cool with them. You will be in a minute. But first off, there are 38,000 known spider species in the world and about 100 species have venom that's detrimental to humans. So that is 0.0025. So let's start there and continue, okay? But first, thank you so much to all the patrons at patreon.com/ologies for supporting the show for as little as a dollar a month and sending in your questions. Thank you to everyone wearing Ologies merch from ologiesmerch.com. And thank you to everyone who leaves a review because they really help the show so much and I read them all and I prove it to you. So thank you, LadyEllenTia04,

• 4:04Alie Ward?

  who wrote a review this week that said, "I've been able to cut my doom scrolling to almost nothing because Ologies always keeps me on the edge of my seat." Thank you, thank you, thank you for making this space possible. LadyEllenTia04, glad you're here, happy to do it. I hope you like spiders, or I hope you fear them because it's up ...will cure arachnophobia, maybe. And if not, you get your money back on this free podcast. Speaking of free podcasts, also, we have shorter G-rated versions of our episodes in their own feed, wherever you get podcasts. You can subscribe to that. That show is called Smologies. It's also linked in the show notes. We made them for delicate ears. So now, let's get into it. Ready? I headed to San Diego State University to interview this expert who had been on my list for years.

• 4:47Alie Ward?

  And it was hot, like 100 degrees. And for some reason, I think I was wearing a sweater. I can't remember. Parking was incredibly confusing, and it was not going well. I'm gonna set the scene. I'm nearly 20 minutes late to this interview. Um, nightmare. Some of you are very afraid of spiders. This is my actual nightmare. It's 100 degrees. 224, Life Sciences South. So sweaty. And because it's 1 million degrees, and I did not want to die, I drank like a gallon and a half of water in the way here. It was a two-hour drive. So here I am. Not believe how bad I have to be.

• 5:30Alie Ward?

  My neck feels and smells like a T-Rex has been licking it. Oh, excuse me. Um, excuse me. Do you know where Life Science South is?

• 5:41Alie Ward?

  Um.

• 5:42Alie Ward?

  Oh, um, do you know where the Life Science building is, South?

• 5:46Alie Ward?

  Um, Life Science is South?

• 5:51Speaker 02

  I believe it's down there.

• 5:52Alie Ward?

  Down there?

• 5:53Speaker 02

  Yes. I'm not 100% sure, though.

• 5:56Alie Ward?

  Okay, I'm honing in. I'm getting closer. At this point, despite arriving on campus early, I am one hour late to his office. It's a nightmare. I'm looking for Marshall. He's a spider guy. He's in Life Sciences, South 264.

• 6:12Speaker 03

  Marshall, head in?

• 6:13Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 6:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay.

• 6:15Alie Ward?

  Thank you so much for the escort.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, don't worry. I lose all the time.

• 6:19Alie Ward?

  Ah, you're an angel. Thank you so much. Marshall!

• 6:24Alie Ward?

  Am I dead? Is this heaven?

• 6:27Speaker 05

  Look a little red in the face.

• 6:29Alie Ward?

  Yeah, it's 100 out there. There are people just straight up in bikinis.

• 6:32Speaker 05

  Is it 100?

• 6:33Alie Ward?

  It's 100. If not, a little bit more. And I talked to...

• 6:36Speaker 05

  That's disgusting.

• 6:36Alie Ward?

  Yeah, it's... I'm disgusting, but... That's okay. So I'm so sorry. Can I use the ladies room really quick? Okay, you're the best.

• 6:43Alie Ward?

  He was so forgiving and very humble and shy and subdued. I don't think he had ever heard of ologies or realized what he was getting into. Much like a spider that you see in your shower, who's like, I'm okay, what are you? But relax, chill out, enjoy such dazzling information such as: What is a true spider versus not a true spider? Which are the most advanced spiders? What's a spider's vision like? Which movies get it really, really wrong? The rarest ones, the tiniest ones? What fieldwork is like? How learning about these critters is the key to loving them? Hidden phone features, mating habits, the oldest spider, and so much more.

• 7:24Alie Ward?

  So let's hand the mic to professor, researcher, spider defender, and arachnologist, Dr. Marshal Hedin.

• 7:51Alie Ward?

  Can you pretend like you're doing karaoke? Just like, pretend you're either Seinfeld or karaoke. Celine Dion, one of the two.

• 8:02Speaker 05

  Marshal Hedin, H-E-M.

• 8:04Alie Ward?

  Hedin?

• 8:05Speaker 05

  Hedin.

• 8:05Alie Ward?

  Okay. A lot of people call you Hedin, probably?

• 8:08Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 8:08Alie Ward?

  Yeah, you get that a lot. I'm glad you said it, because I...

• 8:11Speaker 05

  Hedin.

• 8:12Alie Ward?

  Yeah, Hedin. Okay, perfect. And now, do people call you Dr. Spider, ever?

• 8:17Speaker 05

  Rarely.

• 8:18Alie Ward?

  Really?

• 8:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:19Alie Ward?

  That's a missed opportunity, to be honest.

• 8:23Alie Ward?

  Can I call you Dr. Spider?

• 8:25Speaker 05

  You can call me Dr. Spider.

• 8:26Alie Ward?

  Hell, yeah. And you are an arachnologist.

• 8:30Speaker 05

  I am.

• 8:31Alie Ward?

  Right?

• 8:31Speaker 05

  Big time.

• 8:32Alie Ward?

  Big time. What, how do you classify just a normal arachnologist and a big time one?

• 8:38Alie Ward?

  Based on the level of passion?

• 8:41Speaker 05

  Yes, and I work on different groups of arachnids. If you just work on spiders, I mean, you're kind of sort of an arachnologist, but if you work on spiders and other arachnids, then yeah.

• 8:53Alie Ward?

  Now, when you are tasked with defining a spider in very technical terms.

• 8:58Speaker 05

  What do you mean defining a spider? Like defining a new species?

• 9:02Alie Ward?

  No, just literally what is a spider as opposed to another arachnid?

• 9:07Speaker 05

  Spiders have, in their fangs, they have venom glands. And spiders produce silk from their abdomen. That sets spiders apart from other arachnids.

• 9:18Alie Ward?

  Venom glands and silk.

• 9:19Speaker 05

  That actually makes them the ultimate predator, venom and silk.

• 9:23Alie Ward?

  And let's say that you're talking about daddy longlegs.

• 9:27Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 9:28Alie Ward?

  Does it irritate you when people call them spiders?

• 9:31Speaker 05

  No.

• 9:33Alie Ward?

  So the daddy longlegs that you're used to seeing, those may not even be spiders. There are these creatures called opelionis, and we are going to exonerate them in a moment.

• 9:42Speaker 05

  No, I don't get too upset about it.

• 9:44Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 9:45Speaker 05

  So there are daddy longleg spiders.

• 9:48Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 9:49Speaker 05

  Which are cellar spiders, which people find in their cellars. But those are spiders. And then there are, if you go to the East Coast, you see a little arachnid with a little round body and long legs, and people call those daddy longlegs. Those are opelionis, not spiders.

• 10:06Alie Ward?

  And opelionis don't have venomous glands or silk?

• 10:10Speaker 05

  That's correct, yeah.

• 10:11Alie Ward?

  And their body segments, just one ball of a body?

• 10:14Speaker 05

  That's right. They don't have two-part body plan, yeah. But there's another myth, because some people think that opelionis, what they call daddy longlegs, are actually highly venomous, but that's not true.

• 10:25Alie Ward?

  So those Slenderman friends that hang out in your shower, sometimes they're not even spiders and not venomous. So that myth that these non-spider daddy longlegs are dangerous, but they just don't have fangs, the total horsepucky garbage talk. And even the cellar spiders, not a threat to your life.

• 10:44Speaker 05

  Well, they don't have venom glands, for one thing, but even if it was a daddy longleg spider, it's not really dangerous either, so myth number one, crushed.

• 10:53Alie Ward?

  Flim flam busted.

• 10:55Alie Ward?

  Um, spiders technically aren't insects either, or are they insects?

• 11:00Speaker 05

  Not even close.

• 11:00Alie Ward?

  Not even close to insects. So when people say, "I hate insects like spiders."

• 11:05Speaker 05

  Why would you ever say that, but?

• 11:06Alie Ward?

  Well, I know, tell me about it. One thing you should know about me right off the bat is I love bugs.

• 11:12Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 11:12Alie Ward?

  Love bugs.

• 11:13Speaker 05

  This is good.

• 11:14Alie Ward?

  I, bug collection, my, one of my favorite things to do before the internet when I was a kid, was just pour through field guides of insects.

• 11:22Speaker 05

  Awesome.

• 11:22Alie Ward?

  I draw them. If I see a spider, I will let it crawl on me and then rehome it outside. I'm thrilled, I saw tarantula in the wild last year and it was, I almost started crying.

• 11:32Speaker 05

  Whereabouts?

• 11:33Alie Ward?

  It was in the Santa Monica Mountains. And I'd never seen one in the wild before. Here's some actual audio from this encounter and it's mortifying amounts of glee.

• 11:43Alie Ward?

  That is beautiful. We have trapdoor spiders in our backyard.

• 11:48Speaker 05

  Sweet.

• 11:49Alie Ward?

  Yeah, so I'm the opposite of a person that's like, "Kill it with fire."

• 11:53Speaker 05

  Good.

• 11:54Alie Ward?

  That's why I've been so excited about this for so long. Thank God that we established that because you can tell this good man is used to haters. What about you? When did you start getting interested in bugs as a general category?

• 12:06Speaker 05

  When I was a grad student.

• 12:07Alie Ward?

  Really? Not until then? You weren't out looking for bugs when you were a kid?

• 12:11Speaker 05

  No, I was outside a lot when I was a kid, but a lot. But I was, I was interested in mammals mostly.

• 12:18Alie Ward?

  Really?

• 12:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:20Alie Ward?

  We were turned out into a field and told to come back when it got dark.

• 12:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was me too.

• 12:24Alie Ward?

  Yeah, just like, "See you, see you later, when you smell rice-a-roni, come back."

• 12:28Speaker 05

  That's right. Different times.

• 12:30Alie Ward?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 12:32Speaker 05

  Although you can still do that up in our Northern California.

• 12:35Alie Ward?

  Turn loose, it's good for the microbiome.

• 12:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:37Alie Ward?

  Get a tetanus shot, best of luck.

• 12:39Speaker 05

  I like it.

• 12:40Alie Ward?

  So why mammals when you were growing up in Mount Shasta?

• 12:43Speaker 05

  That was just kind of the culture. I grew up with, you know, hunters, around hunters and stuff, so that's kind of what we did.

• 12:49Alie Ward?

  What were you studying grad school?

• 12:51Speaker 05

  When I was a master's student, I actually studied mammals, mice, but then I, when I did my PhD, I made the transition.

• 12:57Alie Ward?

  What was it? What flipped that switch?

• 13:00Speaker 05

  I was kind of floundering around.

• 13:04Speaker 05

  But I was interested in like questions, evolutionary biology questions. And then I got, I just got interested and kind of floated around and found arachnids and then, yeah, went from there.

• 13:16Alie Ward?

  Was it something about their mystique or their web spinning or?

• 13:22Speaker 05

  No, initially it was just because they were very poorly known and I thought there was a lot to learn.

• 13:27Alie Ward?

  How many species do we know of?

• 13:31Speaker 05

  Spiders?

• 13:32Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 13:32Speaker 05

  Fifty thousand?

• 13:34Alie Ward?

  Fifty thousand?

• 13:35Speaker 05

  Fifty thousand described.

• 13:36Alie Ward?

  That's so many.

• 13:37Speaker 05

  But there's probably twice as many as that, actually. One hundred K.

• 13:41Alie Ward?

  One hundred?

• 13:42Speaker 05

  One hundred thousand.

• 13:43Alie Ward?

  Thousand.

• 13:44Speaker 05

  Spider species.

• 13:44Alie Ward?

  Species of spider.

• 13:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:46Alie Ward?

  Did you ever have the phobia of spiders?

• 13:50Speaker 05

  No.

• 13:50Alie Ward?

  No? You probably run into people with it a lot, right? Or people, if they find out what you do, they probably...

• 13:56Speaker 05

  I've heard that. I've heard about that.

• 13:57Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 14:00Speaker 05

  I've heard that there's a thing.

• 14:02Speaker 06

  I think one of your Venezuelan spiders hitched a ride here. There may be some spiders around here that are very dangerous.

• 14:08Alie Ward?

  Do you blame a lot of it on arachnophobia, the film?

• 14:11Speaker 05

  Uh, I mean, I think that film's kind of so old that people don't watch that anymore.

• 14:16Alie Ward?

  That's good.

• 14:17Speaker 05

  I think it's just, yeah, something about the culture.

• 14:20Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 14:21Speaker 05

  That's what parents learned. Then they teach their kids the same kind of fear.

• 14:25Alie Ward?

  Mm-hmm. I talked to a herpetologist, said the same thing about snakes.

• 14:28Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 14:28Alie Ward?

  You just, it's just conditioned. See that Herpetology episode with Dr. David Steen about reptiles and how children don't start to fear them until they see their elders spooked. Even the Mayo Clinic is like, if a family member has a specific phobia or anxiety, you're more likely to develop it too, because children may learn specific phobias by watching how a family member reacts to an object or a situation. That's straight from the Mayo Clinic. And we're more on how fear works in your body and how you have what I like to call a screaming almond of terror nestled at the center of your brain. We have an amazing two-part fearology episode with Dr. Mary Poffenroth, who also has a new book out called Brave New You. She's great. But the message here,

• 15:12Alie Ward?

  you're scared of spiders because probably someone else was in your life. Let's crunch the numbers on the actual danger. How many of those 50,000 known species are a danger to humans?

• 15:25Speaker 05

  About 50.

• 15:27Alie Ward?

  Five oh.

• 15:28Speaker 05

  Fifty out of fifty thousand. Pretty small percentage.

• 15:32Alie Ward?

  Yeah. Human beings are probably much more dangerous to.

• 15:35Speaker 05

  That's right. I always talk about this in my class. Like, you can show a slide of animals that kill people.

• 15:39Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 15:40Speaker 05

  And spiders aren't on the list, right?

• 15:42Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 15:43Speaker 05

  They don't kill people, essentially, effectively. They're not on the top fifty list, so.

• 15:48Alie Ward?

  It's like mosquitoes, people. From what I understand, like, there's mosquitoes and then people.

• 15:54Speaker 05

  And then a bunch of actually dangerous animals like dogs.

• 15:57Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 15:57Speaker 05

  Or whatever.

• 15:58Alie Ward?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:59Speaker 05

  Right.

• 15:59Alie Ward?

  And here, I have one in my bed every night.

• 16:02Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 16:02Alie Ward?

  But if some people see a spider outside, they're like.

• 16:05Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 16:05Alie Ward?

  So, yes, I have a killer in my bed every night, and her name is Gremlin. Statistically, dogs kill twenty-five thousand humans a year globally. Ranking number four on the list of dangerous animals. And you can see our recent hippo episode for some debunking in that department. But I still love my dog. I'm not scared of her. You want to know the top animal killer? Of course. Once again, not spiders. It's mosquitoes because of their vector-borne diseases. They're responsible for roughly a million human deaths annually, and they're not spiders. There are over two hundred million mosquito-spread cases of malaria a year, and it's on the rise, and most deaths occur in little kiddos under the age of five.

• 16:49Alie Ward?

  Mosquitoes kill more people on Earth in one day than sharks have in the last century. Spiders are like, leave me out of this, people. And to be fair, I will say it's not the mosquitoes' fault that they are just lousy with parasites who use them for a ride. But the number-two animal-caused death. Mosquitoes, number one. Dogs, number four. Snakes, number three. Coming in at over a half a million human fatalities per year is a species of ape, Homo sapiens. Which means that I have one of those in my bed, too. So if a mosquito bites me while I'm sleeping in my home, I am in bed with three potential killers, and none of them. Are spiders. So in terms of what animal could take your ass out,

• 17:32Alie Ward?

  it's a mosquito, or a warlord, or a drunk driver, or maybe a person who was sold firearms when they don't know how to handle them. But it's not going to be a spider, most likely. So you are needlessly afraid of spiders. I get it. The receptionist at my dentist's office this week told me that she is so afraid of spiders that she has broken two phones by throwing them across the room when she saw a picture of a spider on the phone, on the screen. Not a real spider, just a screen spider. So what can you do? First, you can ask yourself if something happened with a spider once that surprised you. One guy friend once told me that he hates spiders. And I was like, did you ever get surprised by one?

• 18:14Alie Ward?

  And he was like, oh, I guess I did have a tarantula crawl across my hand in a desert when I was a kid. And I was like, well, there you go. So try to distinguish between the different emotions of fear and surprise. Also, exposure. I know you don't want to hear that, but it's true. Look at photos first, and then see if you can hold one, or try to look at some spiders from a distance outside. And what you're doing is rewiring your brain to learn through exposure that they aren't scary or a threat. And then you're teaching the people around you that they don't have to fear them either. And unfortunately, whether it's about writing an email, or texting someone hot, or getting started on your novel,

• 18:56Alie Ward?

  or procrastinating on a work thing, or even ordering food over the phone, the more you avoid it, the more it scares and owns you. That is from my therapist to your brain. And it includes spiders. One person asked me if during this episode, if I could bleep the word spider. And I was like, I don't, I think that's not the problem, of hearing the word spider.

• 19:21Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 19:22Alie Ward?

  We're going to be saying it a lot.

• 19:23Speaker 05

  That could get pretty annoying.

• 19:24Alie Ward?

  Yeah, exposure therapy is the way to go. But what was your graduate work in spiders? What part of arachnology was that?

• 19:32Speaker 05

  Well, it was pretty awesome. I went to grad school in Missouri, but I did my work in the southern Appalachians. And I worked on spiders that like to live in caves.

• 19:43Alie Ward?

  Oh, amazing.

• 19:44Speaker 05

  It's like the combination, right?

• 19:45Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 19:46Alie Ward?

  For more on caves, you can see our recent speliology episode about what it's like to spend weeks underground, sleeping in a hammock for science. Spider roommates are part of the job.

• 19:57Speaker 05

  You combine the cave, you combine with the spider. Not all of them live in caves, but a lot of them live in caves. A lot of them just live up in the beautiful mountains of that area.

• 20:06Alie Ward?

  Is that a spider-rich territory in generally Appalachia?

• 20:10Speaker 05

  Yeah. It was really spectacular working there.

• 20:13Alie Ward?

  Does your work deal with fieldwork or lab work or kind of an equal combination?

• 20:20Speaker 05

  Both, yeah. And the field is the best.

• 20:22Alie Ward?

  People like us? Are you kidding? Turn us out with a bucket and a flashlight?

• 20:26Speaker 05

  It's so awesome. It's like a road trip, like a three-week road trip. I mean, you're with people that also love nature and are really interested in spiders. And every day you're outside in beautiful places, looking for things, often finding new things, finding new species, lots of rich conversations. It's the best.

• 20:47Alie Ward?

  What kinds of places has that taken you to?

• 20:50Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, in California, I've been everywhere. What, is that a song or something? I've been everywhere, man.

• 21:03Speaker 05

  I've been everywhere, literally in California, and a lot in the Western United States, a lot in Eastern United States and Southern Appalachia, South Africa, Australia a few times, Central America, South America.

• 21:15Alie Ward?

  Australia's got some spiders. I've seen pictures of Australian spiders and they're like bread plate. They're like a palm size, right? The Huntsman's?

• 21:25Speaker 05

  Oh, yes.

• 21:26Alie Ward?

  But it's not just Australia that has giant spooters.

• 21:29Speaker 05

  Oh, I had a giant crab spider that I just found in Arizona. I should have brought it in.

• 21:34Alie Ward?

  How big is a crab spider?

• 21:36Speaker 05

  Well, a giant crab spider is pretty big. They have long legs. They can kind of fill your palm or something like that. But they're in the same family as the spiders you're talking about, sparasids.

• 21:45Alie Ward?

  Yeah, their legs are sort of set back a little bit, right?

• 21:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 21:48Alie Ward?

  This giant crab spider, or Oleos gigantius, is a huntsman, and its legs are more along a horizontal axis than a circle, if you can imagine that. And Marshall, this man knows his spiders. He's been at this professionally for decades, discovering new species and cataloging them, and then teaching the next generation of what he considers stewards of the environment and protectors of the species. He's traveled all kinds of terrain, and he says to go spider watching, head to different habitats. And our aperiology episode with Joseph Saunders is a really great intro into macro photography, even with your phone, and how to get up close and patient, looking for tiny creatures with new eyes. So maybe start with some photography.

• 22:33Alie Ward?

  Can you tell me, from an evolutionary perspective, what do we know about the evolution of spiders and how they branch off like that? And why do they call things that are true spiders not true spiders? What's with that taxonomy being a little?

• 22:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, that name's kind of dumb, but we know a lot about the spider tree of life. Our knowledge in the last 10 years has exploded.

• 22:54Alie Ward?

  Tell me.

• 22:55Speaker 05

  I'm actually part of that, but we're using like DNA evidence to reconstruct the tree, the phylogeny for spiders. My lab was the first lab to kind of develop this technique where we could pull the same genes from the spider genome and compare it across species. So now that you can do that, you can easily collect a lot of data and reconstruct that phylogeny.

• 23:19Alie Ward?

  Marshall says that they used to have to request a species sample sent to look at its jennies under a microscope and its mouth parts and stuff, to determine who it was, what was what species, and if it was a novel find, and where they fit in with spider evolution. Can you give me kind of a broad strokes tree of life overview? Like, when did spiders maybe emerge in history and?

• 23:46Speaker 05

  Like, the common ancestor of spiders goes back to maybe 350 million years ago.

• 23:52Speaker 05

  So that's in the Paleozoic, that's before dinosaurs, then of course they've been evolving since then.

• 23:59Alie Ward?

  So when it comes to your war with spiders, spiders were here first, before you, before dinosaurs, not to be goth about it, but spiders are going to be here after you, probably after us as a species.

• 24:14Speaker 05

  Spider evolutionary history is really old compared to a lot of like mammals or birds. It's really, really deep history. It's like akin to all vertebrates combined, like all animals with a backbone.

• 24:27Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 24:28Speaker 05

  Maybe have a, an evolutionary age that is about the same age as all spiders.

• 24:33Alie Ward?

  Whoa.

• 24:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:34Alie Ward?

  Whoa.

• 24:35Speaker 05

  They're old.

• 24:37Alie Ward?

  Did certain species of spiders kind of remain unchanged? Do we have any that are kind of the horseshoe crab of the spider world?

• 24:43Speaker 05

  Like a living fossil.

• 24:44Alie Ward?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:45Speaker 05

  We do in California.

• 24:47Alie Ward?

  What are those?

• 24:48Speaker 05

  Well, there's a genus called Hypokylus.

• 24:50Alie Ward?

  Okay, so Hypokylus have been around since before the dinosaurs and they're what's called an aranomorph or a true spider. And aranomorphs or true spiders are most of the spiders in the world, about 90% of what you might see. Now, aranomorphs have fangs that point kind of diagonally over each other, like having a crossbite, and they include critters like jumping spiders and wolf spiders and little house spiders making cute cobwebs in your corner, the big huntsmen's, the little pink and white crab spiders that hide in flowers, and those orb weavers that make those gorgeous classic spider webs. But another type of spider is what's called a megalomorph, which means shrew shaped. And megalomorphs

• 25:32Alie Ward?

  are typically burrow dwelling, so they hide in little holes, and they include tarantulas and Australia's funnel web spiders, which we're going to get to later. And instead of being crisscross, megalomorph fangs point straight down, like a little tiny cute little vampire. So yeah, true spiders are just the aranomorphs and then our little trapdoor and tarantula friends don't count as true spiders, but Marshall says that is a ridiculous taxonomy blunder. But yeah, back to this living fossil Hypokylus spider that Marshall loves.

• 26:03Speaker 05

  But Hypokylus is kind of early on the branch of true spiders.

• 26:08Alie Ward?

  Ooh.

• 26:08Speaker 05

  Right here.

• 26:09Alie Ward?

  And they're still kicking. They're still running around.

• 26:11Speaker 05

  They're so awesome. They're called lampshade spiders. So they build a web that looks like this flimsy, beautiful lampshade.

• 26:17Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 26:18Speaker 05

  And then they sit. On the rock, kind of behind their lampshade. And they have a morphology that's very cryptic. They blend in with the rock. But their morphology hasn't evolved. Really, kind of, it's morphological stasis.

• 26:33Speaker 03

  What does that mean? Exactly.

• 26:35Speaker 05

  They just have stayed there the entire time. So they're spectacular spiders. It's kind of like when you see them, you can envision that the lineage that they exist in was there when the dinosaurs were there. They've just been there the entire time, kind of in stasis, kind of persisting.

• 26:53Alie Ward?

  These little long-legged babes build webs that are kind of conical. And when the light catches them in dark spaces, they take on this glow of a lampshade. And they're some of the more primitive, newer species. And Marshall loves them, I think it's safe to say. And I love that.

• 27:11Speaker 05

  A beautiful story of evolutionary persistence. And for someone from California, it's so cool because you can kind of go there and see that very, very special spider.

• 27:22Alie Ward?

  And this is exciting.

• 27:23Speaker 05

  We actually described a new species of Hypokylus a couple of years ago.

• 27:26Alie Ward?

  Really?

• 27:27Speaker 05

  From the far southern Sierra Nevada, from up near Kernville.

• 27:30Alie Ward?

  Did you get to name it?

• 27:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:32Alie Ward?

  What'd you name it?

• 27:33Speaker 05

  It's called Hypokylus hamote, which is an indigenous name.

• 27:37Alie Ward?

  Oh, that's great.

• 27:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:39Alie Ward?

  What does it mean?

• 27:39Speaker 05

  Hamote. It means from the south.

• 27:42Alie Ward?

  Oh, that's beautiful. And according to a newspaper article titled, "His Spidey Sense Must Have Been Tingling: SDSU Biologist Discovers New Species." This newly discovered beauty is brown, orange, and black with these iridescent blue and green specks. And it's little, though. It's described as the size of a pencil eraser. So if this genus is one of the older ones, what are the newer models of spider? He says that some jumping spiders with big eyes and sharp vision, they do complicated dancing courtship. And yes, they have the ability to bound nearly 40 times of their body length, which is the equivalent of you jumping over 200 feet.

• 28:24Alie Ward?

  That's from one tip of a 747 wing to the tip of the other wing. Jumping spiders can do the equivalent of that. But Marshall says not all models of spider are from the same time. Some lingering under your fridge or sitting on a flower could be 100,000 years old, while others are 100 million years old. What about sizes? What's the biggest spider?

• 28:46Speaker 05

  Biggest spiders like a big tarantula that you would find in Brazil. A bird eating spider, like the size of a dinner plate.

• 28:52Alie Ward?

  And they really do eat birds, right?

• 28:54Speaker 05

  That's what I hear.

• 28:55Alie Ward?

  Was that named because someone's like, that thing could probably eat a bird? Or are they like, I got another bird?

• 29:00Speaker 05

  No, yeah, they they found him eating birds.

• 29:02Alie Ward?

  Okay. Oh, my goodness, he ate a bird. Michael, he ate a bird. He ate a bird. Well, then that's accurate. What about the range of spiders across the globe? Does every continent, does every latitude have them?

• 29:19Speaker 05

  Except for Antarctica, but yeah, everything else, there's spiders. There's some spiders up in the Arctic. I mean, obviously, as you get further north, there's fewer of them, but they get pretty far north.

• 29:29Alie Ward?

  How do they survive those temperatures?

• 29:31Speaker 05

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 29:33Alie Ward?

  Let's have it.

• 29:34Speaker 05

  Some of the species that live at either high elevations or extreme latitudes must have some antifreeze. Yeah, there are spiders that are active on the snow.

• 29:42Alie Ward?

  Spider antifreeze? You ask the heavens? Spider antifreeze. So according to the 2004 study, antifreeze proteins in Alaskan insects and spiders in the Journal of Insect Physiology, these cold tolerant little critters have high concentrations of a type of alcohol in their hemolyte or blood and proteins that lower the freezing point of water, but the melting point stays the same, which is called thermal hysteresis, in case you're ever like in the hardest game of bar trivia ever known. You're probably never going to need to know the term thermal hysteresis, but now you do. And while spiders, they usually have eight eyes. Most have to rely on touch to kind of suss out the world around them.

• 30:25Alie Ward?

  They're literally navigating the world on vibes. And their brains are tiny and their neural tissue can extend all through their torso. They are thinking with their whole chest. What about anatomy of a spider? We've got the fangs up front.

• 30:42Speaker 05

  Going back to the basics, I like this.

• 30:43Alie Ward?

  Yeah, because like, let's get to know spiders.

• 30:45Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 30:46Alie Ward?

  We got the fangs up front, typically two.

• 30:49Speaker 05

  Always two.

• 30:50Alie Ward?

  Always two. So callicery are up front and those are the jaws of a spider and they're tipped with little fangs. Now, next to those callicery are some short, leggy looking things called palps, or petapalps. And they can be small and right near the mouth, or they can be larger. Like wolf spiders sometimes have them with little ping pong paddles or boxing gloves at the end. And they're usually bigger in man spiders. Now, we did a scorpiology episode with Dr. Lauren Esposito, and to my delight and shock, I learned that scorpion's pinchers are technically petapalps. Petapalps?

• 31:28Speaker 05

  Petapalps.

• 31:28Alie Ward?

  Are those technically legs, or are they just modified legs into mouth parts?

• 31:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, they're technically legs.

• 31:34Alie Ward?

  They are?

• 31:35Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 31:35Alie Ward?

  So petty means foot, and palps means to feel. So they have mouth legs that they use like fingers. Tell everyone you know spiders have mouth legs and they live on earth.

• 31:48Speaker 05

  But they don't really function as legs. They function in a sensory way. The spider uses the petapalps to kind of sense its environment. Unless you're a male spider, in which case the petapalps are modified to transfer sperm. But they're not walking legs.

• 32:01Alie Ward?

  So they don't count as legs, but they are appendages?

• 32:03Speaker 05

  They are appendages. They're paired appendages. So technically, a spider has six pairs of appendages going from front to back. The chillicery are paired appendages, but they're not walking legs, obviously. The petapalps are paired appendages. And then the four pairs of walking legs.

• 32:19Alie Ward?

  Yeah. So spiders have 12 appendages. Only eight of them are legs. And the other four are mouth legs, and they're fang area. But even though they have fangs or callicery in their head, you might say that spiders kind of have two business ends. Because of course, one lies at the base of their little finger butts. If you glance down at the derriere of a spider, very closely, it may seem to be like if an old lady was knitting on a porch and just waved like, hello. And then what about spinnerets in the back?

• 32:50Speaker 05

  Those are modified abdominal appendages. Yeah. Those are actually very cool because you can see them as appendages like when a tarantula plays out some silk, you can see them moving independently.

• 33:00Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm. Like a little, like a finger on each side of the butt, right?

• 33:03Speaker 05

  Exactly. It's really cool.

• 33:05Alie Ward?

  As a companion piece, I urge you to see this spidronology episode we did to learn all about spider webs and spider silk and how they are putting genes that make spider silk into silkworms and sometimes goats to make other things. It's a wild world. We'll link in the show notes. But okay, let's talk about their beautiful face and bod, which are kind of sewn together. They're like neck? Eh, no thanks. Different than an insect. So they fuse their head and their thorax together.

• 33:35Speaker 05

  Yep. Insects are hexapods. They have six legs.

• 33:38Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 33:39Speaker 05

  Arachnids have, well, they have 12 legs, but they have eight walking legs.

• 33:44Alie Ward?

  When it comes to their internal organs, do they have a stomach and an intestine? I understand there are book lungs in there that are kind of just like blood or hemolymph just squirts out in there. It's kind of open concept.

• 34:00Speaker 05

  You mean squirts out?

• 34:01Alie Ward?

  Yeah, just bathe, things are just bathed.

• 34:04Speaker 05

  That's right, right. It's an open circulatory system, right? They have this dorsal heart.

• 34:09Alie Ward?

  So a dorsal heart, like a dorsal fin, means that it runs along its back and down the length. So imagine if your heart wasn't on the front side, but it ran down your spine. But spiders don't need a spine because their skeleton is on the outside of their body. But they do have a heart, so be nice to them.

• 34:27Speaker 05

  And then they have hemolymph that pumps through the body.

• 34:30Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:30Speaker 05

  And then the book lungs just lie in contact with that hemolymph. And then there's respiration across that surface. The book lungs, of course, include these sheets of cuticle. There's extremely high surface areas, like the inside of a lung.

• 34:46Alie Ward?

  Ooh.

• 34:47Speaker 05

  But it's cuticular.

• 34:49Alie Ward?

  So yes, a usually blue colored juice called a hemolymph instead of blood, splishy splashes just around inside their body, just transporting nutrients and keeping things slippery in kind of an open concept circulatory system. But according to the 2022 paper, "Take a Deep Breath: The Evolution of the Respiratory System of Symphytonathoid Spiders," there are no less than 22 different respiratory configurations in this certain kind of spider. And by the way, that's just one family of one in for order, and that's 22 different respiratory system configurations. So it varies. Marshall says that a lot of spiders lose their book lungs with evolution.

• 35:33Alie Ward?

  Like tarantulas and other megalomorph spiders, which tend to be older in the evolutionary scheme of things, they have four book lungs, which are structures kind of like pages in a book that have increased surface area for gas exchange.

• 35:46Speaker 05

  But most araniomorph true spiders have moved away from that. Some of their book lungs have evolved into little cuticular tubes that just permeate the body. It's more efficient. The spider can be more active that way because it has basically a more efficient circulatory system.

• 36:04Alie Ward?

  Are those more like veins?

• 36:05Speaker 05

  Exactly. It's like a capillary system. You have that kind of clunky, open system. And if you're a megalomorph, like a tarantula, you have four book lungs and you're kind of slow because of your respiratory system. They're metabolically not very active. It's like life in the slow lane. But if you're a jumping spider, you have this tracheal system that permeates the body and they can be very active predators.

• 36:31Alie Ward?

  For more on the boggling, dazzling world of dancing jumping spiders, see the Kinetic Salicytology episode with the beloved Dr. Sebastian Everici, which is all about how spiders dance seductively. And it also includes a bonus electronica track made of spider thumps composed by Jason Scardamalia. It's so good. Yeah, they are jumping around all the time, but you never see a tarantula doing much more than lumbering.

• 36:55Speaker 05

  And like a trapdoor spider, it just sits and it's... Burrow, literally it can sit there without eating for a year. It's like sitting in its closet, I'm just gonna, I'll pass this year. Catch me again next year, right? It's ridiculous.

• 37:09Alie Ward?

  It's like going fishing and you're like, I'm just gonna sit in this boat.

• 37:12Speaker 05

  But it's super duper efficient for their lifestyle. They can persist in the landscape.

• 37:17Alie Ward?

  They can outweigh their prey.

• 37:19Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 37:20Alie Ward?

  How often do most spiders eat? Do they need to eat daily?

• 37:23Speaker 05

  It depends on what they are. If you're a jumping spider, you need to eat a lot. But if you're a trapdoor spider, literally they can eat once a year. It's crazy. I don't know how it works.

• 37:33Alie Ward?

  Can we talk more about trapdoor spiders? The one who hang out in a burrow and then seal it with a little cork like manhole they made of dirt, plants and silk. Or one species of trapdoor spider whose actual ass is flattened like a disc that they use to close their little house off. They use their butt as a door. It's a backdoor, front door, made of spider butt. Can we talk about trapdoor spiders? Great. Now, trapdoor spiders, I think are amazing because they've got absolutely bonkers camouflage.

• 38:01Speaker 05

  They've shown that female trapdoor spiders can live for 45 years in the wild.

• 38:07Alie Ward?

  What? How?

• 38:09Speaker 05

  That's right. Again, it's kind of life in the slow lane.

• 38:12Alie Ward?

  Wow.

• 38:13Speaker 05

  Yeah. In Australia, there's kind of beautiful studies. They marked the burrows of spiders and they just kept following them through time. And there was this one big female matriarch and she lived essentially forever. Forty-five years for such a small bodied animal is really, really cool. And it's very different from other arthropods. And then finally, one day they walked into the forest and they found her. Trapdoor had a hole in it. The wasp had finally got her. Forty-five years.

• 38:42Alie Ward?

  No.

• 38:43Speaker 05

  It must have been pretty sad, actually, to find that. But it's still cool.

• 38:48Alie Ward?

  And for more on this, you can see the 2018 study, "The Longest-Lived Spider: Megalomorphs Dig Deeper and Persevere," which reports that this legendary trapdoor lady, who went by the title of Number 16, was observed from her first spring as a spiderling up until her death in 2016, living to be 43 years old. Forty-three, a spider in her 40s. And her principal watcher was the Australian Lady of the Spiders and arachnologist Dr. Barbara York-Maine, who worked into her 80s, motivated, she had said, by seeing how long Number 16 would stay alive. And Dr. York-Maine, she died of complications from Alzheimer's

• 39:33Alie Ward?

  just months after that final paper was published. And Barbara's mentee, Leanna Mason, who took over the fieldwork, has said that in Dr. York-Maine's advanced memory loss, she remembered Number 16, but perhaps mercifully forgot that Number 16 had died. Now, they are in the beyond, hopefully hanging out together in the ether and waiting for bugs. And so what was the secret to the long life of Number 16, at least? So, studies on these slow-moving arachnids cite that sedentary, fiercely solitary lifestyle in unkempt environments and what

• 40:14Alie Ward?

  we would call very intermittent fasting, keep these babies alive longer. And also to mate, a female soaks a mat of her own silk with some sexy pheromones and then waits for a male to knock on her door. And then, when she answers, he blocks her fangs with his leg and injects a handful of sperm-y silk in her. So, a long, perhaps lonely life, not eating much, putting out a personal ad on your doorstep, you open the door and you get jiu-jitsu'd with jizz. So, like, as much as I like to glean strength from nature...

• 40:49Alie Ward?

  As your internet dad, uncle, I urge you do not use trapdoor spiders as a physical or a mental health model.

• 40:56Speaker 05

  It's such a cool study and, you know, to be able to follow an individual spider for 45 years is really awesome.

• 41:03Alie Ward?

  And are those wasps, those tarantula hawk wasps?

• 41:07Speaker 05

  Probably, yep, like a spider wasp, a pump pilled.

• 41:10Alie Ward?

  I've seen some of those in our backyard, because I know we have trapdoor spiders.

• 41:14Speaker 05

  Get away from my trapdoor spiders.

• 41:15Alie Ward?

  I know, I know.

• 41:16Speaker 05

  Stinkers.

• 41:17Alie Ward?

  Gorgeous insects, but I'm also like, no, not the trapdoor spiders.

• 41:22Speaker 05

  What kind of trapdoor spiders do you have?

• 41:23Alie Ward?

  Um, oh, that's such a great question.

• 41:25Speaker 05

  California trapdoor spiders?

• 41:26Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 41:27Speaker 05

  Both real certain.

• 41:28Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 41:29Speaker 05

  Awesome.

• 41:30Alie Ward?

  When it rains, twice or three times, they've tried to come into the house.

• 41:32Speaker 05

  Nice.

• 41:33Alie Ward?

  And a couple have perished that way.

• 41:34Speaker 05

  Those are the males?

• 41:35Alie Ward?

  The males, yeah.

• 41:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:37Alie Ward?

  Speaking of males, and then, once one was just lumbering down our hallway and my husband started screaming, partly out of a little bit of shock, but also because he knew I'd be so excited.

• 41:46Speaker 05

  Nice.

• 41:47Alie Ward?

  It was like, ah, I'm going, and we were trying to find a good place.

• 41:50Speaker 05

  The males use heavy rains as cues to leave their burrow.

• 41:53Alie Ward?

  Where are they going?

• 41:54Speaker 05

  They're looking for the female. It's time to go.

• 41:57Alie Ward?

  They're not in my garage.

• 41:58Speaker 05

  Well, they don't know.

• 42:00Alie Ward?

  Get out of here, man, you've got ladies to meet.

• 42:02Speaker 05

  That's the ridiculous thing about male trapdoor spiders. So they live in their burrow, let's say, for five or six years, and they're molting, they're getting bigger, they're in their burrow, they live in California, it hasn't rained for six months.

• 42:14Alie Ward?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:15Speaker 05

  It's October, first rain of the season, they've molted to maturity, they're like, okay, it's time to go. But how do they know where they're going? Like, they just clamber out of their burrow, this is the first time they've ever done that, and then they have to go find a female.

• 42:30Speaker 07

  I'm a little nervous.

• 42:31Speaker 05

  It's actually, it seems maladaptive to me. I have no idea how it works, but it obviously does work, they find females and...

• 42:38Alie Ward?

  So if we see one inside again, returning them to the hillside is the best?

• 42:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, just put it on the outside, yeah.

• 42:44Alie Ward?

  Now, we talked about burrows, we've talked about jumping spiders, so when it comes to hunting, obviously, spiders are great at it, hence the fangs and the venom.

• 42:54Speaker 05

  Fangs and the venom and their web.

• 42:56Alie Ward?

  And the web.

• 42:57Speaker 05

  The web.

• 42:58Alie Ward?

  Now, all spiders make silk, but not all of them use webs to catch, right?

• 43:03Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 43:04Alie Ward?

  So what are some hunting methods and living methods that spiders use?

• 43:07Speaker 05

  Well, you have, like, the bolus spider, you know about the bolus spider?

• 43:11Alie Ward?

  I don't think I do.

• 43:12Speaker 05

  You don't know about the bolus spider?

• 43:14Alie Ward?

  I don't think so. Is this a joke?

• 43:16Speaker 05

  No.

• 43:16Alie Ward?

  Okay. I was like, what's the punchline?

• 43:19Speaker 05

  The bolus spider is a derived orb-weaving spider.

• 43:23Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 43:24Speaker 05

  Like a charlotte's web spider.

• 43:26Alie Ward?

  Oh, okay. Yes.

• 43:27Speaker 05

  But they've taken the charlotte's web and instead of building a complex orb web like that, they just have a single line of silk and at the end of the single line of silk, they have a sticky ball of glue.

• 43:40Alie Ward?

  What? What? This thing is flinging a sticky ball around to catch stuff and bolus means ball. And these bolus spiders, according to your BFF Workpedia, they hunt by using one or more tacky little capture blobs on the end of a silk. It's like a lasso made of your body secretions.

• 44:03Speaker 05

  That's cool, but the cooler thing is that they emit chemicals that mimic moth pheromones. So the bolus spider sits in one place and they attract moths. This is happening at night. And then when the moth is attracted, they whip their bolus and catch it with the sticky glue.

• 44:22Alie Ward?

  No.

• 44:23Speaker 05

  That's pretty specialized.

• 44:25Alie Ward?

  No one's ever told me about that.

• 44:27Speaker 05

  And they attract moths of like a single species. So they're very species specific. Like they attract male moths of a single species. Right? Because they're producing a chemical that mimics a female moth pheromone.

• 44:40Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 44:40Speaker 05

  Aggressive chemical mimicry. They're spectacular.

• 44:44Alie Ward?

  Sounds like a moth rodeo. I'm excited about this.

• 44:47Speaker 05

  That's right. It's a moth rodeo. But they can actually switch their chemical in the middle of the evening and start to attract a different species. It's ridiculous. The whole thing is ridiculous.

• 44:57Alie Ward?

  That is ridiculous.

• 44:59Speaker 05

  Spectacular.

• 44:59Alie Ward?

  And it is just all going on undercover of night in it, maybe from a tree branch.

• 45:04Speaker 05

  That's right. They are orb-weaving spiders. They just no longer make an orb web.

• 45:09Alie Ward?

  Wow, they're like webs are so five minutes ago. I'm onto this new stuff. What about funnel web spiders? Okay, so there are two kinds of funnel web spiders, and one is a harmless sweetie-peaty. One is not.

• 45:23Speaker 05

  That's good to clarify. So Australian funnel web spiders are mygalomorphs, and those are the most medically dangerous to human spiders in the world. And the females and the males, they use silk. They kind of live underground or on trees, and then they have like this messy web, like a funnel web at the entrance. But the males, same idea, molt to maturity, and then they go look for females. But they have evolved venoms to protect themselves from predators when they're wandering around.

• 45:52Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 45:53Speaker 05

  But those venoms happen to be also highly dangerous to people. So they've killed people. They're deadly spiders, but there are antivenoms that have been developed.

• 46:03Alie Ward?

  It's like they're carrying pepper spray or something. They're like, I'm gonna be walking out at night.

• 46:08Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 46:08Alie Ward?

  I gotta be safe here.

• 46:09Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 46:10Alie Ward?

  So knowing your spiders and not avoiding them is what will keep you the safest. I am chill around local spiders because I know who's who. And so if you're traveling somewhere new, or even just around your own area, get to know spiders so you can kind of kick back around most of them. And I'll give you a heads up that there is a Brazilian wandering spider known to be a bit aggressive, and its bite can cause rapid heart rate and high blood pressure, dizziness, sweating, hair standing up on end, and in that vein, painfully long-lasting erections. So much so that the pharmaceutical industry is eyeing it as a treatment for dick probs. It's also sometimes conveniently called a banana spider.

• 46:55Alie Ward?

  Now, on the other end, what about antivenom? So a Journal of Toxicology paper titled "Antivenom Treatment in Arachnids" says that the spiders that would cause you the most problems are the widows, the recluses, and that wandering Brazilian spider. Anyone with writer's block, feel free to use recluse, widow, wander. To Brazil as a prompt, go make a novel. But antivenom, this was news to me. It's sometimes made by milking spider fangs or dissecting venom out of the spider and injecting it into an animal like a horse with tiny doses. And then more and more so their bodies build antibodies to the venom. Then the horse blood is gathered and the antibodies to the venom are injected in you

• 47:39Alie Ward?

  and they bind to venom to neutralize it. However, this sucks. Your body can make antibodies to the antibodies, which means that some antivenom really doesn't help much the second time around. But even one shot at getting away with a fatal bite seems like magic. It's been around since the 1980s. And one of its developers, Emil von Behring, also won the Nobel Prize for helping to develop the diphtheria vaccine. And he was known as, quote, "the savior of children" because so many kids used to die from diphtheria. So vaccines, literal modern miracles. But yeah, know your spiders. Sometimes you're thrown a curve ball

• 48:20Alie Ward?

  and a small funnel web spider in, say, California is totally harmless. But there is another type of funnel web spider that is chunky, highly venomous, and Australian.

• 48:32Speaker 05

  If you're in Australia, you know what a funnel web spider is.

• 48:35Alie Ward?

  Yeah, I'm sure.

• 48:36Speaker 05

  I actually picked one up back in the day when I was I was on the eastern seaboard of Australia on a field trip. And we went to this friend of mine's house and he had this patch of forest that was covered in my gallamore spiders. It was wonderful. But I found a funnel web spider and I picked it up because I didn't know what it was. And he was like, I wouldn't do that. Whatever your call.

• 49:00Alie Ward?

  Obviously, you survived. Congratulations on that. It's like you won. What about sexual dimorphism? Because I know with the orb weavers, it's beautiful to see this ginormous, beautiful female. And then there's like, there's like a little dude hanging out in the corner. Yeah. How different across the board?

• 49:22Alie Ward?

  Do we tend to see the different sexes? Do we tend to see larger females?

• 49:28Speaker 05

  Generally, larger females than males.

• 49:29Alie Ward?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:30Speaker 05

  But the amount of dimorphism varies. It's generally the case that the females are bigger than the males, but sometimes the males are pretty close to the female size. But then, in some spiders, males are stupidly small, like a golden silk spider.

• 49:43Alie Ward?

  Yes.

• 49:44Speaker 05

  Right?

• 49:45Alie Ward?

  Yes.

• 49:46Speaker 05

  But the females are gigantic. Like, if you go to Costa Rica, you'll see this gigantic female, and the male is literally like

• 49:52Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 49:52Speaker 05

  one one-hundredth of her size.

• 49:54Alie Ward?

  It's like a tuba versus a kazoo. It's like, what is going on here?

• 49:58Speaker 05

  Not even that, it's worse than that.

• 50:00Alie Ward?

  I know.

• 50:01Speaker 05

  Males have very different lives than females, so their morphology is often very different.

• 50:06Alie Ward?

  Is it because they just don't need to capture as many nutrients to create offspring? Or how are their lives so different?

• 50:13Speaker 05

  Well, they're typically vagrant, so they're having to move around the habitat more than a female. The female is just gonna stay there, and the male comes to look for her. And again, they don't care about food. Once they molt to maturity, they don't care about food. They're just looking for females.

• 50:27Speaker 08

  Hello, ladies.

• 50:28Speaker 05

  So they have a different kind of natural history or a different life history.

• 50:31Alie Ward?

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:32Speaker 05

  Once they're ready to go, once they're sexually mature.

• 50:35Alie Ward?

  Do you have a favorite spider?

• 50:37Speaker 05

  I love Hypokylus. I love the idea of Hypokylus. I can take you to see Hypokylus sometime.

• 50:42Alie Ward?

  I know, I wanna go see some, let me know.

• 50:44Speaker 05

  If you wanna go see them.

• 50:45Alie Ward?

  You kidding? Field trip to see spiders? Heck, yeah. So these are those little ancient lampshade spiders that we chatted about earlier. And one of, perhaps, the rarest lives right outside of L.A. in the San Bernardino Mountains.

• 50:59Speaker 05

  It's called Hypokylus bernardino. And it's only known from, it's literally, the species is only known from like one little creek drainage.

• 51:06Alie Ward?

  Oh, my god.

• 51:08Speaker 05

  They're pretty rare, but I know where they live. I'm actually going on, not this coming Sunday, but the Sunday after that.

• 51:14Alie Ward?

  Okay, holler.

• 51:15Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 51:16Alie Ward?

  Yeah, that'd be, that'd be-

• 51:17Speaker 05

  Are you serious?

• 51:18Alie Ward?

  I am, I am.

• 51:19Speaker 05

  You just can't tell anyone where they are.

• 51:20Alie Ward?

  Oh, I would never. Once you're in with spider people, you can never betray that trust. They're few and far between of us. Just an update on this. The day we were supposed to meet up for the spider hunt, which was a bristlingly-

• 51:32Alie Ward?

  Hot and dry weekend, a 43,000 acre fire in the same mountains thwarted our plans. Now the spider's habitat should be fine, but given that this species has been discovered in exactly one creek drainage in all of the world. Climate change, habitat loss, and in general insect or prey decline all threaten spider populations. And Marshall's specialty is finding and highlighting the spiders with the small distributions. I asked him how he does it and he said a lot of field work. Do you have really good hiking boots?

• 52:07Speaker 05

  I have multiple pairs.

• 52:09Alie Ward?

  I bet.

• 52:09Speaker 05

  Three pairs, actually.

• 52:11Alie Ward?

  I bet you get good mileage on them.

• 52:13Speaker 05

  I do.

• 52:15Alie Ward?

  Typical like a Fitbit day for you would be like 20,000 steps, I'm guessing when you're in the field, something crazy.

• 52:21Speaker 05

  When I'm in the field, it's time to go. Boots on the ground. It's actually called boots on the ground.

• 52:25Alie Ward?

  Is it?

• 52:26Speaker 05

  Really important to be in the field these days. It really is. You need to be out there to kind of see what's going on.

• 52:33Alie Ward?

  Speaking of seeing, what about their eyes? What kind of eyesight? I know various species, species, some probably need their eyes in low light.

• 52:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, jumping spiders can see really well and in color. Many of them can see in color. Bull spiders, pretty good eyesight, but it's kind of more nocturnal and really kind of motion detection vision. Some blind cave spiders have no eyes.

• 52:54Alie Ward?

  Who needs them?

• 52:55Speaker 05

  Lots of spiders have eight eyes, some have six, some have four, some have two, some have zero.

• 53:01Alie Ward?

  Do they use all of those eyes for different things?

• 53:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, kind of for different things, like their principal main eyes in the front. They might use them to actually see things like a jumping spider, but then all the peripheral eyes are used to kind of detect motion around them.

• 53:17Alie Ward?

  Can I ask you listener questions?

• 53:19Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 53:20Alie Ward?

  Okay. All right. So don't go anywhere because your questions are next, but first we'll donate to a cause of theologist's choosing. And this week in honor of Marshall, it's going to the San Diego State University Biodiversity Museum to support student stipends and the purchase of equipment and supplies. And the donation was made possible by sponsors of the show. How's your ponytail looking?

• 53:40Alie Ward?

  Maybe like a little thinner than it used to. We've talked about this in our menopause episode. At some point, it's bound to happen to all of us. So if you're ready for thicker, fuller hair, start your free online visit today at forhers.com/ologies for personalized care. So that's F O R H E R S dot com slash ologies. Individual results may vary. Featured products include compounded drug products, which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety, effectiveness, or quality. Prescription required. Price varies based on product and subscription plan. See website for full details, restrictions, and important safety information.

• 54:13Alie Ward?

  This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. If you haven't heard me gushing about Squarespace for years, it's an all-in-one website platform. Whether you're trying to grow a business you have or if you're just a baby business getting started, it has everything you need. That's where I secured my domain name. It helped me build a professional site. I can update it so easily. I've been using Squarespace since before ologies existed. After procrastinating for years, I literally built my website in one evening. They have templates. They have flexible editing tools. Squarespace also makes it easy to share your work. You can book clients. You can get paid. They have built-in tools for scheduling and invoicing and email all in one place. Whenever someone I know needs a website,

• 54:57Alie Ward?

  whether they're a scientist that needs to put their work up or someone who's just starting a business, I'm like, dude, Squarespace. So head to Squarespace.com/ologies for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code OLOGIES to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. You can do it.

• 55:14Alie Ward?

  Being safer on the road starts with the person behind the wheel. That's Mazda's philosophy when designing every vehicle. Their proactive safety features help keep you more aware, connected, and engaged during every drive, which means your car does more than help protect you. It makes you a safer driver, which helps protect everyone. That's why Mazda has been named Consumer Reports' safest new car brand. To learn more, visit MazdaUSA.com. Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services.

• 55:46Alie Ward?

  Listen, sometimes you get out of your routine. That happened to me recently when I went out of town and I realized I forgot my Ritual Essential for Women 18+. It's a multi that I've been taking for years. And guess who landed in another country without them? Me. Didn't feel right. They contain nine key nutrients, two delayed-release capsules designed for optimal absorption. But Ritual, why do I love them so much? They have a team of scientists. They poured over thousands of studies to figure out what are common gaps that people need in their diet, but they don't actually consume. It's also designed to be gentle on the stomach. You can take it with or without food, which I love. Plus, I like that it looks like a tiny lava lamp. I tell you that every time, but it has these beads and oil. And it tastes like mint, easy down the hatch. I usually take them in the morning.

• 56:31Alie Ward?

  And the reason why I've stuck with Ritual for so many years is because my schedule's all over the place. Sometimes I'm eating breakfast. Sometimes I'm running through an airport with one shoe. So instead of striving for perfect health, aim for supporting foundational health. Save 25% on your first month at ritual.com/ologies. That's ritual.com/ologies for 25% off your first month. Every time I record a Quince ad, I'm like, look at me wearing head-to-toe Quince. I feel like this is enough of an ad. I can just stop here. But if you're like, huh, what is that? Quince sells clothes and shoes and bags, even stuff for your house that are classic, well-made, and priced at 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they've cut out the middleman. They work directly with ethical factories.

• 57:15Alie Ward?

  So you have luxury quality pieces without a luxury price tag. Perhaps this holiday season, do you know what it feels like to get a cashmere sweater as a gift? I don't, because I'm the one getting them for people. And so can you. And they're affordable, too. They also have 14 karat gold earrings, high-quality down outerwear, cozy gloves made of cashmere, leather bags. They have great bedding, cookware, luggage. So whether you're giving that to you or to someone else, you can give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or you can go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too.

• 57:57Alie Ward?

  And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, just let them know it was Ologies. It's the best way to support the show.

• 58:05Alie Ward?

  All right, let us burrow into the question bag and see what we catch. Um, okay, Courtney Hudson says,

• 58:11Speaker 09

  I remember hearing at some point or reading somewhere that on average, you're never more than eight inches from a spider. So I'd like to know if that's actually true, or if I just made that up somehow. And then also, um, can we talk about micro spiders? Because I want to know about them little cuties.

• 58:33Alie Ward?

  What, how spiders, if you're outside, do you think you're around less than a foot from a spider at all times?

• 58:41Speaker 05

  No, I would say no.

• 58:42Alie Ward?

  Okay, there's not that many spiders.

• 58:44Speaker 05

  No, it depends on where you are, but no, in California, no.

• 58:47Alie Ward?

  Okay, what about micro spiders? Are there tiny, tiny spiders called micro spiders?

• 58:52Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 58:52Alie Ward?

  Really?

• 58:53Speaker 05

  There's spiders less than a millimeter in size, yeah.

• 58:55Alie Ward?

  Full grown?

• 58:58Speaker 05

  Full grown adults, kind of ridiculous. And in particular, there are some male spiders that are really small like that. And basically, the male is just like, it's just kind of like a walking pedipalp.

• 59:10Alie Ward?

  Aren't they all?

• 59:11Speaker 05

  That's right, a walking, intermittent organ.

• 59:16Alie Ward?

  They got one job.

• 59:17Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 59:18Alie Ward?

  I Googled, what's the world's smallest spider? And I landed on a Wikipedia page that was simply three sentences. I'd like to read them to you. Patu merplessi is a species of small spider endemic to Samoa. It is considered the smallest spider in the world as male leg span is less than half a millimeter. It also has the largest sex organs to body size ratio of any spider species. And the size of its sex organs tend to be a hindrance to mating rather than an advantage. What an emotional journey, never underestimate a short king. Okay, we talked about book lungs. Um, Anna Dillon, Ellie Snowden, Rachel McGill, want to know, why are their butts so big? What's in there?

• 1:00:01Alie Ward?

  Is that where they hide all the web or the spider babies? Why are there, why are their beautiful butts so large?

• 1:00:10Alie Ward?

  Good question.

• 1:00:11Speaker 05

  It is a good question. Yeah, no, like a big adult female would be doing both. She would have her spider babies in there and that's where all of her silk glands are. And of course, if you're talking about an orb-weaving spider, then they have multiple different types of silk glands. So their abdomen is technically just packed full of all these glands that are making silk proteins.

• 1:00:31Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 1:00:32Speaker 05

  That's pretty cool.

• 1:00:33Alie Ward?

  It is very cool. It's just a silk factory housed in a dump truck abdomen. Now, Mother's Day just passed, but it's never too late to remind mom that one species of velvet arachnid called the Indian cooperative spider lives in a colony of mostly females working together to build webs. But a few weeks after their kids hatch, the mama liquefies her own internal organs to regurgitate them into her children's mouths. And she does this until she dies. And then the children hop on her dead body and drink the rest of her juice until nothing is left but an exoskeleton. Now, this is a testament to the strength of the biological inclination to care for young and also the absolutely exhausted urge

• 1:01:15Alie Ward?

  to just cash it in and go to heaven when you have 75 babies at once. So patrons Lisa Gorman and Michaela Shaughnessy, in Michaela's words, who asked, "How much am I ruining their day when I accidentally sweep up their nests?" Like, probably a lot. It's the only thing they live for. But to patrons Erin White, Dave Brewer, Jess C., and Devon, who all asked, in Devon's words, "Why do spiders have so many babies all at once?" Well, it's because baby spiders are delicious. If you are a bird, or a lizard, or a fish, they are like popcorn chicken. You know who else eats you if you're a baby spiderling? Your own siblings. It's worse than any prestige TV drama about family dynamics you'll ever

• 1:01:57Alie Ward?

  watch. Like, a tarantula can have up to 3,000 babies at a time, and very few are going to make it to their own parenthood. But what if you're not so committed to juicing your own viscera for your babies, and you're also a spider? So Eating Dog Hair for a Living and Christina Kraft wanted to know, what's up with having a backpack made of your children? Some of them have live babies on their backs. What's going on with that?

• 1:02:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, they're a good little, they're good mothers. So like a wolf spider will carry around her egg sac, like a white disc for a long time. And then the spider leans will come out of that egg sac and then they crawl onto the female's back and do that for a couple more molts.

• 1:02:39Alie Ward?

  And they don't eat each other?

• 1:02:41Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:02:42Alie Ward?

  Oh, some spiders snack on one another, right?

• 1:02:46Speaker 05

  They can do that, yeah.

• 1:02:48Alie Ward?

  After a good date, it can happen, from what I understand.

• 1:02:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's kind of like famous, but I would say that that's the exception rather than the rule.

• 1:02:57Alie Ward?

  So to Trista Algar, who said, "My girlfriend wants to know if there are cannibal spiders." The answer is hell yes, but not all of them all the time. And to Daniela Napolitano, "The story about black widows eating their males is not always true. They don't do it every time. Also, the females can be twice the size of the males." So the males are a little sneaky snack. Now, let's say that you're a redback Australian widow spider. If you're male, only 20% of you will have a chance to mate. So when you follow the scent of other man spiders into a lady's web, you pluck on it like a harp. Some will do what's called a copulatory somersault, and they land into the fangs of their bride.

• 1:03:39Alie Ward?

  Yeah, she might eat you, but otherwise you would die a virgin. And this way, she gets to feast upon your body and make your shared babies. It's not all bad. Now, on that note, I found myself following some sex trail to a paper titled, "Spider Behaviors Include Oral-Sexual Encounters," which detailed that, quote, "Our field and laboratory study of Madagascar Darwin's bark spiders uncovers a rich sexual repertoire that predictably involves cannibalism, genital mutilation, male preference for freshly molted tender females, and emasculation. Surprisingly, this species of male spiders also engage in oral-sexual encounters."

• 1:04:22Alie Ward?

  It then added that, "Irrespective of a female's age or mating status, males salivate onto female genitalia pre, during, and post-copulation." So maybe that's how you don't get eaten. Everyone loves to hear a juicy story.

• 1:04:37Speaker 05

  That's right. They kind of love that sexual cannibalism, but it doesn't always happen.

• 1:04:41Alie Ward?

  Roslyn Hesby for Colin Hesby wants to know, "How do spiders poop?"

• 1:04:47Alie Ward?

  Just like anyone else, I guess.

• 1:04:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, they have a little anal tubercle near their spinnerets, in between their spinnerets and behind them, and they just poop out generally a little kind of liquid gray poop.

• 1:04:57Alie Ward?

  Oh, so it's not like frass, it's not like little sand?

• 1:05:01Speaker 05

  No, it's not like, no, it's not like a little mouse poop or anything.

• 1:05:04Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:05:05Speaker 05

  It's more liquid than that.

• 1:05:07Alie Ward?

  Um, in my office, I have an office that's a shed outside my house, and there are, at last count, eight spiders that live in there. I check on them from time to time. They eat a lot of ants.

• 1:05:17Speaker 05

  Eight individuals?

• 1:05:18Alie Ward?

  Mm-hmm. There's one over in that corner, one over in that. I'm gonna take some pictures.

• 1:05:22Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:05:23Alie Ward?

  Because mostly I just see their webs and I go, "Thanks, man."

• 1:05:25Speaker 05

  Send them to me, I'll identify them for five bucks.

• 1:05:28Alie Ward?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:05:29Speaker 05

  Five bucks.

• 1:05:29Alie Ward?

  Five bucks.

• 1:05:31Speaker 05

  Each.

• 1:05:31Alie Ward?

  Make it four, four seventy-five with a twenty-five cent tip.

• 1:05:37Alie Ward?

  So patrons Emma O E and Tristan Falk, yes, it is actually beneficial to have a little spider roommate for bug control. And no, Tristan, you have not been lied to. This is true. Now, if you live in parts of the country like the southeastern United States, you should familiarize yourself with local species. Like, know the body shape of a black and brown widow, and check for the red or orange hourglass where a belly button would be. Know the tiny violin shape on a brown recluse. Google an Australian funnel web spider. And if you know the venomous ones, then it's easier to spot all the non-threatening ones, which are the vast majority of spiders. And although last week's episode was about AI ethics, one

• 1:06:20Alie Ward?

  feature you may not know about your phone, or your other non-iPhone phones, is that it does have this very cool ability to identify species, or at least guess about the ID. So you can take a picture of a spider or a plant or what have you, and you swipe up on the picture, and the location will be on there, as well as now an AI guess on the species. Try it. It's bonkers. I'm usually the friend that people text to ask, "What the hell bug is this?" And I don't want people knowing about this phone feature, because then no one's gonna ask me anymore, and I don't get to look it up. And then my off-the-cuff knowledge of bugs is no longer important. Impressive to acquaintances who text me once a year with a bug question. But let's say you have a house spider on your hands or on your wall,

• 1:07:06Alie Ward?

  which can be one single species with a common name house spider, or confusingly can be one of a dozen or so, at least in the US, that are referred to casually as house spiders because they like to shack up with you. Where it's nice and dry, the rent is paid. So many of you, Emma Henson, Anna Dillon, Jacob Shepherd, Denny, Karina Reagan, Carrie Walker, Nita Chen, Hannah Gory, Caitlin, Melandorf, Derek Peliquin, Rachel Hartshorn, Melanie Metzger, and Esip Brillard, and first time question asker Amber Hayes wanted to know, in Amber's words, "I heard that if you put a spider you find in your house outside, it's like a death sentence for them. Is this true? Aren't they from the outside?" Amber Hayes, great question, and I'm sorry to say that yes,

• 1:07:49Alie Ward?

  some house spiders just can't make it out there on their own. But if it's between that and squishing it, just put it outside. Maybe it'll find its way back in, but hide in your bookshelf better. Also, if you need the best device for grabbing bugs, there's a thing called a My Critter Catcher. It looks like a soft bristle brush and it's attached to a three-foot pole. So you can kind of gently scoop them up into the bristles and then walk outside with them.

• 1:08:18Speaker 08

  My Critter Catcher lets you safely grab those bugs without any fear and release them harmlessly outside where they belong.

• 1:08:25Alie Ward?

  Okay, it sounds like mean, but for functionality and kindness to bugs, I give it a 12 out of 10. Every home needs one. And some homes do need spiders because they eat so many other bugs. Now, Dave Cannon said, "I don't mind spiders. I think they're great, really. But how many are okay to keep secretly in the house? Don't tell my wife." Now, Dave, get familiar with the venomous ones in your area. Escort those outside and keep as many around the house as you like. I think I just told your wife when you told me not to, but whatever. Now, others had a sweet spot for spooders, such as patrons Natalie Parsons, Tamar Cotino, and Lucy Antonelli, who asked, "How do I..."

• 1:09:06Alie Ward?

  Become friends with spiders. Honestly, here's my advice. Let them stick around and don't kill them is probably a good first step to any kind of diplomacy. And for more on that, you can see our recent genocideology episode, which we'll link in the show notes. And spoiler, it's not about spiders. Now, Chan and Cody asked, do spiders want hugs? And I dug into some research on this, and it's no. But back to that harriness. Body fat asked about their fur and Emma Kelly Brown, Jason Ganley, Body Fat, Bjorn Fredberg want to know, why are they so hairy? Now, that's not fur, though, right? That's

• 1:09:43Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:09:44Alie Ward?

  Seti?

• 1:09:44Speaker 05

  Siete, yep. A lot of them aren't. Some of them are like a wolf spider has quite a bit of siete that make them kind of look like that. But a tarantula certainly has a lot of siete that make them look kind of hairy, but certainly not a ubiquitous thing for spiders to be like that. And generally the case, their cephalothorax has fewer hairs than the abdomen. The abdomen is generally covered with quite a few hairs that make them look kind of furry.

• 1:10:11Alie Ward?

  And many spiders have a variety of sense organs, which was recapped by the 2018 paper, The Sensory Equipment of a Spider: A Morphological Survey of Different Types of Sensilium in Both Sexes of H. brunetti. And the paper says that they include structural ones to sense air movement and vibration, chemosensory organs that might aid with smell and taste, and some spiders have ears on their legs. One of those spiders is called an ogre-faced spider. And despite, yeah, having eyes like a lemur and hairy tusks like a walrus, calling them ogre-faced is rude because they can hear you with their creepy legs. Now, as long as we're name calling, Stacy Pinkowitz wants to know, thoughts on calling spiders bugs, even though they're not insects?

• 1:10:57Speaker 05

  I'm against it.

• 1:10:57Alie Ward?

  Okay. They're not bugs. Spiders are not bugs?

• 1:11:00Speaker 05

  Spiders are not bugs.

• 1:11:01Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:11:02Speaker 05

  Most insects are not bugs.

• 1:11:04Alie Ward?

  Oh, because true bugs, Hemiptera.

• 1:11:06Speaker 05

  That's right. We really want to get into it.

• 1:11:08Alie Ward?

  Then again, there are true spiders that are not called true spiders. We have a major branding problem.

• 1:11:13Speaker 05

  The true spider thing is problematic.

• 1:11:15Alie Ward?

  So true bugs belong to an order of insects called Hemiptera, which are shield shaped, like a stink bug. And patrons Annalise Young and tarantula lover, Win Constantini, asked about tarantulas not being true spiders. And yes, that is technically true because their order is a bit older and they have some anatomical differences. But once again, this spider expert thinks that sucks. Also, patron Invy wanted to know what's up with the word tarantula? And I'm glad you asked because I didn't know and I got to learn. So first off, there aren't tarantulas in Italy. And as an Italian, I can assure you, sometimes we are very stupid. But there's a wolf spider that inhabits the area of Taranto. It was named after the town because people thought when you were bitten by this wolf spider,

• 1:11:58Alie Ward?

  you would get very bummed out and sometimes experience mania. And the only way to sweat out the venom was to dance a frenetic jig, which is why Italians dance around at weddings doing the tarantella. This is also where filmmaker Quentin Tarantino got his name. As a descendant of folks from Taranto, and honestly, I can see him getting both depressed and also very energetic and happen to just wiggle it out. But yeah, there are some word origins with a side of eight legs. Tarantulas, not called true spiders, not all bugs are true bugs.

• 1:12:33Speaker 05

  But like when I teach entomology and one of my students says, I found a bug. I get kind of stoked because I think they're talking about a Hemiptera.

• 1:12:40Alie Ward?

  No, no luck.

• 1:12:41Speaker 05

  Sometimes no.

• 1:12:44Alie Ward?

  Eating dog hair for a living, Danny C. and Emma O. E. want to know, are there any that are facing extinction? Any that are in real dire straits or we probably wouldn't know because there's so many?

• 1:12:56Speaker 05

  There are spiders in the United States that are listed as U.S. federally endangered. Yeah, I actually work on those. I'm kind of proud of my spider conservation work, research. I do a lot of that.

• 1:13:06Alie Ward?

  Which ones? You want to shout them out?

• 1:13:08Speaker 05

  There are cave spiders in Texas, quite a few species that are only found in a single cave. There's actually a species called Sicurina baronia, which is from a single cave in downtown San Antonio. That has now been covered with, you know, concrete and culverts and that species is almost certainly extinct, but you can't go into the cave anymore. So we don't really know. It's kind of weird, huh?

• 1:13:32Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:33Speaker 05

  But there's a lot of Texas cave spiders that are endangered. And there's a special little micro tarantula that lives on mountain types in southern Appalachia that is also listed as endangered. And it's actually, it lives in spruce fir forests on the very, very tippy tops of mountains.

• 1:13:51Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:13:52Speaker 05

  And those spruce fir forests have declined because of invasive bugs.

• 1:13:57Alie Ward?

  Well, according to paper assessing the impacts of balsam woody adelgid, an anthropogenic disturbance on the stand culture and mortality of fraser fir in the Black Mountains, North Carolina. This small European wingless thing and adelgid's name means invisible. It's actually not a bug, but we're going to forgive Marshall this time. We're all human unless you're a spider who's like, I hate those balsam woody adelgids.

• 1:14:22Speaker 05

  So the forest kind of died off and that exposed the moss mats where the spider likes to live. But the kind of climate change scenarios for the future, they don't bode well for that species.

• 1:14:35Alie Ward?

  Oh, man.

• 1:14:36Speaker 05

  This is going to get warmer and warmer. And then the forests that the spiders live in will actually go away.

• 1:14:42Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:14:43Speaker 05

  And then the spiders might go away.

• 1:14:45Alie Ward?

  Oof.

• 1:14:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:14:46Alie Ward?

  So be kind to spiders. They've been through so much, but some species have been around for a hundred million years and evolution is an ongoing process. So we are rooting for them. What about pets? Spiders as pets. Shannon Cody wants to know, do jumping spiders make good pets? Mouse Paxton wants to know if black widows are good pets. In general, how do you feel about having pet tarantulas?

• 1:15:13Speaker 05

  Pet tarantulas are fine if the animals are bred in captivity. That's obviously a problem because they're often not. So then it becomes something that I'm strongly against, obviously. People have pet pitipus jumping spiders and they like that. Because pitipus jumping spiders are big and they have a personality and they'll look at you. I mean, you have to be prepared for the fact that they're only going to live for a year or two. So they're going to die sooner or later. I mean, black widows as a pet, that's, it's interesting. They're actually really cool spiders.

• 1:15:46Alie Ward?

  Yeah, they're beautiful.

• 1:15:47Speaker 05

  They are quite beautiful, but I don't know if I, I don't, I wouldn't recommend it for everyone.

• 1:15:53Alie Ward?

  Um, you mentioned something about jumping spiders having personality. Gina Ninja LB wants to know if they have feelings or show personalities. Jacob Shepard, do spiders have personalities? Earl of Grammalkin, Mouse Paxton, David the altruistic, Miss Inthrope and Vanessa Adams all want to know. Little tiny personalities that you notice?

• 1:16:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, for sure. And some people have actually studied whether or not individual spiders have different personalities. Yeah, that's the thing.

• 1:16:17Alie Ward?

  And according to the 2014 paper, Animal Behavior: Task Differentiation by Personality in Spider Groups. The researchers support the idea that spiders have personalities. They looked at that Indian cooperative spider that lives in colonies and shared that, quote, "certain individuals specialize in bringing the food while others rarely or never help out." Which means that spiders, I hypothesize, also talk shit about one another. And the paper continues with kind of a Carrie Bradshaw pondering. "What is it that predicts differential participation in the spider? Individual personality is the answer. Individuals vary in their level of boldness and bolder spiders socialize in prey attack. What do the shy group members then do?

• 1:17:01Alie Ward?

  And are the bold group members actually better at catching prey? These are still unanswered questions in social species." So yeah, when you kill a spider, you might be swatting at an asshole or like a really good guy. But speaking of culture, let's talk Australia. Jess C. says, "As an Australian, I wonder why we are so famous for our spider friends." Do Australian spiders deserve their reputation? Or are they unfairly maligned? And Mims wants to know why the preponderance of venomous spiders in Australia.

• 1:17:33Alie Ward?

  Or big ones.

• 1:17:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, I wouldn't say it's a preponderance. It's just the fact that they have members of a particular family that happen to be venomous. And there's quite a few species of that family. So it's kind of like just a historical accident. It's really just members of that one family that are medically dangerous. So if you took that family away, the Australian spider fauna in overall is not atypically dangerous.

• 1:18:02Alie Ward?

  It's just that one kind of-

• 1:18:03Speaker 05

  It's just that one lineage. Yeah. And they're big, you know, they're Sydney funnel web spiders and their relatives.

• 1:18:08Alie Ward?

  And this is the family Ultra City. And if you live in or are going to Australia, do some research on who the baddies are down there because a funnel web spider in Australia can kill you. I'm just being honest. Now, in North America, again, funnel web spider has the unfortunate same name, but they are harmless little grass biters that make tubes out of silk. It's like having the same legal name as a serial killer and it's not fair. But in the popular zeitgeist, listener Annalise DeYoung suggested the 1967 children's book, Be Nice to Spiders. Ginger Ninja LB said, please see the book, Ahhh Spider by Lydia Monks to help your fears. And many people, Danielle Sutra, Blake Baird, Mac and Adam Weaver, mentioned the book Children

• 1:18:53Alie Ward?

  of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. And Adam said, it's a beautiful sci-fi novel and it involves some spider intelligence. Now, Timmy H. and Emily Burns had Harry Potter admonishments for featuring a tailless whip scorpion and calling it a spider. I also think that's egregious. Now, patrons Rachel M. and Ominic asked about the sweet, sweet imagery of Lucas the Spider, highly recommended adorable jumping spider cartoon. And the Mary Slav generously shared that, years ago, I was bitten by a brown recluse on my scrotum of all places. I never developed any spidey powers. Does that mean it was probably not radioactive? And other Spider-Man question patrons such as Anjali Himali and Andrew McVeigh wanted

• 1:19:37Alie Ward?

  to know about spiders in the media.

• 1:19:39Alie Ward?

  Is there any pop culture that gets it right? Charlotte's Web, Children of Time, Harry Potter, Lucas the Spider, Spider-Man? Anything that you go, yeah, that's cool.

• 1:19:48Speaker 05

  Charlotte's Web.

• 1:19:49Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:50Speaker 05

  It kind of portrayed the spider as something that was interesting and complex and partly intelligent and kind of beautiful. So I like that the best.

• 1:20:01Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:20:01Speaker 05

  And she was very sophisticated.

• 1:20:05Alie Ward?

  I think that it shed some light on how artistic the webs are.

• 1:20:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:09Alie Ward?

  And how friendly they can be.

• 1:20:11Speaker 05

  I think everyone should go back and read Charlotte's Web. It's just really cool.

• 1:20:15Alie Ward?

  I agree. What about Deborah L. Blanton wants to know, how do spiders hear? Do they have a sense of hearing?

• 1:20:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, they have little tiny, very sensitive hairs that respond to those mechanical stimuli. So, yes. There have been studies that have been shown that they can use their web as like a gigantic ear.

• 1:20:38Alie Ward?

  So the sound vibrations can...

• 1:20:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. I know, exactly. That's pretty spectacular.

• 1:20:42Alie Ward?

  That's amazing. Aki wants to know, do spiders communicate with each other? If so, how? Popsicle Emperor wants to know, do any spiders connect and bond with other spiders? I imagine they have to because there are spider babies everywhere.

• 1:20:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, sure. They communicate. They communicate using vision, some of them. They communicate using acoustics, sound, vibrations, chemicals. So multifaceted. Yeah, they're communicating.

• 1:21:07Alie Ward?

  Uh, Jana Kamaki, first time question asker, asks, if you've seen the picture of a big spider with a small frog? And if they ever live in a symbiotic relationship? Have you ever seen that?

• 1:21:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, there's a paper that talks about, uh, it's a South American tarantula and frog that have a symbiotic relationship. I believe it's a tarantula and frog. But yes, yeah.

• 1:21:30Alie Ward?

  I love that.

• 1:21:30Alie Ward?

  Please see the 2008 study Commensalism in Microhyalid Frogs and Megalomorph Spiders, which recounts that spiders and frogs, certain South Asian species that would normally fight and eat each other, were witnessed hanging out in the same burrow or living in the same tree hole. Why aren't these two fulfilling their evolutionary obligation of being enemies? Well, the paper notes that previous studies have found that certain tarantulas recognize frogs with some chemical cues, which prevents them from attacking this frog. They're like, this one's cool. The spider leaves some decaying remains of its prey, which attracts ants, and the frog eats the ants.

• 1:22:14Alie Ward?

  And staying in the spider's burrow during the day keeps the frog safe from the heat, and the frog eats the ants that would eat the spider's egg sac. So, yes, it's a commensal relationship. It benefits them both. But we can also call them best friends.

• 1:22:29Alie Ward?

  If we want to, especially when the world feels like trash and we have to imagine them chilling in a hole together, having a good time. Sebastian Etcheverry, who we have already spoken about. Sebastian's on here, wants to know weirdest spider, go.

• 1:22:44Speaker 05

  Weirdest spider? Is this whole thing live? It's not?

• 1:22:50Alie Ward?

  No.

• 1:22:51Speaker 05

  Weirdest spider. I mean, spinning spiders are pretty awesome and kinda weird.

• 1:22:57Alie Ward?

  Spitting spiders? What are they spitting?

• 1:22:59Speaker 05

  They spit a combination of glue and venom.

• 1:23:01Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 1:23:02Speaker 05

  If there were a lot of spitting spiders, or if spitting spiders were bigger, then they would be pretty scary.

• 1:23:08Alie Ward?

  What happens with the glue and the venom?

• 1:23:11Speaker 05

  They spit sticky glue and immobilizes their prey. If you look at a slow-mo video of the spinning spider, it's moving its chelicerae like in a zigzag pattern. The glue comes out literally like this.

• 1:23:24Alie Ward?

  Marshall kinda motioned some finger guns.

• 1:23:26Speaker 05

  And it just sticks to like a fly or something. It's rad.

• 1:23:32Alie Ward?

  That's like a Wonder Woman, like.

• 1:23:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. The true Spider-Man would be like a tarantula that has foot silk.

• 1:23:39Alie Ward?

  Does it ever make you mad that Spider-Man doesn't spin webs out his butt?

• 1:23:44Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:23:45Alie Ward?

  Can you imagine? A couple spinnerets down there, just a hole in his bodysuit.

• 1:23:51Speaker 05

  I think that would freak people out.

• 1:23:52Alie Ward?

  That'd be so great. What's with his wrists? Come out the other end.

• 1:23:57Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 1:23:58Alie Ward?

  Baby, that's the business end of it. Tobey Maguire's like, not while I am playing Spider-Man. Let's talk about repellents. Some people said Megan Walker, Robin R., Michael Anderson, Daniella Napoliano, Claire Mauer, and Robert Audet. Robert has a boatload of cat-faced spiders in the back of their rental home and Flagstaff. They keep knocking down webs. Megan Walker wants to know, is there actually some essential oil or other substances that act as spider repellent? Or do they not care about that stuff? I've heard that peppermint oil is not something spiders like. If you wanted to aromatically discourage them from taking up residence in your ear canal or something.

• 1:24:41Speaker 05

  This is not something that I have done any research on. Not interested in repelling them.

• 1:24:46Alie Ward?

  Yeah, you're like, that's not a problem I have. Like, come to my office hours, spiders.

• 1:24:52Speaker 05

  I'm interested in the opposite.

• 1:24:54Alie Ward?

  And in case you were not Marshall, I looked into this for you. And according to the 2018 paper, Natural Compounds as Spider Repellents, Fact or Myth? Volatiles released by mint oil and chestnuts may be effective in deterring spider settlement in two different families of spiders, but lemon oil as a repellent is a myth. So roasted chestnuts, mint, lemon cocktails. Maybe you're hungry. We're going to fix that because Ally Brown, Alan, Ally and Julian, and Haley Kirby asked, in Haley's words, will spiders crawl into our mouths as we sleep? Or is this just an irrational fear? Have you ever heard the myth that you swallow eight spiders a year?

• 1:25:31Speaker 05

  I think I've heard that.

• 1:25:32Alie Ward?

  Yeah, I don't know where they got that. That doesn't happen though, right?

• 1:25:35Speaker 05

  I think that's ridiculous.

• 1:25:36Alie Ward?

  Yeah. And if you need proof, you can see the 2016 piece, Believing That Humans Swallow Spiders in Their Sleep: False Beliefs as Side Effects of the Processes That Support Accurate Knowledge, which explains that there was a rumor, that this rumor began in the early 1990s as a columnist named Lisa Burgett Holst warned about the dangers of misinformation, spreading via email, and used this particular example as a sad illustration of how we sometimes do not use our brains to question pretty much anything. Now, 20 years after Snopes explained that and gave the source, Snopes confessed that they made up the journalist and that entire backstory.

• 1:26:16Alie Ward?

  And in fact, Lisa Burgett Holst is an anagram for this is a big troll. And it was all an April Fool's Day prank that they waited decades to reveal at the spider's expense, mind you. So please tell everyone you know that you do not swallow any spiders in your sleep, probably every year, or, you know, two per season. Oh, speaking of seasons, Trista Algar, first time question asker, and Sarah Meaden and Kieran want to know, where do spiders go in the winter?

• 1:26:44Speaker 05

  Depends on their lifestyle. If they're a trapdoor spider that lives for 45 years, they don't go anywhere.

• 1:26:50Alie Ward?

  Chilling.

• 1:26:50Speaker 05

  They just do what they do. In fact, they like the winter, like a California trapdoor spider, they live for the winter. During the summer, they actually take silk and they close their burrow. They seal it shut from the inside to kind of retain moisture. And then they know that they're not really going to eat during the summer, so they live for the winter. But then like a little jumping spider that lives on the slopes of Mount Shasta. It's covered in snow in the winter. Let's say they've made it in the spring. Then there's little babies. The little babies are kind of getting bigger over the summer. And then when the fall comes, they just go down into the leaf litter or whatever and build a little silken cocoon and hunker down.

• 1:27:29Alie Ward?

  They're just chilling in a sleeping bag.

• 1:27:30Speaker 05

  It depends on what their life history is.

• 1:27:32Alie Ward?

  Man, if you could knit your own Kevlar sleeping bag camp over winter.

• 1:27:38Speaker 05

  There are spiders that live on sand dunes in California and they during the day they come out and they sit on the sand dune. But when it's time for them to go to bed, they flip on their back and they start spinning silk. They start spinning in a circle. Woo. They make a little sleeping bag and then they actually pull it over themselves. And then the sand just covers them. Isn't that radical?

• 1:28:00Alie Ward?

  That's so cute.

• 1:28:02Alie Ward?

  And speaking of hiding, Liz Cleland and Jeff Stumpo had reclusive questions. Do you have any myths about the brown recluse that you'd like to bust? Mary Slay says, years ago, I was bitten by a brown recluse on my scrotum of all places. I never developed any spidey powers, which means it probably was not radioactive. But anything about brown recluse that you want to clear up in the southern southeast United States? They're endemic there, but everyone freaks out whenever they see any spider that's brown, that's a brown recluse.

• 1:28:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:28:33Alie Ward?

  Is it really the venom? Or is it a staph infection that'll get you from that?

• 1:28:39Speaker 05

  Well, it's probably a combination of both.

• 1:28:41Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:28:42Speaker 05

  I mean, they certainly have chemicals in their venom that cause your cells to die. But most importantly, for people that live in the western United States, there basically are none of those spiders. There are no established populations of those recluse spiders. There are native species that are found out in the desert, but those are not brown recluse. So effectively, all.

• 1:29:07Speaker 05

  Brown recluse bites that are diagnosed as such in the Western United States are misdiagnoses. And that's problematic because then you're not really doing what you should do.

• 1:29:18Alie Ward?

  They're misdiagnosed because they're a skin infection of another kind.

• 1:29:20Speaker 05

  That's right. And then the treatment plan is not what it should be.

• 1:29:24Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:25Speaker 05

  Because it's not a recluse bite. It's something else.

• 1:29:27Alie Ward?

  So many people think they get spider bites, but I understand a lot of those are just straight up staph infection from a cut.

• 1:29:32Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 1:29:32Alie Ward?

  Yeah, that happened to me where I thought I got a spider bite. Turns out I was just hauling wood. Literally gave myself an infection that went into my veins.

• 1:29:41Speaker 05

  Oh, sorry.

• 1:29:42Alie Ward?

  Huge, huge PSA from your dad word. If you have a red welt on your skin and it's growing and it starts to trace up your veins, go to the ER like immediately. Do not fuck around. Do not find out. Do not pass go. Drop what you're doing because that can be a blood infection and you might need antibiotics now. Happened to me, but the point is that a lot of times spider bite, air quotes, is blamed when really you just have an infection from a nick or a scrape. And spiders are like, hey, here's an idea. Take a shower and clean your wounds and stop blaming us for your blood infections. I don't even touch you. But like people see a big welt in an infection. They think a spider must have done this to you. And it's like, no, you maybe caught yourself on a fence or something.

• 1:30:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a medical misdiagnosis problem.

• 1:30:29Alie Ward?

  It's not fair. I'm telling you spider, there needs to be more spider integration in our culture.

• 1:30:33Speaker 05

  There does.

• 1:30:33Alie Ward?

  And the first thing is combating fear. So last listener question I have is Brittany Ross, first time question asker, also an admitted arachnophobe. What are some qualities with spiders that are endearing? I have learned to find jumping spiders cute now, they say, but help me love the less quote adorable spiders. Lauren R. says, besides raising the next generation to not be afraid of spiders, how can we help shift the narrative away from fear toward respect and appreciation?

• 1:31:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:31:00Alie Ward?

  I will add that they so deserve, of course. Literally 50 of you gentle souls asked how to overcome your fear of spiders, but I'm going to shout out just the first time question askers, Mark Peyton, Jasmine Tsai, Rowan Tree, Helena and Felix Cosmo. And here I would like to quote Chief Dan George of the Slavitu Nation who said, "If you talk to the animals, they will talk with you and you will know each other. If you do not talk to them, you will not know them. And what you do not know, you will fear. What one fears, one destroys."

• 1:31:32Speaker 05

  Well, I would just say that. I mean, everyone kind of needs to open their eyes to everything. It's kind of a general problem we have in our society. People are kind of too close minded, right? About everything. But, I mean, spiders, they mostly eat insects. So they're important in that way. Their silks are spectacular. Strongest things ever, right? Their strongest biomaterials known to man. It's crazy. They have intricate biologies. You just have to, you just have to want to learn a little bit more about all spiders. And once you start learning more about them, they're, they're cool animals that have really cool lifestyles.

• 1:32:09Alie Ward?

  I think the less anthropocentric we are, perhaps, we start thinking of what is this spider gonna do to me? That spider probably doesn't give a shit about you unless it thinks you're gonna kill it, right?

• 1:32:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, that's exactly right. Yeah, you just have to kind of think of them as little animals doing their thing, right? And then, like, they're doing their thing in such interesting ways, using silk in particular. They're, they're cool.

• 1:32:34Alie Ward?

  Just to appreciate them as critters.

• 1:32:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, right. If you have to say, what good do they do for humanity? Which I don't think you have to. You can just appreciate them for themselves. But for humanity, they're providing all of this natural insect biocontrol. That's what they do. They eat insects. But beyond that, they make these silks that we can use for other things. And they're actually, their venoms are actually used for therapeutics. So they have a lot of potential to directly impact humanity positively. We just have to be open to it.

• 1:33:06Alie Ward?

  Not to mention, what would Halloween be without him? Come on. It's my favorite. My favorite spider season. What about the one, last two questions I always ask? Hardest thing about your job? Most annoying thing about being an arachnologist? It can be anything. It can be petty, it can be big. It can be the fact that people hate spiders, whatever.

• 1:33:24Speaker 05

  I don't see it that way.

• 1:33:25Alie Ward?

  Yeah?

• 1:33:26Speaker 05

  Yeah. I have an awesome job.

• 1:33:27Alie Ward?

  There's gotta be one thing. I ask you your favorite after this, but there's gotta be one thing that sucks about your job. Is it parking on campus? Because that's what I think sucks the most about your job.

• 1:33:39Speaker 05

  I don't like to complain about my position. I'm very fortunate. I don't see it that way. Sorry.

• 1:33:44Alie Ward?

  No, I love not a single complaint from someone who works with spiders. This is the first time in 350 episodes, anyone's ever said, I don't have a single complaint. And you're the guy that works with spiders. I think that should tell people a lot. That you're not like, I hate it when spiders assault me in some way. That doesn't happen.

• 1:34:03Speaker 05

  Well, that doesn't happen to me. And if people don't like spiders, that doesn't annoy me. I mean, I think it's like an opportunity for me to maybe help them get over that. I don't get upset about that kind of stuff.

• 1:34:14Alie Ward?

  You're a bigger person than me because if someone doesn't like spiders, I feel like I want to sit them down and lecture them. What about your favorite thing?

• 1:34:22Speaker 05

  My favorite thing about my job? I mean, I love, I kind of love everything about it. I get to go into the field a lot and the field is wonderful. I really like to teach, so I get to teach a lot in my position. It's inspiring for me to try to inspire other people. Kind of a beautiful thing. Fundamentally, I love learning about biodiversity. I kind of think of it as I'm trying to explore and discover and describe the biological world around me. Really not for people, but for like this greater thing. It's weird. I don't know how to, I don't know how to describe it.

• 1:34:58Alie Ward?

  That's an important purpose.

• 1:34:59Speaker 05

  Right. If there was like a, if there was like a spider god, they would smile upon my actions. Yeah, I think it is really important to kind of learn stuff now and pass it on to the next generation. And it's not even that. It's just kind of telling the stories of the spiders that the spiders can't tell the stories themselves. So I kind of help the spiders tell their story.

• 1:35:24Alie Ward?

  Beautiful that you're an advocate and that you're literally helping them be seen.

• 1:35:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, exactly. That's it. Helping them be seen. Right? Like there's a new species that lives up by Kernville, but no one knew about it. But now, now they know about it because I kind of, I found them and. Wrote a paper about them.

• 1:35:41Alie Ward?

  You are the PR that they need.

• 1:35:43Speaker 05

  That's right. That's right. And it's not about me. That's, that's the other thing. I don't, I don't really care. I mean, I don't do this for myself. I, I'm doing it for this, this greater good.

• 1:35:53Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:35:53Speaker 05

  Right. But I'm really fortunate to have a job that allows me to do that.

• 1:35:58Alie Ward?

  Well, same. I'm lucky that I get to tell people about what you know about spiders.

• 1:36:02Speaker 05

  Nice.

• 1:36:02Alie Ward?

  So that they appreciate them. Um, I'm going to send you some pictures of the spiders that cohabitate in my office.

• 1:36:08Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:36:09Alie Ward?

  I'll let you know who's in there.

• 1:36:10Speaker 05

  Cha-ching. Thin mo for me.

• 1:36:13Alie Ward?

  Five bucks each.

• 1:36:14Speaker 05

  That's right. Find as many as you want.

• 1:36:20Alie Ward?

  So ask spider people not smart questions because oh, the stories. You thought a spider was an anonymous little being invented by ghouls to destroy your sanity. But the joke's on you because they are vast, colorful, cute, smart, and they eat roaches for you. And 99.998% of them are harmless, if I did that math right. Now you can find out more about Dr. Hadeen at the links in the show notes, as well as the cause he chose. We are at Ologies on Blue Sky and Instagram. I'm Ally Ward with one L on both. And we do have those shorter kid-friendly episodes called Smologies in their own feed, which is linked in the show notes.

• 1:37:00Alie Ward?

  You can get merch at ologiesmerch.com. And to submit your questions before we record, you can sign up at patreon.com slash ologies. Thank you to BFFs since kindergarten, Erin Talbert for adminning the Ologies Podcast Facebook group, and her and Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Veltis for their support as I'm off to shoot tomorrow. Avaleen Malik makes the professional transcripts. Kelly Ardware does the website. Noelle Dilworth is our nimble scheduling producer. Susan Hale, our managing director oversees it all with only two eyes. Jake Chaffee weaves it all together as an editor and slinging the sticky bits is lead editor Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn wrote our theme music. And if you stick around until the very end of the episode, I tell you a secret. This week I will tell you that I just got back from rehearsal tonight at 30 Rock.

• 1:37:41Alie Ward?

  And I, which by the way, I got into a cab and I was like, is it 30 Rockefeller Center? Or is it just called 30 Rock? I don't know how to tell. So I was like, 30 Rock? And then I was like, is that douchey? Like when people call San Francisco Frisco? I don't know, don't tell me because I can't change it now. But anyway, I was at 30 Rockefeller, I was at the studios and I was practicing and stuff. And I spent also the day holding this huge tailless whip scorpion and mantids and these little tiny fast roaches. And tomorrow I'll be handling a tarantula too. And if you asked me if I would rather have giant leggy spiny insects and spiders on

• 1:38:20Alie Ward?

  my skin on essentially live TV or sing karaoke in any random bar, it would be the roaches and the spiders on me on television. Karaoke terrifies me. Can't do it, which means I should do it and I should get it over with. That is the lesson we learned today. Okay. Thank you for being here. You did great. All right, bye bye.

• 1:39:00Speaker 10

  Trust me, Wilbur. People are very gullible. They'll believe anything they see in print.

• 1:39:06Alie Ward?

  How's your ponytail looking? Maybe like a little thinner than it used to? We've talked about this in our menopause episode. At some point, it's bound to happen to all of us. So if you're ready for thicker, fuller hair, start your free online visit today at forhers.com/ologies for personalized care. So that's F O R H E R S dot com slash ologies. Individual results may vary. Featured products include compounded drug products which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety, effectiveness, or quality. Prescription required. Price varies based on product and subscription plan. See website for full details, restrictions, and important safety information. Father Ward, you say? There's no way you would need a career coach? You have it all together. That's a lie and you know it. I actually hired a career coach and without them I wouldn't have started Ologies.

• 1:39:51Alie Ward?

  It was one of the best investments I've ever made. And if you're like, I don't know where to find a career coach.

• 1:39:56Alie Ward?

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• 1:40:40Alie Ward?

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