• JacksonLamb@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Why limit it to the US? Dolomedes is international.

      Also yes I will sleep tight, knowing these adorable and accomplished spiders are out there living their best lives.

  • Dasus@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    Don’t spiders actually sort of rather drink their prey than eating it? We digest food inside us, spiders just vomit up shit onto paralysed prey that liquifies it so the spider can just sort of slurp it up.

    So I wonder how he’ll do with a turtle. It’s easy enough to imagine on a fish, but…

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    I would love to upvote something so fascinating as a sudden change or extreme rarity in ecology, but unfortunately I cannot in good conscience because doing so also promotes animal gore fetishists that exist in unfortunate numbers on general forums, youtube, etc.

    • andros_rex@lemmy.worldOP
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      12 days ago

      I know about the types of communities you are talking about, but there is a difference between people who purposefully put animals together to cause them to kill each other for entertainment and taking striking pictures of natural predation.

      I just watched a video of an Australian water rat eat the heart of a toad, as an adaptation to prey on invasive species with mostly toxic organs. That is pretty cool, and the shock value helps with the educational aspect.

      There’s a difference between that and “let’s put a snake and a spider in the same confined environment to watch them kill each other for fun.” Or god, the monkey torture people.

      Animals eat each other, and learning about them will require confronting this fact. I think this photo is educational, not lurid. Most people know very little about spiders, and I hope that my posting this picture got people to think more about the natural world. It is shocking, it does provoke a visceral reaction, but it also prompts questions. I am probably going to use it as a phenomenon to explore the next time I work with a student on biology.