Araneology (SPIDERS) with Marshal Hedin

Summary

Ologies with Alie Ward: Araneology (Spiders) with Dr. Marshall Hedin

Episode Information:

• Title: Araneology (Spiders) with Dr. Marshall Hedin
• Host: Alie Ward
• Guest: Dr. Marshall Hedin, Professor and Arachnologist at San Diego State University
• Release Date: May 14, 2025

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Introduction to Araneology and Dr. Marshall Hedin

In this enlightening episode of Ologies with Alie Ward, host Alie Ward delves deep into the fascinating world of spiders with guest Dr. Marshall Hedin, a passionate arachnologist based at San Diego State University. Alie begins by addressing common fears, aiming to transform listeners' apprehension into appreciation through knowledge and proximity.

Alie Ward [06:00]: "Many psychologists assert that the best cure for phobias is exposure response prevention. Listen, if you're afraid of spiders, this episode will make you stronger."

The Diversity and Danger of Spiders

Dr. Hedin shares astonishing statistics about the vast diversity of spiders, highlighting that while there are approximately 38,000 known species worldwide, only about 100 possess venom harmful to humans—a mere 0.0025%.

Dr. Marshall Hedin [15:34]: "Human beings are probably much more dangerous to other people. There are over 200 million mosquito-borne cases of malaria annually, but spiders are not among the top killers."

He debunks prevalent myths, such as the misconception surrounding "daddy longlegs"—clarifying that many common references are either harmless spiders or entirely different arachnids like Opiliones, which lack venom glands.

Dr. Marshall Hedin [10:08]: "Opiliones don't have venomous glands or silk. The idea that they're dangerous is total horse bucky garbage talk."

Overcoming Arachnophobia

Alie emphasizes that fear of spiders is often a learned behavior, influenced by cultural portrayals and parental reactions. Dr. Hedin concurs, noting that exposure and education are key to overcoming such fears.

Dr. Marshall Hedin [19:25]: "Exposure therapy is the way to go. Look at photos first, then see if you can hold one. Rewire your brain to learn they aren't a threat."

Spider Anatomy and Evolution

The conversation transitions to the intricate anatomy of spiders. Dr. Hedin explains the difference between araneomorphs (true spiders) and mygalomorphs, detailing their distinct fang orientations and respiratory systems.

Dr. Marshall Hedin [24:02]: "Spider evolutionary history is really old compared to mammals or birds. They're akin to all vertebrates combined in terms of evolutionary depth."

He introduces the concept of "living fossils" like Hypokylus, a genus that has remained morphologically unchanged for millions of years, showcasing the evolutionary persistence of certain spider species.

Dr. Marshall Hedin [26:05]: "Hypokylus has been around since before dinosaurs. They're spectacular spiders with morphological stasis."

Behavioral Ecology and Hunting Methods

Dr. Hedin illuminates the diverse hunting strategies employed by spiders. From the intricate webs of orb-weavers to the specialized bolas-spinning techniques of certain species, spiders exhibit remarkable adaptability.

Dr. Marshall Hedin [44:05]: "The bolas spider emits chemicals that mimic moth pheromones, attracting prey with a sticky lasso. It's like a moth rodeo."

He also discusses the longevity of certain spiders, such as trapdoor spiders that can live up to 45 years in the wild, and the extreme sexual dimorphism observed in species like the black widow, where females are significantly larger than males.

Dr. Marshall Hedin [38:03]: "Female trapdoor spiders can live for 45 years. Their sedentary lifestyle and intermittent fasting contribute to their longevity."

Conservation and Endangered Species

Highlighting the environmental challenges facing spiders, Dr. Hedin speaks about habitat loss, climate change, and invasive species threatening various spider populations. He underscores the importance of fieldwork in discovering and conserving rare spider species.

Dr. Marshall Hedin [74:02]: "Climate change and habitat loss are pushing some spider species to the brink. Conservation efforts are crucial to protect these ancient lineages."

Listener Questions: Demystifying Spider Myths and Facts

The episode transitions to a lively Q&A segment where Dr. Hedin addresses numerous listener inquiries:

• Swallowing Spiders in Sleep [86:38]:

  Dr. Marshall Hedin: "The myth that humans swallow spiders in their sleep is entirely false. It originated from a fabricated story and has been debunked repeatedly."

• Spider Communication and Personalities [77:24]:

  Dr. Marshall Hedin: "Spiders communicate using vision, vibrations, and chemicals. There's evidence suggesting they have distinct personalities, especially in social species like the Indian cooperative spider."

• Spiders’ Role in Ecosystems [93:16]:

  Dr. Marshall Hedin: "Spiders are vital for natural insect control. They help maintain ecological balance by preying on various pest species."

• Pet Spiders and Conservation [76:19]:

  Dr. Marshall Hedin: "While some spiders like jumping spiders can make fascinating pets due to their personalities, it's essential to ensure they are bred in captivity to avoid impacting wild populations."

Cultural Representation and Media Portrayal

Discussion also touches upon spiders in media, referencing books like Charlotte's Web and animated characters like Lucas the Spider, which help shift public perception from fear to appreciation.

Listener Anonymous [81:22]: "Charlotte's Web portrays spiders as complex and intelligent, fostering a more positive image."

Final Thoughts and Advocacy

Dr. Hedin concludes by advocating for greater spider integration into our cultural consciousness, emphasizing that understanding and respecting these creatures can lead to a more harmonious coexistence.

Dr. Marshall Hedin [97:17]: "Ask spider people. They are vivid, colorful, and play a crucial role in ecosystems by controlling insect populations."

Conclusion

This episode of Ologies serves as a comprehensive guide to understanding spiders, dispelling myths, and appreciating their ecological significance. Dr. Marshall Hedin's expertise and enthusiasm provide listeners with valuable insights, encouraging a shift from fear to fascination with these remarkable arachnids.

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Notable Quotes:

• Dr. Marshall Hedin [15:34]: "Human beings are probably much more dangerous to other people. There are over 200 million mosquito-borne cases of malaria annually, but spiders are not among the top killers."

• Dr. Marshall Hedin [26:05]: "Hypokylus has been around since before dinosaurs. They're spectacular spiders with morphological stasis."

• Dr. Marshall Hedin [44:05]: "The bolas spider emits chemicals that mimic moth pheromones, attracting prey with a sticky lasso. It's like a moth rodeo."

• Dr. Marshall Hedin [97:17]: "Ask spider people. They are vivid, colorful, and play a crucial role in ecosystems by controlling insect populations."

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Resources:

• Learn more about Dr. Marshall Hedin and his work: [Show Notes Link]
• Support the San Diego State University Biodiversity Museum: [Donation Link]
• Follow Ologies on Bluesky and Instagram
• Merchandise: ologiemerch.com
• Submit Your Questions: patreon.com/ologies

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Stay Connected: Join the conversation on social media and share your own spider stories using #OlogiesWithAlie.

Transcript

[Alie Ward]

The Feathersnap Smart Bird Feeder brings the wild to your window, combining clever tack with nature's little surprises. It has a built in camera that captures photos and videos every time a bird stops by and it connects to your phone for real time alerts and bird identification. It's solar powered, beautifully designed and so easy to use. It's the perfect gift for parents, grandparents or anyone who loves nature. No experience required. Check out the Feathersnap Smart bird [e-mail].

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

I've often made fun of podcast hosts who try to hawk too many supplements. One supplement I actually take is Ritual. I've been taking them for years. One thing I like about them is it's female founded, it's a B corp and they believe in science. They have clinical trials already done for their best selling products like they're essential for women's 18 plus multivitamin, which is a multi I take that has nine key nutrients and two delayed release caps. It's third party tested and I love that. Ritual was founded by a skeptic who was like what do we actually need to take and how can we do that in a quality way? So yeah, I take Ritual every morning and when I open up the bottle I wink at them and say ritual. You get it? So no more shady business. Ritual's Essential for Women 18 plus is a multivitamin you can actually trust. Get 25% off your first month at ritual.com ologies. You can start Ritual or add Essential for Women 18 to your subscription today. That's ritual.com ologies for 25% off. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. You have to say that, oh hey, it's your neighbor's dad practicing golf on the lawn. Alie ward. It's also the lady who's going to be on the Tonight show on Wednesday, May 14, correct? Your pod father, 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. 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 gonna 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 is if you're afraid of spiders will make you a stronger person. It'll make your life easier. You got it. And if you're not 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 erinia, 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 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 going to 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 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 [e-mail] 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 show so much and I read them all and I prove it to you. So thank you lady Ellentia04 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. Ladylnta04 Glad you're here. Happy to do it. I hope you like spiders or I hope you fear them because this episode 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 smallogies. It's also linked in the show notes. We made them for delicate years. 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. 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 seed. I'm nearly 20 minutes late to this interview. 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 on the way here. It was a two hour drive. So here I am. Not believe how bad I have to be. My neck feels and smells like a T. Rex has been licking it. Oh, excuse me. Excuse me. Do you know where life science south is? Oh, do you know where the life science building is? South. Life Science is south.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Is that what I believe? It's down there?

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Down there?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Yes. I'm not 100% sure though.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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 science spider guy. He's in Life Sciences South. 264Marshall heading.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Thank you so much for the escort. Yeah, don't worry.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Happens all the time.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Ah, you're an angel. Thank you so much, Marshall. Am I dead? Is this heaven?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

A little red in the face.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Isn't it 100?

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

It's 100 if not a little bit more. And I talked to. 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. He was so forgiving and very humble and shy and subdued. I don't think he had ever heard of ologies or 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 field work 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. So let's hand the mic to professor, researcher, spider defender and araneologist Dr. Marshall Hedin. Can you pretend like you're doing karaoke? Just like pretend you're either Seinfeld or karaoke. Celine Dion. One of the two.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Marshall Hadeen. D him.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Hadeen.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Hadeen.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Okay. A lot of people call you Haden? Probably.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Yes.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Yeah. You get that a lot. I'm glad you said it because I Hadeen. Okay, perfect. And now do people call you Dr. Spider ever?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Rarely.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Really?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Yeah.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

That's a missed opportunity, to be honest. Can I call you Dr. Spider?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

You can call me Dr. Spider. Hell yeah.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

And you are an arachnologist.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

I am.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Right.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Big time.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Big time. How do you classify just a normal arachnologist and a big time one? Based on the level of passion?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Do you mean defining a spider? Like defining a new species?

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Venom glands and silk.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

That actually makes them the ultimate predator. Venom and silk.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Yep.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Does it irritate you when people call them spiders?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

No.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

I mean, so the daddy long legs that you're used to seeing, those may not even be spiders. There are these creatures called opiliones and we are going to exonerate them in a moment.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Okay.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

So there are daddy long leg spiders, 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 long legs. Those are apiliones, not spiders.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

And opiliones don't have venomous glands or silk.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

That's correct. Yeah.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

And their body segments. Just one ball of a body.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

That's right. They don't have two part body plan. Yeah, but there's another myth. Because some people think that opiliones, what they call daddy long legs are actually highly venomous. But that's not true.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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 long legs are dangerous, but they just don't have fangs. Total horse bucky garbage talk. And even the cellar spiders. Not a threat to your life.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Well, they don't have venom glands for one thing. But even if it was a daddy long legs spider, it's not really dangerous either. So myth number one.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Crushed flim flam busted. Spiders technically aren't insects either. Or are they insects?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Not even close.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Not even close to insects. So when people say I hate insects.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Like spiders, why would you ever say that? But.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Okay.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Love bugs. This is good bug collection. One of my favorite things to do before the Internet when I was a kid was just pour through field guides of insects.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Awesome.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Whereabouts?

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Sweet.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Yeah. So I'm the opposite of a person. That's like kill it with fire. 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?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

When I was a grad student.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Yeah, that was me too.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

That's right. Different times.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Yeah, exactly.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Turn them loose. It's good for the microbiome.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Yeah.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Get a tetanus shot. Best of luck.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

I like it.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

What were you studying in grad school?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

What was it? What flipped that switch?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

How many species do we know of spiders? Yeah.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Fifty thousand.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Fifty thousand.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Fifty thousand described.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

That's so many.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

But there's probably twice as many as that, actually. 100K.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

100.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

100,000 spider species.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Species of spider, yeah. Did you ever have the phobia of spiders?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

No.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Yeah. You heard.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Do you blame a lot of it on arachnophobia? The film?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

That's good.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

I think it's just something about the culture. Yeah, that's what parents learned. Then they teach their kids the same kind of fear.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

I talked to a herpetologist, said the same thing about snakes. 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 situation. That's straight from the Mayo Clinic. And for 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 youw. She's great, but the message here, 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?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

About 55. Oh, 50 out of 50,000. Pretty small percentage.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Yeah. Human beings are probably much more dangerous to other people.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

That's right. I always talk about this in my class. You can show a slide of animals that kill people. And spiders aren't on the list, right? Yeah, they don't kill people. Essentially effectively they're not on the top 50 list.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Then a bunch of actually dangerous animals like dogs or whatever.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

That's right.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

But if some people see a spider outside.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

That's right.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

So yes, I have a killer in my bed every night and her name is Gremlin. Statistically, dogs kill 25,000 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 200 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. 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 reason. 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, 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 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? 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 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. Hearing the word spider.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

That's right.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

We're going to be saying it a lot.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

That could get pretty annoying.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Well, it was pretty awesome. I went to grad school in Missouri, but I did my work in the southern Appalachians.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Wow.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

And I worked on spiders that like to live in caves.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Oh, amazing.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

It's like the combination, right?

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

You combine the cave 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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Is that a spider rich territory in generally Appalachia?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Yeah.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

It was really spectacular working there.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Does your work deal with field work or lab work or kind of a equal combination?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Both. Yeah. And the field is the best.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

That'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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

What kinds of places has that taken you to?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

I've been everywhere.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Mango Baltimore, Salvador, Ambarilla, Tocapella Barranquilla and Padilla Amma.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Killer.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

I've been everywhere, man. I've been everywhere. Literally in California and a lot in the western United States. A lot in the eastern United States and southern Appalachia, South Africa, Australia a few times. Central America, South America.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Oh, yes.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

How big is a crab spider?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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. Sporacids.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

This giant crab spider, or Olios giganteus, 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 can say. 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 Sounders 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. 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.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Tell me.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Marshall says that they used to have to request a species sample sent to look at its genies under a microscope and its mouthparts 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?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

And, like, the common ancestor of spiders goes back to maybe 350 million years ago. So that's in the Paleozoic. That's before dinosaurs. Then, of course, they've been evolving since then.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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 gonna be here after you, probably after us as a species.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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 maybe have an evolutionary age that is about the same age as all spiders.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Whoa, whoa.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

They're old.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

World, like a living fossil? Yeah, yeah, we do in California.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

What are those?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Well, there's a genus called Hypokylus.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Okay, so Hypokylus have been around since before the dinosaurs. And they're what's called an ouranomorph or a true spider. And our true spiders are most of the spiders in the world, about 90% of what you might see. Now, arenomorphs have fangs that point kind of diagonally over each other, like having a cross bite. And they include critters like jumping spiders and wolf spiders and little house spiders making cute cobwebs in your corner, the big huntsmans, 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 megalomor megamorphs 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 ar 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.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

And they're still kicking, they're still running.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

What does that mean exactly?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

The 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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

And this is exciting.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

We actually described a new species of Hypochylis a couple of years ago. Really? From the far southern Sierra Nevada, from up near Kernville.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Did you get to name it?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Yeah.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

What'd you name it?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Oh, that's great.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Yeah.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

What does it mean?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Hamote? It means from the south.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Oh, that's beautiful. And according to a newspaper article titled his spidey sense must have been tingling. SDSU Biologist discovers new Species. This 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 200ft. 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?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

And they really do eat birds, right?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

That's what I hear.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

No. Yeah, they found him eating birds.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

How do they survive those temperatures?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Let's have it.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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 hemolymph 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 well, well, spiders, they usually have eight eyes. Most have to rely on touch to kind of suss out the world around them. 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.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Going back to the basics. I like this.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Yeah. Cause like, let's get to know spiders. Okay, we got the fangs up front. Typically two.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Always two.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Always two. So chelicerae are up front and those are the jaws of a spider and they're tipped with little fangs. Now next to those chelicerae are some short, leggy looking things called palps or pedipalps. 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 Esposit, and to my delight and shock, I learned that scorpion's pincers are technically pedipalps. Pedipalps.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Pedipalps.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Are those technically legs or are they just modified legs into mouthparts?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Yeah, they're technically legs.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

They are, yep. So pedi 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, but they don't.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

So they don't count as legs. But they are appendages.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Yeah. So spiders have 12 appendages, only eight of them are legs and the other four are mouth legs and their fang area. But even though they have fangs or chelicerae 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 wave like hello. And then what about spinnerets in the back?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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, like a little.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Like a finger on each side of the butt, right?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Exactly. It's really cool.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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 it 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. No thanks. Different than an insect. So they fuse their head and their thorax together.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Yep. Insects are hexapods. They have six legs. Arachnids have. Well, they have 12 legs, but they have eight walking legs.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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. You mean squirts out, bathe things are just bathed?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

And then they have hemolymph that pumps through the body. 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 area. It's like the inside of a lung, but it's cuticular.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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 infraorder and that's 22 different respiratory system configurations. So it varies. Marshall says that a lot of spiders lose their book lungs with evolution. 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.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

But most Araneomorphs, 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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Are those more like veins? Exactly.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

It's like a capillary system. You have that kind of clunky open system. And if you're a mygalomorph, 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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

And like a trapdoor spider, it just sits in its 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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

They can outweigh their prey.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

That's right.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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 back door, 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.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

What? How?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Wow.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Yeah. In Australia, these 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. 45 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. 45 years. No, that must have been pretty sad actually, to find that. But it's still cool.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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. 43. A spider in her pocket, 40s. And her principal watcher was the Australian lady of the spiders and arachnologist, Dr. Barbara York Main, who worked into her 80s, motivated, she had said, by seeing how long number 16 would stay alive. And Dr. York Main, she died of complications from Alzheimer's just months after that final paper was published. And Barbara's mentee, Leanda Mason, who took over the fieldwork, has said that in Dr. York Main'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 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 spermy 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 with jizz. So, like, as much as I like to glean strength from nature, as your Internet dad uncle, I urge you, do not use trapdoor spiders as a physical or a mental health model.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

And are those wasps? Those tarantula hawk wasps?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Probably, yep. Like a spider wasp, a pumpillid.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Get away from my trapdoor spiders.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

I know, I know. Stinkers, gorgeous insects. But I'm also like, no, not the trapdoor spiders.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

What kind of trapdoor spiders do you have?

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Oh, that's such a great question.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

California trapdoor spiders.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Yeah, both.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Riocertum.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Awesome.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

When it rains, twice or three times they've tried to come into the house, and a couple have perished that way.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Those are the males.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

The males. Yeah. 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. Cause he knew I'd be so excited.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Nice.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Where are they going?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

They're not in my garage.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Well, they don't know.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Get out of here, man. Got ladies to meet.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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. It's October 1st, 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. I'm a little nervous. It's actually. It seems maladaptive to me. I have no idea how it works, but it obviously does work. They find females.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Yeah, Just put it on the outside. Yeah.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Fangs in the venom, in their web.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

In the web.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

The web.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Now, all spiders make silk, but not all of them use webs to catch. Right. So what are some hunting methods and living methods that spiders use?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Well, you have like the bolas spider. You know about the bolas spider?

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

I don't think I do.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

You don't know about the bolas spider?

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

No.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Okay, I was thinking, what's the punchline?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

The bolas spider is a derived orb weaving spider.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Okay.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Like a Charlotte's web spider.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Oh, okay. Yes.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

That's cool. But the cooler thing is that they emit chemicals that mimic moth pheromones. So the bola 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. No, that's pretty specialized.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

No one's ever told me about that.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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. Yeah, Aggressive chemical mimicry. They're spectacular.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

That is ridiculous.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Spectacular.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

And it's just all going on under cover of night. Maybe from a tree branch.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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 Petey. One is not.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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. But those venoms happen to be also highly dangerous to people. So they kill people. They're deadly spiders. But there are anti venom spots that have been developed.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

That's right.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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 kinda kick back around most of em. 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. Now on the other end, what about antivenom? So a journal of toxicology paper titled Antivenom treatment in Arachnidism 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 wanders 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 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 curveball. 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.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Yeah, I'm sure.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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 gallimorph 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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Whatever your call, 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, do we tend to see the different sexes? Do we tend to see larger females?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Generally larger females than males. 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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Yes, right. Yes.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

But the females are gigantic. Like, if you go to Costa Rica, you'll see this gigantic female and the male is literally like 1/100 of her size.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Not even that. It's worse than that. Males have very different lives than females, so their morphology is often very different.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Well, they're typically vagrant, so they're having to move around the habitat. More than a female, the female is just going to stay there and the male comes out, 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. Hello, ladies. So they have a different kind of natural history or a different life history once they're ready to go, once they're sexually mature.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Do you have a favorite spider?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

I know. I want to go see.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Let me know if you want to go see them.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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 LA in the San Bernardino Mountains.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Oh, my God.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Okay, Holler. Okay, yeah, that'd be.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Are you serious?

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

I am, I am.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

You just can't tell anyone where they are.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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 hot and dry weekend, a 43,000 acre fire in the same mountains thwarted our plants. 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?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

I have multiple pairs.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

I bet.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Three pairs, actually.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

I bet you get good mileage on them.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

I do.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Speaking of seeing, what about their eyes? What kind of eyesight? I know, it varies species. Some probably need their eyes in low lighting.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Yeah, jumping spiders can see really well. And in color. Many of them can see in color. Wolf 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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Who needs them?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Do they use all of those eyes? For different things.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Can I ask you listener questions?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Yes.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Okay. All right, so don't go anywhere because your questions are next. But first we'll donate to a cause of the ologist'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 shop.

[Alie Ward]

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[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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It's quince.comologieS breezy. All right, let us burrow into the question bag and see what we catch. Okay. Courtney Hudson, seven. I remember hearing at some point or reading somewhere that on average you're never more than 8 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, can we talk about micro spiders? Because I want to know about them. Little cuties. What spiders? If you're outside, do you think you're around less than a foot from a spider at all times?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

No. I would say no.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Okay. There's not that many spiders.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

No. It depends on where you are, but no. In California. No.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Okay. What about micro spiders? Are there tiny, tiny spiders called micro spiders?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Spiders less than a millimeter in size. Yeah.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Full grown.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Full grown adults. Kind of ridiculous. In particular, there's some male spiders that are really small like that. Basically the male is just like. It's just kind of like a walking pedipalp.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Aren't they all?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

That's right. A walking intermittent organ.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

They got one job.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

That's right.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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 marblesi 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. Anna Dillon, ellie Snowden, Rachel McGill. Want to know why are their butts so big? What's in there? Is that where they hide all the web or the spider babies? Why are their beautiful butts so large? Good question.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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. 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. That's pretty cool.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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 to just. Just cash it in and go to heaven when you have 75 babies at once. So patrons Lisa Gorman and Michele 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, Jesse and Devin, who all asked, in Devin'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 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 baby? And you're also a spider. So eating dog hair for a living. And Christina Craft 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?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Yeah, I mean, they're 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 spiderleins will come out of that egg sack and then they crawl onto the the females back and do that for a couple more molts.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

And they don't eat each other?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Nope.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Oh, some spiders snack on one another, right?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

They can do that? Yeah.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

So to Trista Elgar, 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. 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 detail 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. It then added that irrespective of a female's Age or mating status. Males. 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. That's right.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

They kind of love that sexual cannibalism. But it doesn't always happen.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Rosalind Hesby for Colin Hesby wants to know how do spiders poop? Just like anyone else, I guess.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Okay. It's more liquid than that 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.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Eight individuals.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

One over in that corner, one over in that. I'm gonna take some pictures, okay. Because mostly I just see their webs and I go, thanks, man.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Hell yeah, five bucks. Five bucks each. Make it $4.75 with a 25 cent tip. So patrons Emma Oe 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 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 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 get yes 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 going to ask me anymore and I don't get to look it up. And then my off the cuff knowledge of bugs is no longer 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, which can be one single species with a common name house spider on 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 Shepard, Denny, Karina Reagan, Carrie Walker, Nita Chen, Hannah Gorey, Caitlin Mellendorf, Derek Peliquin, Rachel Hartshorn, Melanie Metzger and Issa 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 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, 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 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.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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 spooters such as patrons Natalie Parsons, Tamara Coutino and Lucy Antonelli, who asked how do I 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 that and it's no. But back to that hairiness body fat asked about their fur and Emma Kelly Brown, Jason Ganley bodyfat, Bjorn Fredberg want to know why are they so hairy? Now that's not fur though, right? That's no seti.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Setae. Yep. A lot of them aren't. Some of them are like a wolf spider has quite a bit of setae that make them kind of look like that. But a tarantula certainly has a lot of setae that make them look kind of of hairy. But certainly not a ubiquitous thing for spiders to be like that. And in 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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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 sensillum in both sexes of Argiope Brunettch. 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 Pinkowicz wants to know thoughts on calling spiders bugs even though they're not insects.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

I'm against it.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Okay, they're not bugs. Spiders are not bugs.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Spiders are not bugs.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Okay.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Most insects are not bugs.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Oh. Cause true bugs. Hemiptera.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Then again, there are true spiders that are not called true spiders. We have a major brand of bugs.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

That true spider thing is problematic.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

So true bugs belong to an order of insects called Hemiptera, which are shield shaped like a stink bug. And patrons Annalise de Young and Teresa 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 yngvy 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, 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 having 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.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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 Hemipteran.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

No. No luck.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Sometimes no.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Eating dog hair for a living. Danny C. And Emma Oe 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.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Which ones? You want to shout them out.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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 buronia, which is from a single cave in downtown San Antonio. What? That has now been covered with 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. That's kind of weird, huh?

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

But there's a lot of Texas cave spiders that are endangered, and there's a special little micro tarantula that lives on mountaintops 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. And those spruce fir forests have declined because of invasive bugs.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Well, according to the 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 gonna forgive Marshall this time. We're all human, unless you're a spider who's like, I hate those balsam woody Adelgids.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

So the forest kind of died off, and that exposed the moss mats where this spider likes to live. But the kind of climate change scenarios for the future, they don't bode well for that species. Oh, man, this is gonna get warmer and warmer, and then the forests that the spiders live in will actually go away. And then the spiders might go away.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Oof.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Yeah.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

So be kind to spiders. They've been through so much, but some species have been around for 100 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?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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 Fidipus jumping spiders, and they like that because Fidipus 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 interesting. They're actually really cool spiders.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Yeah, they're beautiful.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

You mentioned something about jumping spiders having personality. Ginaninja LB wants to know if they have feelings or show personalities. Jacob shepherd, do spiders have personalities? Earl of Gramalkin, Mouse Paxton, David the altruistic misanthrope, and Vanessa Adams all want to know little tiny personalities that you notice.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

And According to the 2014 paper Animal Behavior Task Differentiation by Personality in Spider Group 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 this 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? 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. Sure, 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 their preponderance of venomous spiders in Australia or big ones?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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 overall is not atypically dangerous.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

It's just that one lineage.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

And this is the family Altracidae. 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 spiders 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 Anneliese DeYoung suggested the 1967 children's book Be Nice to Spiders. Ginger Ninja LB said, Please see the book Ah Spider by Lydia Monks to help your fears and many people. Danielle Sutra, Blake Baird Mack and Adam Weaver mentioned the book Children 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 have 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 Omnic 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 power. Does that mean it was probably not radioactive? And other Spider man question patrons such as Anjali Himalay and Andrew McVeigh wanted to know about spiders in the media. 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.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Charlotte's Web.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Okay.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

And she was very sophisticated.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

And how friendly they can be.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

So the sound vibrations can.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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's spider babies everywhere.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Janica Maki, 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?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Yeah, I love that. Please see the 2008 study Commensalism in Microhylid 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 and. 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 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 Echeverri, who we have already spoken about, Sebastian's on here, wants to know weirdest spider go weirdest spider.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Is this whole thing live? It's not.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

No.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Weirdest spider. I mean spinning spiders are pretty awesome and kind of weird.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Spitting spiders, what are they?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Spitting spiders, they spit a combination of glue and venom. If there were a lot of spitting spiders or if spitting spiders were bigger than they would be pretty scary.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

What happens with the glue and the venom?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Marshall kind of motioned some finger guns.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

That's like a wonder Woman like.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Yeah, exactly. The true spider man would be like a tarantula that has foot silk.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Does it ever make you mad that spider man doesn't spin webs out his butt?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

No.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Can you imagine a couple spinnerets down there? Just a hole in his body suit.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

I think that would freak people out.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

That'd be so great. What's with his wrists? Can't have it come out the other end.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

That's right.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Maybe 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, Daniela Napoleano, Claire Mauer and Robert Audet. Robert has a boatload of cat faced spiders in the back of their rental home in Flagstaff. They keep knocking down webs. Meegan Walker wants to know is there actually some essential oil or other substances that act 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.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Yeah. You're like, that's not a problem. I have.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

No.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

You're like, come to my office hours. Spiders.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

I'm interested in the opposite.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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 gonna fix that because Allie Brown Allen, Allie and Julian and Haley Kirby asked in Haley's work 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?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

I think I've heard that.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

I think that's ridiculous.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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 d 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. 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 Elgar, first time question asker, and Sarah Meaden and Kieran want to know, where do spiders go in the winter?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Depends on their lifestyle. If they're a trapdoor spider that lives for 45 years, they don't go anywhere just chilling. 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 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 that's covered in snow in the winter, let's say they've mated 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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

They just chill in a sleeping bag.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

It depends on what their life history is.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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 sand. They start spinning in a circle, 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?

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

That's so cute. 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. Is it really the venom, or is it a staph infection that'll get you from that?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

It's probably a combination of both. 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 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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Exactly.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Oh, sorry.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Yeah, it's a medical misdiagnosis problem. Problem.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

There does.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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? 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 Payton, Jasmine Tsai, Rowan Tree, Helena and Felix Cosmo. And here I would like to quote chief Dan George of the Tsleil Waututh 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.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Well, I would just say that, I mean, everyone kind of needs to open their eyes to everything. That'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? The strongest biomaterials known to man. Just crazy. They have intricate biologies. You just have to want to learn a little bit more about all spiders. And once you start learning more about them, they're cool animals that have really cool lifestyles.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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 they're doing their thing in such interesting ways, using silk in particular. They're cool.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Just appreciate them as critters.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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 are providing all of this natural insect bio control. That's what they do. They eat insects, but beyond that, they make these silks that we can use for other things. And 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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Not to mention, what would Halloween be without them? 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.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

I don't see it that way.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

I have an awesome job.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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? Cause that's what I think sucks the most about your job.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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?

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

My favorite thing about my job. I mean, 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 describe it.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

That's an important purpose.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

That's beautiful that you're an advocate and that you're literally helping them be seen.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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 they know about it because I found them and wrote a paper about them.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

You are the PR that they need.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Nice.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Okay.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

Cha ching venmo for me.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Five bucks each.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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 Bluesky and Instagram. I'm Alieward with one l on both and we do have those shorter kid friendly episodes on called smallogies in their own feed which is linked in the show notes. You can get [e-mail] and to submit your questions before we record, you can sign [e-mail] Ologies thank you to BFF since kindergarten Aaron Talbert for admin in the Ologies podcast Facebook group and her Ann Boni Dutch and Shannon Feltus for their support as I'm off to shoot tomorrow. Avileen Malik makes the professional transcripts, Kelly R. Dwyer does the website. Noelle Dilworth is our nimble scheduling producer. Susan Hale, our managing director, oversees it all. With only two up, 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 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 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.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

All right.

[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Bye bye. Pachydermatology, homeology, cryptozool, Zoology Lithology Nanotechnology Meteorology, Olfactology, Mapology, serology Trust me, Wilbur, people are very gullible. They'll believe anything they see in print.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

That's why Milo's Rewards members get a.

[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

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[Unnamed Student/Assistant]

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[Dr. Marshall Hedin]

Program subject to terms and conditions. Details@lowe's.com Terms subject to change.