Arachnid
dr. dolittle | May 27, 2016In a prior post summarizing the annual Michigan Physiological Society Meeting, I briefly mentioned the work from Adrian Vasquez, Milad Qazazi, Andrew Failla, Sanjay Rama, Samuel Randall, and Jeffrey Ram from Wayne State University, Detroit, MI).
They were exploring the diversity of water mites, a type of arachnid, in Western Lake Erie and they found a mixture of both native and invasive species.
Dr. Jeffrey Ram, Professor at the School of Medicine at Wayne State University, was kind enough to share images from their work. They refer to these particular water mites as "charismatic microfauna"…
laelaps | March 24, 2010
Megarachne, (changed to Mesothelae for broadcast) restored as an enormous spider in the series Before the Dinosaurs: Walking With Monsters.
Imagine that you are are standing in a massive junkyard with the remains of cars strewn all about you. A few are relatively complete, but most of the heap is made up of bits and pieces of models from the entire history of automotive innovation. If you were to reach down and pick up one of the scraps, would you be able to tell the make and model of the car it came from?
The challenges a paleontologist faces in reconstructing the life of the past are…
zooillogix | November 30, 2008Two weeks ago the University of Colorado College of Engineering sent two orb weaving spiders up in the space shuttle. The spiders' web building behavior was observed and streamed back to earth, serving as a classroom tool for teaching fifth though ninth graders about the effects of zero gravity. Great idea. Except when scientists opened up the second spider's box, they found it had escaped. Thus began the plot to a perfect B- Sci-Fi/Horror flick. Unfortunately for all of us safely earthbound observers, the other spider turned up in its buddy's box shortly thereafter, having succeeded only in…
zooillogix | October 1, 2008Built by the French performing arts group "La Machine" for Liverpool's European Capital of Culture program a few weeks back, the giant arachnid reaches 15 meters tall and weighs 37 tons.
Built from both steel and wood, it utlizes a hydraulic system to move all spider-like and is operated by 12 people all sitting atop or strapped below the cephalothorax. If even one of those 12 drivers so much as yawns, the giant metal spider will grab the nearest human victim with its powerful jaws and suck out all of their internal juices.
We're trying to track down schematics so you can build your own at…
grrlscientist | March 25, 2008tags: spider, web building, mind-altering drugs, streaming video
This streaming video documents that spiders web-building abilities are affected by exposure to mind-altering drugs, like weed, as demonstrated by in 1960 Dr. Peter Witt. [1:49].
grrlscientist | March 22, 2008tags: arachnid, photography, subway art, AMNH, NYC, NYCLife
Scorpion species (but which one?)
as portrayed in tiles on the walls of the West 77th street entrance to the NYC subway stop (A-B-C)
at 81st and Central Park West. (ISO, no zoom, no flash).
Image: GrrlScientist 2008. [wallpaper size].
Read more about the AMNH tile artworks and see the AMNH tile artworks photographic archives -- with all the animals identified.
zooillogix | October 31, 2007Using a technique called very high-resolution x-ray computed tomography, researchers at the University of Manchester dissected a 50 million year old spider encased in amber. As reported in Zootaxa, leveraging the same technology used in CAT scans, it can make out features the width of a human hair. In this case, the technique enabled the researchers to identify the critter of Halloween past as a new species.
zooillogix | October 5, 2007Credit where credit is due. We got this cordial heads-up from the Mondo Spider team in the comments section of the Tate Gallery Spider post:
"Big deal. A spider that sits there and does nothing... We built a 1500Lb mechanical spider that we can drive." That they did.
More here as well as on YouTube
zooillogix | October 4, 2007Famed artist, Louise Bourgeois, clearly had an interesting relationship with her mother. Her new installation at the Tate Modern, Maman (1999) is a giant 30ft sculpture made of bronze, steel and marble and was intended as an "ode to my mother" according to Bourgeois. Inside of the spider's immense cage-like body, lies a clutch of eggs. While the Tate describes it is a strong and warm representation of motherhood, "A female spider, this spectacular arachnid alludes to the strength of the mother with metaphors of spinning, weaving, nuture and protection", the Guggenheim Bilbao, where the piece…
grrlscientist | August 31, 2007tags: spider, giant spider web,arachnid, social behavior
Lake Tawokoni State Park rangers (l-r) Mike McCord and Freddie Gowin continue to monitor a giant communal spider web at the park Tuesday, August 29, 2007. Officials at Lake Tawokoni State Park have been watching the growth of a giant communal spider web that has formed in the park over the past several weeks. The giant spider webs are rare for Texas.
Image: Tom Pennington. [Scary wallpaper size]
Have you heard about the spiders that spun a web that is the size of Texas? Well, actually, the web is only the size of two football…
zooillogix | August 30, 2007So that title may be a little sensationalistic... but the web is alive this morning (no pun intended) with stories about an enormous series of interconnected webs spread out over a 200 yard area in North Texas. Researchers and visitors alike have been drawn to the sprawling web, but were uncertain whether it was created by social spiders or one terrifying giant spider with unlimited silk production capabilities and a strong work ethic. Kind of a cross between the queen in Aliens and the giant spider, Shelob, that Frodo fights on his way to Mordor. Turns out the social spider theory was…
zooillogix | June 19, 2007Tougher than steel and Kevlar, the silk of the black widow spider has long been coveted by manufacturing companies, defense contractors and comic-book reading nerds as a possible material of the future.
Scientists have spent years decoding pieces of the spiders' silk making genes, but now Nadia Ayoub and a group of researchers at the University of California-Riverside can create the full proteins and probably spider silk as well.
You want to manufacture my what!?
The silk making genes turn out to be quite long (over 10,000 base-pairs), but with very few introns or "junk DNA" sections that…
zooillogix | May 21, 2007The Antarctic Benthic Deep-Sea Biodiversity Project (ANDEEP) has been working on an unprecedented project to document marine life near the bottom of the Antarctic Ocean. 80% of the isopods identified are entirely new species. Another species, foraminifera, single celled organisms with decorative shells, have also been identified in the waters beneath the North Pole. It is astonishing that these tiny creatures could find their way to the opposite sides of the earth, traveling through dramatically different environments along the way. "What was once thought to be a featureless abyss, is in fact…