
Untangling Spider Biology - sergeant3
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/10/spider-genes-put-new-spin-arachnids-potent-venoms-stunning-silks-and-surprising-history
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thearn4
As an arachnophobia Something about looking at spiders really disturbs me at
some fundamental level. but I'm extremely fascinated by their biology still.
Is anyone else similar?

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interfixus
Yes, someone is similar. Utterly fascinating. Spooks the shit out of me. My
take is, this is too widely shared a phobia not to have some solid genetic
underpinning.

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nolroz
You might be on to something! [http://www.cbs.mpg.de/Fear-of-spiders-and-
snakes-is-deeply-e...](http://www.cbs.mpg.de/Fear-of-spiders-and-snakes-is-
deeply-embedded-in-us)

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andrewl
There's a concept in psychology called _preparedness_ which suggests that we
are biologically prepared to learn certain things. I don't have time to track
down the actual research, but I remember reading years ago about an experiment
with monkeys. They had been born and raised in captivity and had never
encountered any environmental dangers. The researchers paired images of
flowers and a harmless, but unpleasant, electric shock, or images of snakes
and the shock. After many trials the monkeys learned to fear images of
flowers. It took very few trials for them to begin fearing images of snakes.

I'm sure I'm not doing justice to the concept or the research, but those are
the very basics of it.

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blattimwind
In theses parts it would be incredibly difficult to find a spider that would
technically be able to hurt a human (or any bigger mammal, like a cat or a
dog); yet many humans (especially females) are scared shitless of spiders.
I've never understood that, to me spiders are a net positive, since they eat
annoying insects (like flies).

Perhaps these deeply-rooted fears stem from times were humans lived in places
far more dangerous, with far more potent spiders and snakes.

(Snakes don't even exist here, but legless lizards do, and people are of
course scared of them; that kind of lizard won't even attempt to bite
something as big as a human, and as usual, they are useful animals to have
around).

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tboyd47
It's so interesting how genetics and data science are changing taxonomy.
Instead of biologists classifying species into families and the like based on
observable attributes, now we are seeing computers do the classification with
experts forming theories about why the results turned out a certain way.

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monocasa
For any other HNers that are fascinated by this stuff, I really enjoyed
Barth's Neurobiology of Arachnids.

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vixen99
$100 (bargain price from Amazon) for the paperback is going it a bit.

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monocasa
Huh, yeah. Totally agreed. I picked it up for about $35 for the hardback.

I've got a category of semi-rare books that I'd put this in if I didn't
already have it. The price bots on Amazon, etc. don't really know how to
handle them, so the prices fluctuate quite a bit. I've literally seen a book
drop from $330 to under $10 in a day.

