
Do Portia Spiders Have a Mind? (2006) - moyix
http://www.dichotomistic.com/mind_readings_spider%20minds.html
======
intrasight
Is truly humbling that so much "intelligence" can fit in a raisin-sized
animal. I once thought that these tiny brains would soon reveal their secrets
to us. I briefly contributed to the effort - poking microelectrodes into
crayfish neurons and creating 3D EM models. Now I am pretty sure that I won't
live to see much progress. We just don't have the tools to reverse-engineer a
supercomputer the size of a pinhead.

~~~
hyperpallium
600,000 neurons seems small enough to simulate - and microscopes are easily
good enough to discern cells (neurons) and their connections. Though the
weightings between them probably can't be detected.

At least, that's my layman's view... what specific aspects of tools are
actually deficient?

It could be a useful starting point for eventually understanding ourselves. I
expect we'll need to develop hierarchical models for how neurons operate, to
cope with the complexity... perhaps even new pure mathematics.

~~~
biofox
The problem isn't the number of neurons and their connections, but the
complexity and diversity of them.

There are hundreds of signalling molecules and receptors that haven't been
characterised. Some molecules diffuse over long distances, others are taken up
and recycled depending on the local environment. Surrounding non-neuronal
cells alter the ionic and metabolic states of networks, and can physically
block (or sometimes actively transport) neurotransmitters.

Each neuron type has its own response characteristics (activation function)
that can completely change depending on the context. Even different locations
on the same neuron have different receptors and transmitters, and can
alternate between inhibitory or excitatory functions.

To give an example of the difficulty, we've had a complete map of the neural
connectivity of C. elegans for 30 years, which consists of only 302 neurons,
and we still don't know how many of the cells and circuits function.

I think the only solution will be high-throughput phenotyping. Test cell types
and mutants under different circumstances until we have a deep-enough
understand of these systems and their interactions to model them.

It takes humans far too long to do experiments. We need more lab automation.

~~~
whamlastxmas
I wonder if lab automation would be a good topic for the YC Research efforts.

~~~
biofox
I think it would. As things are at the moment, biologists spend most of their
time doing repetitive manual labour.

One of the most promising things I've seen is the Emerald Cloud Lab, but it's
still a long way off from what's needed:

[http://emeraldcloudlab.com/](http://emeraldcloudlab.com/)

~~~
Kliment
Hey, I'd like to talk with you about automating some of that stuff, but
there's no contact info in your profile. My email and IRC contact are in mine
if you'd be willing to get in touch.

------
jplewicke
I think that there's a common thread that underlies the development of
intelligence in both humans and Portia spiders. We both evolved in an
environment where we were at a sensory and physical disadvantage to our prey.
We both relied more on understanding the behavior of our prey in order to
hunt. In the case of early humans, we adopted a style of hunting known as
persistence hunting.

Persistence hunting (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting)
)is a general hunting strategy in which a hunter chases their prey over a very
long distance(15-30 miles). Eventually the prey becomes weak and succumbs to
exhaustion. On its own, that's not very special -- both dogs and hyenas adopt
a very similar hunting strategy. The key difference is that humans lack the
extremely sensitive sensory abilities that are used by other persistence
hunters.

In the absence of such senses, early hominids had to predict where prey would
go and accurately pursue them over very long distances based on very small
amounts of visual evidence. In short, early hominids hunted by simulating the
minds of their prey. If you look at
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o)
(a documentary on persistence hunting), you can watch some Kudu tribesmen
literally simulating where an antelope will go.

It certainly seems to me like lucking into an evolutionary niche where you get
caloric benefits that are directly linked to how well you can simulate the
fairly-complicated minds of your prey is pretty much a recipe for extreme
selective pressure in favor of general intelligence. The story is a little
different in the case of Portia, given that they are apparently at a visual
advantage to their prey. However, I think the examples mentioned in the
article make a strong case that Portia's comparative hunting advantage is in
planning the best attack method based on the behavior of a given type of prey.

~~~
aristus
I think you got your signs reversed. The spider in question has extremely good
vision.

"Jumping spiders already have excellent vision and Portia’s is ten times as
good, making it sharper than most mammals."

~~~
pmelendez
I don't know if the parent post was edited but it does state right now:

"The story is a little different in the case of Portia, given that they are
apparently at a visual advantage to their prey. "

------
mirimir
This is very cool! I remember Portia from Peter Watts' _Echopraxia_.

~~~
ggreer
Speaking of Watts: Five years before _Echopraxia_ , he wrote a blog post on
Portia.[1]

1\. [http://rifters.com/real/2009/01/iterating-towards-
bethlehem....](http://rifters.com/real/2009/01/iterating-towards-
bethlehem.html)

~~~
david-given
Also speaking of Watts, His superb book _Blindsight_ is online:

[http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm](http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm)

 _Echopraxia_ is a loose sequel to it (in fact, I found it disappointing
similar; not that it's in any way a bad book, it's just that it's about the
same themes).

His _Rifters_ trilogy is online as well, but _Blindsight_ is a lot better ---
the first _Rifters_ book is excellent, the middle one is so-so, but I found
the last one to be a dead loss.

------
netcan
To me (as a complete layman), this is the most interesting topic in biology,
the 21st century's origin of species topic. Intelligence in biology.

For species like this spider or octupi where our last common ancestor is so
early, it begs the question is how much of the evolution of these minds is a
product of convergent evolution. That would be a partial answer to one of the
Drake Equation's components.

Biological Intelligence is such a big question and it goes to the core of
discovering what we are.

~~~
jerf
Some sort of middling-high degree of intelligence seems very likely, because
we have it in multiple lines on this planet (octopus, multiple bird lines,
whales and dolphins, etc.). It is less clear that the next step to a
technological intelligence is very popular; I can't prove it but I seriously
doubt all this middling-high intelligence developed in the last ~2 million
years during humanity's ascent. Very likely many of those middling-high
intelligences were around for millions of years before hominids began their
intelligence explosion (with the hominids themselves being another "middling-
high" intelligence for who knows how long before then). It's not out of the
question that many dinosaurs or other things extinct for millions of years
were middling-high intelligence too.

We can't get great data on this, because it is also likely that the first
technological species precludes the _natural_ development of any future one at
least concurrently, and possibly for extended periods of time. (i.e., even if
humanity accidentally designs its replacement, whatever form that may take,
_that_ won't be relevant data for the Drake equation, or we may "pollute" the
genetics of the planet with a lot more intelligence than could ever naturally
develop, causing intelligent species to start popping up every few hundred
thousand years all over the place even if they all kill themselves off if our
most cynical commentators are to be believed).

We do have good reason to believe intelligence is really quite expensive. We
humans pay a _lot_ for it, if you really get into the biology of it. It may be
the case there's a quite significant gap between "middling high" and the
technological intelligence the Drake equation is about, and having only one
sample that said "somebody made it" tells us not much, since we are the
observer observing that fact.

------
fsiefken
If a Portia spider has only 600K of neurons it is within range of simulating
and testing it with current technology, for example the TrueNorth chip has 1
million neuronlike structures (Spaun, Blue Brain project or the TrueNorth
chip)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueNorth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueNorth)

Perhaps it can already be done with off the shelf hardware and software:
[https://www.neuron.yale.edu/phpBB/](https://www.neuron.yale.edu/phpBB/)
[http://www.nengo.ca/](http://www.nengo.ca/) [http://www.nest-
simulator.org/](http://www.nest-simulator.org/)

It all reminds me a bit of the Vernor Vinge SF novel about intelligent
spiders:

"The planet's inhabitants, called "Spiders" by the humans for their
resemblance to arachnids, have reached a stage of technological development
very similar to that of Earth's humans in the early 20th century, although
humans believe that they may once have been capable of space travel."

Is it a coincidence that Spiders and Octopi have 2^3 legs and are more
intelligent then we expected them to be?

~~~
misja111
It's not just the number of neurons that makes brains so complex, it is also
the far larger number of connections. The average brain cell is connected to
1000 up to 10000 other cells. So for 600K neurons the simulation needs to
simulate something between 600 and 6000 million connections.

~~~
LoSboccacc
moreover every connection is not a simple fixed function * transfer weight
either, they have varying activation levels, can be inhibited or self
stimulate and have all sort of behaviors related to fatiguing and the presence
or absence of certain chemicals around them

------
OneTwoFree
Will we ever be able to scan the wiring of this spider's neurons and "run it"
on a computer? That would be amazing, I think. Then we could create virtual
worlds for these virtual spiders and let them evolve, supposedly much faster
than "normal" evolution.

~~~
moptar
Hopefully. There's a project attempting to do that with a simpler animal, a
kind of worm on a couple of Amazon GPU clusters:

[http://www.artificialbrains.com/openworm](http://www.artificialbrains.com/openworm)

------
wozer
> However being so small, there is a trade-off in that Portia can only focus
> its eyes on a tiny spot. It has to build up a picture of the world by
> scanning almost pixel by pixel across the visual scene.

This is fascinating. I wonder if the limited visual focus plays a similar role
as consciousness in higher animals. It enables the brain to work on larger
problems by focusing on one small Problem at a time.

(Of course, consciousness is more than that...)

------
hyperpallium
> The same species of Portia trapped a few hundred miles away doesn’t show any
> evidence of seeing the egg sac.

Spiders aren't social... but this sounds like cultural knowledge, passed on
from parents or peers. Or perhaps acquired over a number of encounters
(especially the given trial and error Portia exhibits).

~~~
pvaldes
mmh... they are social in one moment of its lives that could explain this.
Mother and young have a strong bound for a while. I'm just wildly speculating,
but a nymph spider sit in the abdomen of their mother could learn what to
chase just seeing its mother chasing. "They born with that skill" is a strong
candidate, but not the only possibility here. They need to repeat the
experiment from spiders raised since eggs if not done before.

~~~
MrJagil
Do you know how long Portia nymphs are connected with their mothers? Seems
like a lot of knowledge to gather before they have even had their own feet on
the ground, let alone had their first first solo hunt.

~~~
pvaldes
In Portia labiata the juvenile phases from egg to first instar last from 21-36
days (mean: 27 days). (Hallas, 1987)

------
angelf
Is there any research on whether this local adaptations have a genetic or
epigenetic origin? One would expect it to be purely genetic, but I'd be super-
cool if the Portia had developed some way to transmit learned adaptations to
their descendants.

The reason it's at least plausible is that epigenetics seem to be involved in
the memory formation process
([http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3549063/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3549063/))

------
vivin
This was a very interesting article. Thanks for posting! I have read about the
web-plucking behavior before, but had no idea about its path-finding
abilities.

------
guard-of-terra
> And then there is the realisation that this is a population-specific, not
> species-specific, trait! It is a bit of locally acquired genetic knowledge.

Some human populations "know" how to digest milk, and some don't. Non species-
specific. It's a bit of locally acquired "genetic knowledge" as well.

What's surprising here?

~~~
thaumasiotes
All human populations "know" how to digest milk. We're mammals.

What differs is whether we _stop_ digesting milk, not whether we know how in
the first place.

~~~
guard-of-terra
I don't see how it affects my line of reasoning.

All spiders can see eggs in the fangs of their opponents. What differs is
whether they react to it.

~~~
undersuit
Because humans that can consume milk are actively expressing genes that
process lactose. Those genes are expressed in mammalian young, and adult
humans who are lactose tolerant.

To say that adult lactose digestion is similar to Portia's egg sac spotting
abilities is to say that all spider's have an egg sac spotting gene and it's
only expressed in the Portia species in a specific geographical area.

Maybe, but then we have an issue with the rest of spiders. If spiders have an
egg sac spotting gene, is it inactive during certain times?

Actually you may be onto something, being able to spot an egg sac would be
useful for a male to determine the receptiveness of a female to mating. Maybe
the Portia spiders in the specific area have a mutation so they are always
looking for egg secs, instead of just when a male is looking for a mate.

~~~
guard-of-terra
You're missing my point. My point is that evolution happens in a subset of
whole population. Sometimes it goes so far that a new species are created.

So, different populations of same species are expected to have evolved
different subtle traits.

I don't think that Portia too carry eggs in their fangs. Nothing points to
that as I recall.

~~~
undersuit
You're missing my point, maybe because I veered off into musing on how an egg
sac detection trait could be a gene.

I'm trying to say that the development of what almost looks like a learned
behavior but is possibly a geographically isolated gene is more surprising
than the modification of a gene so that it is expressed past childhood.

We see the latter all the time in other forms if you look at domesticated
animals as we have selected for the cute and cuddly traits for adult animals
that are normally present in infant forms.

------
dharma1
Thanks, super interesting post.

What tools do we currently have to map neural signaling and structure?

Are there ways to automate the measurements on a large scale?

Are we able to feed digitally modeled neural signals mimicking real signals to
live neural structures - ie. feed complex input signals and record the
outputs?

~~~
joshmarlow
Note sure of the state of the art with respect to any of your questions, but
you may find these links interesting:

There's a project to simulate a nematode worm -
[http://www.openworm.org/](http://www.openworm.org/)

A bit more speculative but super interesting - [http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/brain-
emulation-roadmap-report.pdf](http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/brain-emulation-roadmap-
report.pdf)

------
quotha
meta dna might explain how some local portia are able to recognize egg sacks,
and others are not?

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130319091256.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130319091256.htm)

