
Scientists discover spider species that feeds its young milk - YeGoblynQueenne
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/29/scientists-discover-spider-species-that-feeds-its-young-milk
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mchannon
My questions- how many spiders does it take to make a gallon a day, how would
one mechanize and automate the milking process, and how does their milk taste?

Once you get past the squeamishness of it, if it tastes good, is non-toxic,
and can become cheese and other dairy products, a large part of our ecological
footprint might be reduced. It can't be anywhere near as disruptive to the
ecosystem as modern cattle.

Jumping spiders are carnivorous, and eat ants and other spiders. I'd imagine
things that we currently can't add to our food chain, like compostable waste,
trees, and forest understory, could underpin the diet of the 22nd century.

We could even feed spider milk to cows.

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jf-
I don’t think you realistically can milk a spider.

...another sentence I never thought I’d say.

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amelius
Can't we engineer the spiders to grow bigger?

Or transplant the milk-gene to, say, tarantulas?

(I'm not a biologist, so no idea if these are good ideas or even make sense)

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EGreg
What’s this desire to treat animals as just expendable biological machines as
soon as you figure out they can secrete a substance you like?

What about the consequences affecting the animals themselves from all those
fattening antibiotics, being chained up or whatever?

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vibrato
It’s called being a human. We are intelligent apex predators who exploit
everything we possibly can.

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YeGoblynQueenne
For the record, we're not the only species who farms other animals. E.g.
carpenter ants famously farm aphids
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_ant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_ant)).

And of course our skill at exploiting other animals for sustenance is nothing
compared to that of parasites.

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EGreg
Honeypot ants farm their own, interesting.

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notyouravgdoge
> The observations focused on a species of jumping spider, normally found in
> Taiwan

Does the species have a name? I'd like to read more about this spider but I
don't know what to search for.

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avip
Toxeus magnus

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tomcam
I am so ready for a huge mug of spider milk and and a plate brimming with
dessicated flies right about now!

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vbuwivbiu
that makes them mammals!

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Retric
Several non mammals produce milk like substances for their young.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_milk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_milk)
includes antibodies, protean, and fat.

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denisw
Taxonomies seem to be just as problematic in biology as in object-oriented
programming. :)

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IgorPartola
Worse. In OOP you can at least mostly see where the thing comes from. In
biology, evolution doesn’t readily provide the source code. It’d be like
trying to name a class that inherits from a chain of obfuscated machine code
snippets, some of which you can no longer see.

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starpilot
11 hours after posting, there are only two top-level comments. Interesting.

