My (recently deceased) pet jumper really made me grasp that most animal life on Earth has a sense of self and desires beyond basic survival.
I mean, I knew these things as concepts before, some old study decades ago concluded that earthworms have characteristics of consciousness, if not full blown consciousness and self awareness, but there is a difference between reading about it, and experiencing it firsthand.
My spider absolutely loved sunsets. She had a particular spot in her enclosure that she would sit on, and watch the sunset every day. No reason for it beyond she liked to see it. Driven by purely biological needs, jumpers will either be hunting, hiding, or looking for a mate, but they exhibit “recreational” activities.
You can kind of communicate with a jumping spider too. They wiggle their chelicerae to communicate visually. I could put my fingers up near my mouth, and mimic the movements my spider would do. After a few repetitions, she would start to mimic me. I don’t thing any grand concepts were conveyed, but I’m pretty sure she was recognizing mimicry from something that was not a spider.
They’re really smart, and each one has their own personality, problem is, they don’t live very long. Her last day was a hard day to say the least.
They are absolutely fascinating. Sure, I’m certain a lot of videos ham it up a bit because of the way they look around and do certain things but generally animals with that much visual acuity have a lot of processing power to deal with the info so its not a far stretch at all to imagine there is something more to their intelligence.
Spiders in the genus Portia show behaviour which is really fascinating, not only do they use their eyes to actively hunt but they ‘plan’ attack routes - they can see their prey, plan a route to get closer, which involves breaking line of sight for extended periods yet still remember where to go and where the prey was. They also exhibit strong learning traits and pattern recognition. Absolutely fascinating, and adorable, things. I really want to get a pet jumping spider, one of the big ones.
The only other spiders I know of who do anything similar are tarantula who I will note have a proto-brain but even they seem to be a bit more instinctual. Pretty neat that the little jumpers seem to be the smarter ones, either that or tarantula are simply far more cautious.
We have a ladle meant to hold spoons on the stove while they’re not being used to stir. We had a jumping spider appear in it once… which means we didn’t use that for weeks. Only after we didn’t see it move for days did we realize he had died. Loved that lil guy. Now we can set our spoons down again, though.
Most spiders just hang out in a web. But jumping spiders…it seems like there’s something going on in there. Like they’re figuring something out.
My (recently deceased) pet jumper really made me grasp that most animal life on Earth has a sense of self and desires beyond basic survival.
I mean, I knew these things as concepts before, some old study decades ago concluded that earthworms have characteristics of consciousness, if not full blown consciousness and self awareness, but there is a difference between reading about it, and experiencing it firsthand.
My spider absolutely loved sunsets. She had a particular spot in her enclosure that she would sit on, and watch the sunset every day. No reason for it beyond she liked to see it. Driven by purely biological needs, jumpers will either be hunting, hiding, or looking for a mate, but they exhibit “recreational” activities.
You can kind of communicate with a jumping spider too. They wiggle their chelicerae to communicate visually. I could put my fingers up near my mouth, and mimic the movements my spider would do. After a few repetitions, she would start to mimic me. I don’t thing any grand concepts were conveyed, but I’m pretty sure she was recognizing mimicry from something that was not a spider.
They’re really smart, and each one has their own personality, problem is, they don’t live very long. Her last day was a hard day to say the least.
They are absolutely fascinating. Sure, I’m certain a lot of videos ham it up a bit because of the way they look around and do certain things but generally animals with that much visual acuity have a lot of processing power to deal with the info so its not a far stretch at all to imagine there is something more to their intelligence.
Spiders in the genus Portia show behaviour which is really fascinating, not only do they use their eyes to actively hunt but they ‘plan’ attack routes - they can see their prey, plan a route to get closer, which involves breaking line of sight for extended periods yet still remember where to go and where the prey was. They also exhibit strong learning traits and pattern recognition. Absolutely fascinating, and adorable, things. I really want to get a pet jumping spider, one of the big ones.
The only other spiders I know of who do anything similar are tarantula who I will note have a proto-brain but even they seem to be a bit more instinctual. Pretty neat that the little jumpers seem to be the smarter ones, either that or tarantula are simply far more cautious.
The are definitely figuring stuff out!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDtlvZGmHYk
We have a ladle meant to hold spoons on the stove while they’re not being used to stir. We had a jumping spider appear in it once… which means we didn’t use that for weeks. Only after we didn’t see it move for days did we realize he had died. Loved that lil guy. Now we can set our spoons down again, though.