A Break From The Alex Smith Drama: Urbanization Is Supersizing Spiders

[listopencil]

Originally Posted by Bowser

**** this thread. **** listo. **** everything.

Whatever I can do to help my Chiefs fan buddies during their hour of need.

[Frazod]

Originally Posted by Bowser

**** this thread. **** listo. **** everything.

THISTHISTHIS

[Fish]

Woooo! Spiders!

[rockymtnchief]

Too fat-Omaha

[listopencil]

More spidery stuff:



Could Spider Silk Stop a Moving Train?

Spider-Man’s silk could have stopped a moving train—if his silk resembled the stuff produced by the Darwin’s bark spider, which lives in Madagascar and builds enormous 80-foot wide webs.

A team from the University of Leicester set out to test the reality of this hypothetical hero move from the second Spider-Man movie, Wired reports:

First, the team calculated how much four R160 New York City subway cars — packed with a total of 984 people — would weigh (about 200,000 kilograms, or roughly 10 Atlas V rockets). Then, they calculated how fast the train was going (24 meters per second, or about 53 miles per hour) and how much resistance the track would have offered as it charged forward (negligible). From there, they could work out how much force the webbing would have needed to exert upon the train to stop it: about 300,000 Newtons, or about 12 times the amount of force exerted by a large American alligator as its jaws snap shut.

Figures in hand, the team considered the way trains, webs and anchor buildings would interact geometrically and how much tensile strength a line of web would need in order to hold up a train without snapping.

After crunching the numbers, they found that Spider-Man could indeed have saved that train from plummeting off the track. Spiders such as the Darwin’s black spider produce silk with strength values of 1.5 to 12 gigapascals. Scale those values to a human-sized spindle of silk and web, and the calculations add up to amazing, train-stopping abilities.

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smar...-moving-train/

[Mr. Laz]

Hate spiders


Spiders and sharks creep me the **** out, since i live in Kansas i don't have to worry about sharks except on vacation.

[Frazod]

Originally Posted by Mr. Laz

Hate spiders


Spiders and sharks creep me the **** out, since i like in Kansas i don't have to worry about sharks except on vacation.

**** SHARKS TOO

DAMN YOU SPIELBERG

[listopencil]

OK, now this is freaking me the **** out. I'm going to stop looking at spider shit on the Smithsonian website for a bit:

Spider Builds Fake Spider Decoy

Deep in the Peruvian Amazon, a spider is at work building an elaborate, fake decoy of itself. In its web, it busily goes to working crafting its doppelgänger out of leaves, debris and dead prey insects, including multiple spidery legs, a head and abdomen, Wired reports.

The new spider, thought to be a member of the genus Cyclosa, might build these decoys as part of a defense mechanism to confuse or distract predators. Spiders already make impressive geometric webs, scientists reason, so building other designs isn’t such a leap.

Researchers exploring a floodplain in the forest first learned of the spider when the spotted what they thought was a dead spider caught in a web. It looked flaky, writes Wired, like a fungus-covered arthropod corpse. But the would-be corpse began twitching, and then the researchers noticed a second, smaller spider about an inch above the decoy, shaking her web. The researchers said it “blew their minds.”

Arachnologists soon confirmed that the finding was unique, though more field observations will be needed before the specimen can be confirmed as a new species to science. Other members of Cyclosa are known for building decoys, but those already known to science tend to be clumpy and not nearly as anatomically precise as these examples.

So far, the research team has found around 25 of the clever little spiders. They have no idea if the species is locally restricted or found for miles within the forest. For now, however, the spider mission is on hold. The researchers lack the necessary permits to collect more animals, so until that paperwork comes through in January, arachnologists will be holding their breath.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by listopencil

OK, now this is freaking me the **** out. I'm going to stop looking at spider shit on the Smithsonian website for a bit:

Spider Builds Fake Spider Decoy

Deep in the Peruvian Amazon, a spider is at work building an elaborate, fake decoy of itself. In its web, it busily goes to working crafting its doppelgänger out of leaves, debris and dead prey insects, including multiple spidery legs, a head and abdomen, Wired reports.

The new spider, thought to be a member of the genus Cyclosa, might build these decoys as part of a defense mechanism to confuse or distract predators. Spiders already make impressive geometric webs, scientists reason, so building other designs isn’t such a leap.

Researchers exploring a floodplain in the forest first learned of the spider when the spotted what they thought was a dead spider caught in a web. It looked flaky, writes Wired, like a fungus-covered arthropod corpse. But the would-be corpse began twitching, and then the researchers noticed a second, smaller spider about an inch above the decoy, shaking her web. The researchers said it “blew their minds.”

Arachnologists soon confirmed that the finding was unique, though more field observations will be needed before the specimen can be confirmed as a new species to science. Other members of Cyclosa are known for building decoys, but those already known to science tend to be clumpy and not nearly as anatomically precise as these examples.

So far, the research team has found around 25 of the clever little spiders. They have no idea if the species is locally restricted or found for miles within the forest. For now, however, the spider mission is on hold. The researchers lack the necessary permits to collect more animals, so until that paperwork comes through in January, arachnologists will be holding their breath.

It's just a matter of time before they start building decoy supermodels, and then they'll supplant us as the earth's dominant species.

[listopencil]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

It's just a matter of time before they start building decoy supermodels, and then they'll supplant us as the earth's dominant species.

The decoy in the picture has a pretty smile.

[KCrockaholic]

Whyyyy do we need to talk about spiders? Seriously. Spring is just around the corner, which means it'll be spider haven soon. I'm already terrified.

My biggest fear in life is seriously spiders. Doesn't even matter how small it is.

[listopencil]

Originally Posted by KCrockaholic

Whyyyy do we need to talk about spiders? Seriously. Spring is just around the corner, which means it'll be spider haven soon. I'm already terrified.

My biggest fear in life is seriously spiders. Doesn't even matter how small it is.

Oh, yeah. It's definitely spider time.

[Mr. Laz]

the way the look
the way the move
the shooting thread out their ass
the creepy ass pinchers in the front that bite
the way their web gets all stuck on you if you move through it


*shiver*


nasty ass shit

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Mr. Laz

the way the look
the way the move
the shooting thread out their ass
the creepy ass pinchers in the front that bite
the way their web gets all stuck on you if you move through it


*shiver*


nasty ass shit

my best dance moves come when I accidentally walk through a spider web.