Imagine trying to hide an entire pair of legs when you’re hanging out with ants
It’s lucky for them ants can’t count. “…seven, eight legs?? Wait a minute!”
The skinwalkers are among us
Bottom left is definitely a spider. I count 8 legs and can see the distinct segmentation of a spider body. Though, really, just dat fat ass gives it away.
… arent they all spiders?
(Besides the leggies & butts, eyes are also an ez clue.)
I think so, too. They all seem to have eight legs, more than two eyes, which don’t look like compound eyes, a cephalothorax/two body segments rather than three, a lack of antennae, etc. It would probably be easier to tell looking at them head-on so we could see their chelicerae.
Edit: turns out the pedipalps are more of a giveaway.
Man, I wish spiders didn’t creep me out so much. They’re very cool, but my ancient lizard brain isn’t having it.
Omg, at least it’s alive in your pic, ty <3.
And yes, we are hardwired for some memetics about spider-looking things, but being amazed by them, understanding them biologically, & perhaps a bit of co-living (about as close to befriending them without them being “a pet” & still independent - you know, just seeing & saying hi to Clara every day, watching the life of a begin with ups & downs) may adapt how the association network in your brainhole is used.
(Just guessing.)No problem!
That’s very accurate. I don’t mind handling tarantulas or furry jumping spiders, but shiny spiders of any kind creep me out. Bonus point for terror if there’s webbing involved. Hobo spiders are probably the worst. They’re so fast and aggressive. I still catch them and take them outside, but it still feels awful. The only exception to the mercy rule is the shower. Shower spiders go down the drain immediately.
Poor clean spiders.
But I get what you are saying, it makes some intuitive sense.
In my case I think I’ve (as a kid) narrowed down the technical memetic part mostly to the very centre-point where the 8 lines end, so basically my brain recognising the legs (starting from the end of the legs) & then seeing how they “end” up in one narrow place (so, relatively to spider leg size, if the sternum looking from the bottom or the end part of prosoma from the top is “too tightly together” or even too perfectly round/octagonal shaped).
(And spiders differ very much in that regard, even the same one in relation to how well fed it is :D.)Why? Idk, but doesn’t feel learned.
(It’s still there, but not the default/I have to think about it more actively.)That I remember (again, as a kid) I was only triggered (differently than described above) by one “too smooth” species, the poor, harmless, misjudged beneficial, cute (well, as all spiders) wasp spiders.
I didn’t harm them but it’s a sad memory for me bcs the smol town (or the whole valley?) I grew up in basically doesn’t have them anymore. Bcs we hate flowers/biodiversity, but love grass & pesticides I guess. I should be glad they were even still around for me to experience them.(No pics bcs you mentioned you only like unshaven butts & legs.)
Kill it with
firewater
They are all spiders, but if it hadn’t said they were all spiders I could have still just looked at that guy with little scrutiny and went “wait a minute…” He looks the least ant-like.
Oh, yeah, true - but I don’t know what species of ants it’s mimicking. Perhaps that’s just how they look too & now we are body-shaming ants for looking too spidery (‘sup, you 6-legged no-neck with that thicc ass’) :D.
It seems like it’s Myrmarachne maxillosa, very snooty thing.
It’s prob mimicking a puppy or something.
Here is one desperately trying to toucha the butt of another:
As for who they are copypastaing:
It probably mimics the Common Spiny Ants of the genus Polyharchis.
Yeah, these ants indeed have a dump truck:
(And these
hornyspiny ants do come in way more spinier flavours, pretty metal.)
I saw in a documental a snake which fools ants, but not to eat these, but to use these as bait for fooling lizards, which are the real prey for the snake.
- The snake buried itself in the sand, leaving only the tail point, imitating a tan of grass
- This attracts the ant
- This in turn attracts the lizard who wants to eat the ant
- End of the lizard
Evolution games
Jumping spiders are anywayvery smart for catching their prey, even without the need to disguise their aspect, analyzing the situation and adjust their strategy.
Spider-Ant
Spider-Ant
Does whatever a spider canwhatever a spider c’ant
Except jump
Cause it would be sus
Among ants be like ‘Did Carl just casually jump 20 stories high like it was nothing??’
Can he jump from a branch?
No he can’t, he is an ant
Look out, he is a Spider-Ant!
Strange, she can’t fall from a branch either. Whenever she does, she always seems to catch herself with spider web…
Ant-spider, surely?
Evolution to spiders: We’ve decided to combine your head and thorax.
Some jumping spiders: Nah
Lmao, giraffe spiders!
Are ants so visual? I guess so, or there wouldn’t be enough advantage for these guys to develop. I thought they went purely by sensing pheromones.
Maybe it isn’t just fooling ants?
Don’t know the advantage to fooling everything else but they are convincing. Worked in a warehouse that had a bunch of the red ones one summer. Everybody thought there was an ant problem but they seemed off to me. Firstly, they were never in groups, you’d only find lone ones wandering. Secondly, they walked like ants but held their “antennae” strangely. Lastly, when knocking one off a box I discovered they have a tether thread.
Ants are rarely visual, but I’m also struggling to figure out which predator this is meant to dissuade.
The Wikipedia page on ant mimicry is full of fun facts, but the relevant bits:
Jumping spiders in the genus Myrmarachne are Batesian mimics
Batesian mimics lack strong defences of their own, and make use of their resemblance to a well-defended model, in this case ants, to avoid being attacked by their predators.
Studies on this genus have revealed that the major selection force is the avoidance of ants by predators such as spider wasps and other larger jumping spiders.
But also (not specific to Myrmarachne):
Ant mimics can be myrmecophilous, with the mimics and their ant models living commensally together. In the case of ants, the mimic is an inquiline in the ants’ nest. Such mimics may in addition be Batesian or aggressive (predator) mimics. To overcome ants’ powerful defences, mimics may imitate ants chemically with ant-like pheromones, visually, or by imitating an ant’s surface microstructure to defeat the ants’ tactile inspections.
Thats actually wild, they can smell like ants and are convincing enough to pass a physical ant patdown. Crazy.
Consider: the goal isn’t for predators to be fooled, but prey.
Lots of things consider ants totally harmless, like aphids that gets farmed and stuff. Perhaps it’s an adaptation to throw those things off.
Aphids are borderline mindless, their chief strategy is simply breeding more aphids. I’ve gleefully spectated ladybugs devouring dozens of aphids, and not a single one responded in any way. Tiny dead idiots.
You might be on the right track, but I’m still struggling.
Honestly was just the first example I could come up with, but the fact remains that a lot of things do consider ants to be harmless because they aren’t, like, hunting those things. Especially other small arthropods.
I’m sure there are some hunting ant species (like the 200 army ant species), but most of them aren’t.
Ah, so these spiders look like ants to fool the aphids that ants farm. Similar to how something that looked a lot like a human might fool cows and sheep into following them away to be eaten.
I would guess it’s to fool their prey.
I could be violet sky
The crab of the insect world?
Arthropods, man. They have two ideals and everything goes toward them.
impossible arthropod beauty standards need to be stopped!
That gave me a good chortle. Thanks for making my dumb thought funnier 😊
So in addition to crabification, we also have antification. Evolution really just found an energy minima at eight legs, huh?
It’s more that the lobster plan (long body) is really quite good in many niches, but the crab plan (wide body, no exposed tail) works better in more productive ecosystems that have more predators. So anything lobster shaped coming up from the deep mud will have to reduce its tail or get sniped by a fish
Carcinisation is a bit more of an adaption to environment (convergent evolution into same-ish shape for the by-chanceb best utility of it … ie a perfect body) vs niche mimicry which is in relation to another specific species (ie some else’s body).
Proper ants only have 6 legs, though. But yeah, these spiders-turned-to-ants would have 8 legs.
Well, and crabs technically have 10 legs, with their foremost pair typically equipped with pincers. 🙃
Great info, even the funny they-don’t-jump part, def looks like they don’t have the jumping hydraulics >!(but I’m always sad to see dead spiders)!<.
