#propheciesandmeltdowns

Evil Disco

!! That’s awesome! Aye, spiders are so cool to observe, I sat and watched one on my sister’s front porch the other day. It was trying to build its web and got pissed off every time the wind blew it around.

I’ve got some Arachnophobia Abatement facts!

Spiders running towards you isn’t an act of aggression, they don’t recognize All Of You as being the same entity, much less the thing they are thinking is a threat, because you’re so big to them; they’re running towards you to hide, thinking you’re a rock or a tree or something. An Actual Threat Display is when the spider rears its front legs up into the air and shows its fangs!

Spiders vastly prefer to run away instead of attack, because fighting and producing venom, etc., costs calories, it’s taxing. They really don’t want to bite you -- they’ll usually only do it if you press on them and make them think they’re about to get squashed. From what I’ve seen of tarantulas specifically, even after doing the Threat Pose they would much rather slap something to try to scare it off before actually giving it a nip.

Most spiders’ venom isn’t dangerous to humans! Most of the time a chomp will either feel like nothing, or no worse than a bee sting. Only a few species have medically-significant bites, and those can all be treated afaik.

In fact, most smaller spiders’ fangs actually can’t pierce human skin! They’re too tiny/flimsy.

Spiders are very clean! I used to own a tarantula, and it would groom itself almost like a cat, and it would ball up “trash” [like leftover bits of dead crickets, or parts of its own molts] in webbing and chuck it out of its den. The “trash bags” were super easy to pick up with the tweezers and throw away.

Jumping spiders are very intelligent! They have some fascinating planning and problem-solving skills, and they like, look at you. They will watch you watching them, it’s very cute.

A lot of Spider Fear is greatly agitated by how quickly spiders move, I think -- it’s startling. Watching videos of them moving more slowly, or observing them IRL if you’re up for it, lets you examine their body language more closely [without being physically close if you don’t want to be] and better understand why they move the way they move, so it’s less surprising.

And I’ll put it under a cut, but this is a really cool group of spider species! Their abdomens are covered in reflective plates like a disco ball, and they can even move those plates around a little iirc.

Thwaitesia sp., the Mirror Spiders: