#selfship week

Viewing of the live feed from the trail camera showed that when Specimen 10K0 comes back from his hunting, he places the foraged food brought back in a small carved out hole covered with large leaves. Hunted game gets dragged into the center of the burrow, next to a large pile of grasses, leaves, fur and feathers. We have identified this pile as a nest. Collected water is kept in a large stone bowl which looks to have been naturally eroded. Specimen 10K0 uses an old metal tin, likely litter from hikers or campers, to collect the water and bring it back.

When within the burrow, Specimen 10K0 will often vocalize. Most vocalizations are a high pitched chirp or squeak, and he will look around after, as if looking for something to respond. Other vocalizations include low clicking noises and very rarely, hissing. He will also occasionally rub his wings together which will make a muted tapping noise, but it is unclear whether the noise is simply a byproduct of the action, or if there is any deeper meaning to it.

Other behaviors within the burrow include a type of movement we have elected to call ‘circling’, where Specimen 10K0 will make a full perimeter check of the nest, to the entrance of the burrow and then back around the nest again, as if looking for something. Refurbishing of the nest also occurs. We try to avoid humanizing Specimen 10K0 as best as we can in our observation of him, but there’s no other way to rationalize the amount of time spent on rearranging the nest components other than just plain fussiness. He gets annoyed with the nest and rearranges it many times, as if he’s never satisfied with it.

He’s intelligent, that much is clear.

> Datalog Entry; May 19th, Midspring. 2:13 PM.

After overnight observation of the live feed, much of Specimen 10K0’s behavior makes more sense. Last night, at 12:58 AM, there was a noticeable change in Specimen 10K0’s behavior, his antennae vibrated against each other and made a sound similar to purring and he moved to finally lay down in the nest, of which then a very small creature made its way on top of Specimen 10K0’s torso and buried itself into the fur there. Specimen 10K0 was noticeably gentle towards the creature, cupping his hand around it and moving slowly. It is difficult to tell on the trail camera but the creature looked to be spider-like in nature, with what appeared to be eight legs, a round abdomen and carapace, but had a longer torso like structure where the chelicerae of a normal tarantula would be. We’ve allowed the lab tech to decide the temporary name for the creature until we make an official one. For now, the creature’s being called “Bitsy”.

Specimen 10K0 treats Bitsy very softly, something we hadn’t seen him do with other animals. He moves around carefully and looks to see where Bitsy is when moving objects around. Specimen 10K0 has also been observed giving small pieces of meat to Bitsy. We are unclear about the nature of this relationship, whether it is symbiotic in nature or if Specimen 10K0 is intelligent enough to view Bitsy as a pet. We plan to continue monitoring Specimen 10K0’s behavior through the trail cam for a few more days before the next field rotation of researchers.

> Datalog Entry; May 23st, Midspring. 5:02 PM.

The nickname “Bitsy” has stuck around even after the official christening of the small spider creature’s tag, S41. Observation of Bitsy has shown that it too is highly intelligent, comparable to Specimen 10K0 at the very least. It is able to use rudimentary tools in the form of twigs, leaves, and acorn caps. We observed Bitsy scooping water out of the basin with an acorn cap and drink from it like a cup. We have also concluded that Specimen 10K0 does not view Bitsy as a pet. The two are some type of bonded pair, likely a mated pair despite the glaring differences in species and size. Specimen 10K0 and Bitsy are able to communicate between each other, as we’ve seen Specimen 10K0 vocalize directly to Bitsy, who will in turn take actions that make Specimen 10K0 pleased, qualified by the antennae purring. There is evidence that Bitsy communicates back via vocalization or other possibly hormonal responses, but either the trail cam is unable to pick up the frequencies or is it hormonal responses of which we cannot quantify without getting closer which would disturb the subject animals.

More observation is needed of these two before anything truly definitive can be asserted, but the evidence is certainly there. Today having been the last day for this groups’ observations, we elected to collect a small amount of mottled fur and a few of Specimen 10K0’s shedded wing scales from the environment to further research in the lab when we get back. As the rest of this research team begins packing up to get ready for the next rotation, there’s a bittersweetness to it all. We’ve all grown attached to these two despite our best efforts not to. We hope the next observation team treats them just as well.

“Really now?” Tomura’s raspy voice was dripping with sarcasm but the small uptick of the corners of his dry lips betrayed his true emotions. Sal hummed wordlessly. “Do you really believe in that kinda crap?”

Sal scrunched their face in thought for a moment before ultimately tilting their head and shrugging their shoulders in a noncommittal ‘I don’t know’, then picking up their phone again to begin typing their next sentence. Tomura watched them patiently, shifting one of his feet from the metal footrest under his own seat to Sal’s and starting to very lightly spin their stool as he waited. After a minute, the robotic voice sounded again. “I’m not sure. Maybe. It’s a nice thought,” as the voice spoke, Sal gained a mischievous expression. “There’s definitely one positive thing about it if it’s real.”

Tomura lifted his chin off his fist, tilting his head in curiosity. “Yeah? And what’s that?”

Sal didn’t have to type their next phrase, having already had it loaded up in their text to speech app, they simply sat the phone down and pressed for the response to sound off. “At least your past life’s lover had amazing taste.” 

Tomura had barely enough time to make a small sound of questioning before Sal leaned over and delivered a kiss right to his mole just under his lip. Tomura blinked, face flushing with heat as affection swelled thickly in his chest.