dreaming spiders

August 8, 2022 3:22 PM

Spiders Seem to Have REM-like Sleep and May Even Dream "Jumping spiders discovered sleeping suspended on a silk line experience muscle twitches and eye movements similar to the REM sleep phase associated with dreaming in humans. Scientists revealed the eye movements by recording the sleep of baby spiders with translucent exoskeletons, revealing movement of the tubes that control the position of their retinas inside their heads."
posted by dhruva (18 comments total)

I've had nightmares about debugging websites too.
posted by adept256 at 3:46 PM on August 8, 2022 [8 favorites]

So…. Do they dream of humans crawling over them while they sleep?
posted by njohnson23 at 4:24 PM on August 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

and when they have wet dreams, is that when they remain perched in the corner of your shower, loitering for a day or two + waiting to live or die based on the giant's whim ?
posted by clandestiny's child at 4:26 PM on August 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

“average spider eats 3 persons a year" factoid actualy just statistical error. average spider eats 0 persons per year. Persons Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
posted by BungaDunga at 4:36 PM on August 8, 2022 [10 favorites]

Of course! Be nice to our kind :)

/╲/\ºo;88;oº/\╱\
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:45 PM on August 8, 2022 [20 favorites]

Jumping spiders are basically tiny cats. I love them.
posted by scruss at 5:04 PM on August 8, 2022 [12 favorites]

The viral marketing for the new Sandman series is excellent!

So…. Do they dream of humans crawling over them while they sleep?

They’re having nightmares about humans turning them into necrobotic gripping claws.
posted by ejs at 5:52 PM on August 8, 2022 [7 favorites]

You mean I have to worry about them TWITCHING now?!
posted by prismatic7 at 6:02 PM on August 8, 2022

"well, I was gonna scare my pet spiders with these 3d printed models of even scarier spiders, but then I saw something interesting with my night-vision camera, so now I want to find out if spiders dream"
posted by Gerald Bostock at 6:12 PM on August 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Jumping spiders are basically tiny cats. I love them.
Killin mice
Askin for skritches
posted by Mister Moofoo at 6:15 PM on August 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

“Even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.”
posted by Countess Elena at 7:41 PM on August 8, 2022

Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced life form is ....zzzzzzzz.
posted by storybored at 9:15 PM on August 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Little spider
Spide-ing sadly
In the webly
Light of leaves!
What’s inside a
Spide’s mentadly
Makes its hebly
Full of grieves?

(Mervyn Peake)
posted by Phanx at 2:06 AM on August 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

Jumping spiders are basically tiny cats.

Some burrowing spiders keep tiny cats frog pets for one of the same reasons humans do: to eat vermin.

There is a delightful photoset of a burrowing spider family with their pet frog.
posted by Mitheral at 5:34 AM on August 9, 2022 [8 favorites]

Paging Adrian Tchaikovsky.
posted by doctornemo at 8:22 AM on August 9, 2022

Always upvote jumping spiders!

Here’s a few more interesting things about how Salticidae see (and are seen):
• Neurophysiological analysis of vision in a jumping spider. (Cornell video)
• Close-Up Video of Transparent Jumping Spider Captures Its Tube-Like Eyes Moving. (YouTube)
• When a jumping spider’s two large eyes turn black, it’s looking directly at you. (YouTube)
• See the world through a jumping spider’s eyes — and other senses. (ScienceNewsExplores)
• Jumping spiders can identify biological motion. (Harvard study)
• How jumping spiders measure distance to prey. (European Space Agency study)
• Jumping spiders use body language to hide from ants. (Harvard study)
• Peacock spiders, dance for your life! (BBC video)
posted by cenoxo at 9:29 PM on August 11, 2022 [2 favorites]

Jumping spiders are basically tiny cats.

Make that tiny Tiger cats, if you please!
posted by cenoxo at 5:02 AM on August 12, 2022

Here's a decent commentary on the study and its implications "Studying something as strange as sleep or dreaming benefits from new technologies, new insights, and new study systems. To appreciate its biological relevance, more wild animals observed in the wild and studied under naturalistic conditions are key. The true triumph of the study of R€oßleret al. (5) is in experimentally investigating an obscure but long-known natural phenomenon (retinal movement in spiders) to lend insight to one of science’s great mysteries (the nature of REM sleep) (16). This fundamental insight is the hallmark of great comparative biology, and recognizing and empirically investigating something as quirky as episodes of jumping spiders’ retinal movements during the brief window within which they are visible may cultivate or catalyze fertile new directions for REM research and our understanding of sleep and dreaming"
posted by dhruva at 10:35 AM on August 12, 2022 [1 favorite]