I’m imagining you knitting a jumper for a spider, now.
Hmm…this spider becoming some sort of spider equivalent to a stray cat…I can see that :P
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It’s going to start leaving tiny dead bugs on the doorstep, but they’ll be too small so no one will ever know. 
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A jumping spider in a jumper?
Though, would a jumper even work that well for an ectotherm? Sure, it would still slow loss of body heat, but would that be of much use without a source of body heat to begin with? Seems a bit telling that endothermy and fur/feathers seem to have evolved in tandum unless I’m missing something(which is entirely possible, I only learned this week that crocodiles are more closely related to birds than they are to other reptiles.
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This is actually something I’ve thought a lot about as part of a writing exercise lol. My own conclusion is clothes would not help retain body heat, and would just slow a freezing process, at best.
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Also, regarding spiders developing a feline habit of adopting humans and presenting dead prey to their humans… Imagine a goliath Bird eater doing this… Though sticking to more typical spider diets and things adjacent, I wonder if there are any spiders that prey on Hercules beetles, giant centipedes, or other large arachnids. You know, disturbingly large spiders that eat other disturbingly large creepy crawlies and the high octane nightmare fuel for anyone with phobias in the arthropod phylum.
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(writes down new IF idea)
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It would even hinder the ectotherm’s heat-absorption, I imagine, insulating its cold body from the warmth-providing surroundings.
Maybe it could sit naked in the sun all day to heat up, then pull on its jumper to preserve that heat and surprise prey in the cold of night?
----What the fang! You’re supposed to be cold and slee… eurghl…nice Santa-sweater by the way, love the red-and-green, really suits you…arghhhh…----
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Main problem with taking macro photos of spiders is that they don’t like to stay put. And if you’re taking photos “in the wild” you can have the additional problem that whatever they’re standing on might not want to stay put either.
Here’s a kind of Oxyopidae (common lynx spiders) with an ant, on the underside of a cucumber leaf in the garden. This was shot using a 105mm Nikkon macro lens (not sure if this specific photo was mine or my spouse’s—it’s from several years ago and we both took a bunch all using the same camera and lens):
Description: A mottled tan and brown lynx spider hanging from the underside of a cucumber leaf and feeding on a black ant just slightly smaller than the spider.
If you look at the photo rolls there’s usually about a dozen green blurs (where the wind blew the leaf right as the photo was taken) for every one with a recognizable spider in it.
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My spouse takes mostly macro photography, and, yes, you sometimes get one good shot for every 15 or 20 because of these and other problems. That said, when a shot turns out, it usually really turns out.
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Ouch, I feel bad for the folks who were doing such photography back in the days of film. With modern storage capacities, even a 95% failure rate to get a decent photo still means each good photo is essentially free and you can just delete all the duds to free up space, but it would super suck to invest in a premium roll of film and only get one or two good pictures out of the whole roll… Plus, with modern digital photography, you know right away whether the shot turns out good and even if one subject doesn’t give you the opportunity to try again, you can just keep looking around for other photo ops… I can imagine the crushing disappointment of some amateur film photographer thinking they got some amazing shots, handing their film rolls over to be developed, building anticipation while they wait for their prints… only for most of the roll to be junk…And how many in that position would know the blurriness is just in the nature of nature photography rather than because they did something wrong?
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Someone sent me a meme that had a spider version of owo so I’m sharing it here.
Behold:
88W88
… because the shape of four eights is eight circles, and the W is the chelicerae lmao.
If I may sprinkle some Unicode in:
°•oOωOo•°
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This is really good and important stuff. Genuinely going to be thinking about 88W88 all day.
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Okay so I’ve had this thought bouncing around in my head for a few days now.
I think people really need to stop explaining spiders as “They’re more scared of you than you are of them”.
Why? Because people stereotypically process fear with violence.
If you imagine a spider exhibiting the fear response of a stereotypical human, you get a spider that charges you, lashes out, and destroys potential competitors and threats to ensure a safe, controlled environment. That would be a terrifying kind of spider.
So I really don’t think that explaining fear within a spider is actually that helpful towards building empathy for a spider. Spiders don’t process fear like humans do, and don’t even perceive humans in the same way that we perceive spiders. Comparing human fear to spider fear isn’t useful.
Here’s something we could say instead: “Spiders see you as a weather event.”
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I’m imaging spiders jousting; just some giant medieval armour for sentient spiders the size of horses, some long sticks of wood, etc.
“Why’re all the spiders putting their webs on stilts?”
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Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time has spiders in armour, but not as far as I know jousting.
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Jousting spiders makes me think of thos spider-centaur things I’m not sure have a commonly accepted name… You know, giant spider legs and spider abdomen with the waist of a human torso attached to the neck of the spider body like how centaurs have a human waist attached to the shoulders of a horse body… and my apologies if I’m getting anatomy wrong, I never took biology classes beyond a college freshman level, needed two tries at part two of the course to get a passing grade, and it was like 15 years ago.
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That sounds heavy metal, lol
Being able the instantly come up with the name of D&D monsters is something that fills me with conflicted emotions, but: drider.
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I like the way you think
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I don’t hate spiders. This is important for my tiny triad!
I dislike it when people interfere with predator/prey relationships. Or more specifically saving any non-endangered from any predator. Like for example you save a deer from a wolf. I also don’t like pointless killing of bugs/animals. The only a handful of creatures that die to my hand are in order of priority Venomous insects, Venomous snakes, Miskito, horse fly, house fly, and wasp/hornets. the House fly because they are too abundant, and the rest because there are kids who would get fired from McDonald’s in my household.
Edit: I accidentally included spiders as insects not arachnids. My apologies.
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