tho
ok, it's been a long while...
ok, it's been a long while since any of y'all posted this stuff, but i found this page through Google and others might too...
first of all, these aren't really spiders... they are arachnids, which means they're in the same 'class' as spiders and scorpions (eight legs etc.), and in some places folks call them camel spiders or sun spiders, but they aren't spiders... their scientific-sounding name varies too, but most call them solifugids (some say solifugid singular, solifugae plural)
i'm only taking the time to correct this because this is one of my favorite critters...
look at those jaws... they were the inspiration for the aliens in the movie Predator... these critters have powerful jaws which can move in multiple directions, thus enabling them to grab on with their pincers and literally tear things apart... personally i nominate them to be the model for land-roving robots rather than ants or spiders which others seem to favor...
seriously, i studied these critters as models for robots when i was a grad student in computer science... i started studying spiders but found that as a species their whole evolution centered around their silk-spinning ability - or lack thereof, as in the case of the wolf spiders who seem like another nice candidate for robotic model, but they lack the superior grappling capability of the solifugids...
when i studied these critters (a long time ago), i read stories of soldiers (probably Brits) in the middle-east desert who would throw scorpions in with their pet solifugids and watch the solifugids literally rip the scorpions a new one... sorry, american slang... in a stand-up fight against scorpions, the solifugids would rip their poisonous opponent to shreds and then devour them... got to admire that
as noted by others here and elsewhere, solifugids are not poisonous... they are not the flesh-eating spiders of the desert... there really are flesh-eating spiders in the desert that numb their victims' flesh and then proceed to gnaw on them... very nasty if you're sleeping and they choose to eat your eyeball (*shudder*)... but the real flesh-eating spiders are pretty little blue things, very colorful, not the nightmarish vision as seen in the pictures here...
be sure to see the Wikipedia articles on: Solifugae and Arachnid
as a small note of scientific interest (from the Wiki), there are 900 species of solifugids, 2,000 species of scorpions, and 40,000 species of spiders... that silk-spinning trick has been a big winner, evolutionarily-speaking... i still favor the solifugids, though they are the stuff my nightmares are made of...
(side note: Wiki, as of this posting, is conflicted in that Arachnid article over the number of species of mites and ticks... in one place it notes 30,000 species of mites and ticks, closely followed thereafter with an estimate of 50,000 known, possibly a million total species... got to love Wiki... it's all almost true, almost all of it)
ok, it's been a long while since any of y'all posted this stuff, but i found this page through Google and others might too...
first of all, these aren't really spiders... they are arachnids, which means they're in the same 'class' as spiders and scorpions (eight legs etc.), and in some places folks call them camel spiders or sun spiders, but they aren't spiders... their scientific-sounding name varies too, but most call them solifugids (some say solifugid singular, solifugae plural)
i'm only taking the time to correct this because this is one of my favorite critters...
look at those jaws... they were the inspiration for the aliens in the movie Predator... these critters have powerful jaws which can move in multiple directions, thus enabling them to grab on with their pincers and literally tear things apart... personally i nominate them to be the model for land-roving robots rather than ants or spiders which others seem to favor...
seriously, i studied these critters as models for robots when i was a grad student in computer science... i started studying spiders but found that as a species their whole evolution centered around their silk-spinning ability - or lack thereof, as in the case of the wolf spiders who seem like another nice candidate for robotic model, but they lack the superior grappling capability of the solifugids...
when i studied these critters (a long time ago), i read stories of soldiers (probably Brits) in the middle-east desert who would throw scorpions in with their pet solifugids and watch the solifugids literally rip the scorpions a new one... sorry, american slang... in a stand-up fight against scorpions, the solifugids would rip their poisonous opponent to shreds and then devour them... got to admire that
as noted by others here and elsewhere, solifugids are not poisonous... they are not the flesh-eating spiders of the desert... there really are flesh-eating spiders in the desert that numb their victims' flesh and then proceed to gnaw on them... very nasty if you're sleeping and they choose to eat your eyeball (*shudder*)... but the real flesh-eating spiders are pretty little blue things, very colorful, not the nightmarish vision as seen in the pictures here...
be sure to see the Wikipedia articles on: Solifugae and Arachnid
as a small note of scientific interest (from the Wiki), there are 900 species of solifugids, 2,000 species of scorpions, and 40,000 species of spiders... that silk-spinning trick has been a big winner, evolutionarily-speaking... i still favor the solifugids, though they are the stuff my nightmares are made of...
(side note: Wiki, as of this posting, is conflicted in that Arachnid article over the number of species of mites and ticks... in one place it notes 30,000 species of mites and ticks, closely followed thereafter with an estimate of 50,000 known, possibly a million total species... got to love Wiki... it's all almost true, almost all of it)
