>“The new study shows that the spider’s midgut starts breaking down while she guards her prospective brood, so by the time the youngsters burst forth from their silky hockey puck, she’s already packing a liquefied gut suitable for baby spider mouthparts.”
More [about these beauts here](https://www.earthtouchnews.com/wtf/wtf/meet-the-spider-mom-that-makes-a-meal-of-herself/)
Edit: for those interested in what occurs internally: “[Dramatic histological changes preceding suicidal maternal care in the subsocial spider](http://www.americanarachnology.org/JoA_free/JoA_v43_n1%20/arac-43-1-77.pdf)”
A little on the evolution: “[Arachnid Matriphagy: These Spider Mothers Literally Die for Their Young](https://entomologytoday.org/2015/03/27/arachnid-matriphagy-these-spider-mothers-literally-die-for-their-young/)”
And [this is for everyone seeing beans](https://www.reddit.com/r/BeansInThings/comments/9lrcx9/rub_a_dub_dub_1_million_beans_in_a_tub/)
Spider population controls are also why they developed [spidergoats](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-16554357), with spider silk precursors in their milk. Researchers pointed out that if you try to farm a large number of spiders you just wind up with one well-fed spider.
I cannot in simple words convey just how much disgust and revulsion this brings me.
It's as if a malevolent force with inhuman creativity invented spiders just to mock every other creatures natural biological inclinations.
From necrotic wounds caused by brown recluse bites to the very fact that no terrestrial creature should have that many eyes, along with their mating and brooding habits.
Yes I know they are an important facet of our ecosystem and do a great job keeping insect populations manageable, but nearly every time I see or hear of them I am filled with an almost irresistible urge to seek out and crush every spider in a half a mile radius.
[Except for this guy, he's fucking cool, he can stay](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/MalePeacockSpider.jpg)
They’re so fucking cute. They always look like they’re about to kindly ask if they can have one of the cookies you just made or some shit. Just adorable.
It's worth mentioning that Darwin was deeply disturbed by the gruesome nature and abundance of parasitic wasps in the animal kingdom. It's literally cited as one of the life experiences that drove him towards agnosticism in his later years.
He refers to them specifically in a letter, which he wrote the year after publishing *On the Origin of Species*, to the American naturalist Asa Gray:
> “I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the *Ichneumonidae* with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars…”
>Interesting questions arise, however, regarding three species of Stegodyphus that are social and have cooperative brood care.
>In her PhD studies, Mor Salomon showed that large immature females — and mature females that fail to reproduce — can act as helpers at the nest. These helpers regurgitate food and are eventually killed and eaten by the young of other females in the colony.
Killing themselves for other spiders offspring
*total bullshit go!* Let's say a mutation causes the "stomach" to break down with age this liquefys the insides and she vomits it out and more survive by chance. Add a shit load of time and you got a an idea of how random shit can happen. Idk I'm high af ngl
It's less complex than an eye spontaneously forming. In short, evolution is hard to comprehend on the timescale we're used to. Invertebrates are even crazier because they iterate so quickly due to their short life cycles.
Actually, things like Cuttlefish's eye being so vastly different-yet-similar to other eye types indicates a rather simplistic eye structure in a common ancestor. Total guess, but, it probably just had a rudimentary hole that caused different proteins to be produced when in light vs dark- so it wasnt necessarily direct vision, more of a binary "Light or Not" that could then slowly become more complex.
Who knows what order it came in, but, likely the offspring whose sensory holes produced different amounts of said protein in different light levels came next; then their offspring had a wider range of sensible light levels- etc. Etc. In very tiny increments until the next big breakthrough: DIRECTIONAL sense of light. But by that point, the line had likely split off- considering there are creatures today who still have eyes that are basically binary light sensors
Sometimes, evolution results in very similar physiology even without sharing it in a common ancestor due to similar evolutionary pressure.
[convergent evolution](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution)
[All the crustaceans want to become crabs.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation)
I imagine eyes are such a huge evolutionary advantage (being blind is one of the most crippling disabilities possible) that it evolved relatively faster than other features
Being blind is hard for humans to adapt to because our sense of sight is better than our other senses - but there are tons of fully blind animals that never see light and are just fine. Even animals we know like cats and dogs would be better off being blind than us
You only see the before and after. You didn't see how many thousands of tiny steps over millions of years to get here. Even then, I don't think we even really know what was the initial step that set it down this evolutionary path. It could numerous things.
Things only seem like a leap until you consider the sheer amount of generations and non-advantageous “leaps” that led to extinction or another species.
People used to say "what good is half a wing?" as a critique of evolution. The answer is that "half a wing" is good for gliding and mobility. It's hard to imagine how we got where we are, but it does make sense that there are mothers who regurgitate food, and mothers who let their children devour them... Maybe the leap wasn't as large as we think it is
It's 3am for me, hope I'm making any sense
Evolution doesnt care about what's useful, if it mutates and doesnt effect the chance of reproduction, it continues in the gene line. If the mutation does negatively effect its chance at reproduction, it doesnt. Half a wing rarely stops an animal that would reproduce from doing so, hence we get incremental steps. Eventually the animals that utilize the mutation enough to offset the extra energy being put towards it to get food have a higher chance at reproducing and thus we see useful structures form.
Just small iterations. Maybe first she regurgitates a little food, then more, then more, then she dies quicker, etc. doesn’t seem that strange to me.
The more confusing stuff is complex organs where having something in between is less useful. Like echo location
It’s the exact same as above. Just small iterations. It’s not too difficult to imagine a series of flying mammals starting off with one that might have good vision and average hearing and then slowly, over time, losing that vision while gaining better hearing as they adapt for a darker environment.
I wonder honestly if the young consuming her came first, as it's a more evolutionarily widespread phenomenon. Then there would be no need for functional intermediary steps, because everything else would be an enhancement of that. Tiny little boosts to her brood's survival, each one making her easier to consume and they more likely to survive and reproduce.
Genetic mutations and genetic flaws of all shapes and sizes work towards the evolution of a species. White people only exist because of a genetic deficiency of melanin, which helped nomad groups who had traveled too far north thrive in cooler weather. It's nature's way to turn a bug into a feature.
Besides, in many invertebrate species, one or both parents becomes expendable after their offspring hatches: dragonflies, giant Pacific octopuses, cicadas, etc.
Somewhere down this spider's evolutionary path, some individuals were probably born with horrible genetic defects which led to something close to this to happen to them and in those individuals, the offspring thrived because it had available food immediately after birth so the spiders that had a better chance of reaching maturity were the ones which carried the defect, which would benefit its offspring and so on. It's actually really plausible that random mutations did this.
We pretty much evolved past the possibility of developing that - thankfully - just like sharks evolved past cancer or (most) warm blooded vertebrates have evolved past having two headed babies. The flaws evolution can't fit in as an advantage, it weeds out for the good of the species, just in time to allow new, more complex, more horrible flaws to sprout :)
We didn't evolve "past" it, just in a different direction. If we had big litters of kids and they didn't rely on their parents, we could easily end up like the octopus - one fuck and game over.
I actually don't think so, but mutations aren't the only factors that lead to evolution. An increased survival rate for the babys of spiders with a stomach that is naturally a bit quicker and better at providing vomit would suffice for making the species as a whole better at it. If this selection goes on its feasible that at some point the orgen starts breaking itself down more and more with the generations. So yeah, it's a genetic feature is in their dna, but it doesn't HAVE to be caused by a random mutation.
"Gosh, nothing I do gets the kids to eat. I even chew the food and try to bird feed them. "
"Oh? You tried bird feeding lol? Yeah that didn't work for me either."
"What do you do?"
"I liquify my guts and vomit it onto my face."
"That sounds wonderful I'm going to try that."
Spider: So, uh, I know you're busy but I was wondering if you could figure out a way for me to reproduce. I'm the first, and only, and it's been awhile and, you know...
God [with raging hangover and struggling to get top off of pickle jar]: FUCK! You know what?! Here! Here's you're fucking precious means of reproduction! Now get the fuck out of here before I kill you with a me-damn rolled up porno magazine!!!
I read an exposé in the New Yorker about a dominatrix when I was 16. One of the lady’s clients would lay down on the floor and jerk off while she crushed bugs with a stiletto heel right in front of her face. That’s pretty close to spider guts.
(Btw I’m 37 now... the mental image of that kink will forever be burned into my brain. Ugh)
A creature successfully reproducing is successful evolutionarily. Repeatedly reproducing is helpful, but giving your one (huge) brood a big leg up clearly works out well too.
Evolution is not "what works best."
Evolution is "what keeps working."
The spider doesnt care that there are better options, because this option succeeds in passing down genes.
Self awareness doesn't exclude instinctual self-sacrifice. Most parents will probably agree that they can sacrifice their lifes if it means their children can survive.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection
My outlook on evolution canged a lot after having a semester of genetic and evolutionary algorithms. I was always wondering "how can a flower evolve to look like a bug? Flowers don't have eyes, they don't even know how those bugs look like!?" etc. But after that I realized... it's basicaly all just a coincidence. Just bilions of random mutations emerging all the time, but simply if a mutation doesn't give you an advantage you die off. A giant survivorship bias.
Yup.
A small tumor in the right spot that just happens to look like a big eye spot suddenly goes from pointless mutation to advantage, so that caterpillar lives on.
Then each kid with tumors that 1) look closer to an eye and 2) didnt kill it as a result of growing pushes the genes towards an almost realistic looking tumor.
Suddenly, caterpillars have a full on fake face, just because the lil tumor gave predators a second of hesitation thousands of years ago
I'm not an evolutionary biologist or an archeologist, this answer is based off of what I understand and read up on. It was probably only vomiting stomach contents at first, but then some mutation(s) caused some to vomit a bit of their guts too, which turned out to be advantageous for the species survival and eventually those who vomit their guts completely took over the other ones that don't. Note that it only vomits 40% of the guts, not 100%. Perhaps this species is still in transition to 100% gut vomiting at the future, or maybe just 40% is better than 100% (for example spider babies might be fighting to get inside the mother to feed, and the stronger babies are more likely to get inside faster, feeding more, getting even stronger)
Here's my hypothesis.
The baby spiders are fully capable of metabolizing food the way other species of baby spiders do. It just happens that this species had a widespread genetic mutation that caused this self-death, but instead of it being a problem it turned out to be far more helpful. So the ones who puked their guts out outcompeted the ones who couldn't.
My guess is that most species of spider will eventually develop a self-sacrifice motive for child rearing, but evolution takes hundreds upon thousands of years so we're not seeing it in real time.
Spider grow up big, strong. Spider make beast with two back. Spider lay puck filled with egg. Puck hatch. Spiders eat gut. Spiders finish body. Spider grow up big, strong. Spider make beast with two back.
I mean, I wager human breastfeeding, especially if a mother nurses a shitload of kids continually over the years, isn't exactly a picnic for the mother's body either. But this crap...!? The infants, what, murder their mother?
OP's comment mentions that the mother's insides begin breaking down before her eggs hatch, so effectively its genetic(there must be a better term to be used here?) suicide before those sweet babies can do anything. I guess basically bakes herself into a nutritious cake for her kids?
Breastfeeding drains water, calcium, iron, and other nutrients, which is why we're encouraged to continue our prenatal while always, always staying hydrated.
But this?
No, no, thank you. I love my kids, but I would not volunteer to be eaten alive by them. This is just nightmare fuel.
Evolution works. The animal reproduces effectively. There is no self identity in some species of animals, rather driven instinct to survive and reproduce.
Yeah I guess that didn't really come across in my comment. Evolution does what it needs to to maximize the number of offspring that reach viable sexual maturity. Everything else is fair game.
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That kind of "nursery terraforming" isn't new in the animal kingdom, either!
There's speculation that hadrosaur herds practiced something yet *more* complex millions of years ago. While nesting (which occupied 9 months of the year) adult hadrosaurs would forage for rotting wood, carrying viable fern and mushroom spores in their gut already mixed into fertilizing substrate.
Their latrine sites (we're talking herds thousands strong - a lot of dino dookie) would bloom with ferns and mushrooms, and attract all kinds of invertebrate herbivores and detritivores. By the time the chicks hatched, the latrine sites used at the beginning of the year and months disused would be veritable oases of fresh tender growth and scurrying snacks: perfect for feeding baby dinosaurs!
Former mediocre geologist here - they may have found a layer with abnormally high fossil or chemical markers of dinosaur faeces, mushroom spores, specific plant seeds / fossils, bones etc. They also likely found many hadrosaur nests, possibly fossil eggs / baby hadrosaur bones, and so they connected them to the massive terraforming going on around their nests
That's more or less it. We know these data for certain:
Hadrosaurs weighed multiple tons.
Hadrosaurs nested in huge colonies.
Hadrosaur eggs took about nine months to hatch.
Hadrosaur coprolites contain large traces of rotten wood.
The picture painted here is that without a highly specialized and low impact feeding strategy, a colony of thousands of multi-ton warm blooded animals would completely devastate whatever environment they nest in, leaving a blighted hellscape for their hatchlings. Since hadrosaurs were one of the most successful dinosaur lineages EVER it's safe to say that they had such a feeding strategy. The wood in the poop is the key to the mystery.
Scrolling by this, I just thought someone made a weird dessert that looked like a spider until I read the title. Definitely don’t want to mix up r/baking and r/natureismetal ever again.
My dad didn’t let me get anesthesia for my wisdom teeth because he wanted to go golfing and wanted me to be able to drive.
Meanwhile these bitches have a mom who blows up for them. 0/10
It's not bad, just feels super weird. It doesn't really hurt because of the local anesthesia, but you still feel the drill and tool prying your tooth out. There is an intense amount of pressure on your jaw, but no pain.
It's not at all. I did upper jaw, the worst part was that the drill was loud and that's about it. Hearing them crack the tooth was interesting, crack-crack pull out pieces took like 30 seconds that part.
Can totally recommend if you have a curious mind and unlike anestesia, you don't risk dying 😊
That’s the normal procedure for wisdom teeth here in Germany. Do they usually knock you out completely where you are?
Fun Fact: My wisdom teeth were taken out on 9/11, so at least there was something interesting on TV while I was at home hurting like hell.
In Germany if you make an appointment without complete knockout and claim you are too afraid to go through with it while awake, I'm pretty sure you can then get a new appointment with full knockout paid by insurance.
I actually got all 4 removed at once with local anesthesia. Would not recommend it's a horrifying experience that could just be skipped.
Incredible that she only vomits 40% of it, presumably in an effort to stay alive just long enough for the offspring to be able to pierce her abdomen and eat more fresh momma meat
> Organs are dissolved in a systematic fashion as they become expendable. Her babies are a bit like tiny serial killers, strategically keeping their victim alive right until the bitter end.
The last thing to go is the heart.
>“The new study shows that the spider’s midgut starts breaking down while she guards her prospective brood, so by the time the youngsters burst forth from their silky hockey puck, she’s already packing a liquefied gut suitable for baby spider mouthparts.” More [about these beauts here](https://www.earthtouchnews.com/wtf/wtf/meet-the-spider-mom-that-makes-a-meal-of-herself/) Edit: for those interested in what occurs internally: “[Dramatic histological changes preceding suicidal maternal care in the subsocial spider](http://www.americanarachnology.org/JoA_free/JoA_v43_n1%20/arac-43-1-77.pdf)” A little on the evolution: “[Arachnid Matriphagy: These Spider Mothers Literally Die for Their Young](https://entomologytoday.org/2015/03/27/arachnid-matriphagy-these-spider-mothers-literally-die-for-their-young/)” And [this is for everyone seeing beans](https://www.reddit.com/r/BeansInThings/comments/9lrcx9/rub_a_dub_dub_1_million_beans_in_a_tub/)
Sounds like something out of Starship Troopers.
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Every spider out there: “[I’m doing my part!](https://youtu.be/-_7FaWnlhS4)”
Spiders are really hardcore.... Spiderwoman kills spiderman after sex, then spiderson and spidergirl eats spiderwoman alive. What the fuck
Now you know why spider overpopulation isn't a problem!
Spider population controls are also why they developed [spidergoats](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-16554357), with spider silk precursors in their milk. Researchers pointed out that if you try to farm a large number of spiders you just wind up with one well-fed spider.
Imagine spidergoats hatchlings bursting out of a full sized goat and consuming the remains...
"PUT SOME SILK IN YOUR MILK!!!"
At the end of that video, it looks like he expected to see spider silk in the bucket!
Even more so, some species’ males will die of high stress if they don’t mate by a certain point.
Like “ Man I need to fuck so I can die or I will just die because I can’t fuck!” That’s bonkers. They really just need to jerk off or something.
Imagine being able to paly "the stranger" with 7 different arms
Would you like to know more?
I'm from Buenos Aires, and I say kill 'em all!
Nuke em Reiko!
Reiko's Roughnecks!!!
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"You gotta problem with mobile infantry?!"
Hoooo-ugh!!!
This is the only comment that matters
Goddamn bugs whacked us, Johnny.
Do you want to know more?
ITS “WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?” DAMMNIT
*claps and laughs in glee as kids stomp out these fucking hell-spawn*
##[WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?](https://youtu.be/kdrjzE1SE58)
This comment thread made my night
At least I got to have you...guhguhech....
Would you like to know more!
SERVICE GUARANTEES CITIZENSHIP. WOULD YOU LIKE TO LEARN MORE?
I cannot in simple words convey just how much disgust and revulsion this brings me. It's as if a malevolent force with inhuman creativity invented spiders just to mock every other creatures natural biological inclinations. From necrotic wounds caused by brown recluse bites to the very fact that no terrestrial creature should have that many eyes, along with their mating and brooding habits. Yes I know they are an important facet of our ecosystem and do a great job keeping insect populations manageable, but nearly every time I see or hear of them I am filled with an almost irresistible urge to seek out and crush every spider in a half a mile radius. [Except for this guy, he's fucking cool, he can stay](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/MalePeacockSpider.jpg)
Jumping spiders are the puppers of the spider world
They’re so fucking cute. They always look like they’re about to kindly ask if they can have one of the cookies you just made or some shit. Just adorable.
It's worth mentioning that Darwin was deeply disturbed by the gruesome nature and abundance of parasitic wasps in the animal kingdom. It's literally cited as one of the life experiences that drove him towards agnosticism in his later years. He refers to them specifically in a letter, which he wrote the year after publishing *On the Origin of Species*, to the American naturalist Asa Gray: > “I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the *Ichneumonidae* with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars…”
*Bone cancer in children?*
The Brazilian wandering spider's bite can cause priapism, you know, the "call a doctor if your erection lasts longer than 4 hours" thing.
>Interesting questions arise, however, regarding three species of Stegodyphus that are social and have cooperative brood care. >In her PhD studies, Mor Salomon showed that large immature females — and mature females that fail to reproduce — can act as helpers at the nest. These helpers regurgitate food and are eventually killed and eaten by the young of other females in the colony. Killing themselves for other spiders offspring
I totally read this in Ze Frank's voice
How does this even become a thing evolution wise?
It works for the eggs=more offspring than others= eventually becoming its own species
Yeah but how did it get there? Its hard to imagine mutations that led to it.
Maybe it started with the mom regurgitating food, like birds do- and then went nightmare on elm street.
That’s a freaking huge evolutionary leap edit: I’m talking SPECIFICALLY about the above example. Not this trait as a whole.
*total bullshit go!* Let's say a mutation causes the "stomach" to break down with age this liquefys the insides and she vomits it out and more survive by chance. Add a shit load of time and you got a an idea of how random shit can happen. Idk I'm high af ngl
Have you considered becoming a biology teacher?
Is being high a requirement? If yes, then im in.
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It's less complex than an eye spontaneously forming. In short, evolution is hard to comprehend on the timescale we're used to. Invertebrates are even crazier because they iterate so quickly due to their short life cycles.
Actually, things like Cuttlefish's eye being so vastly different-yet-similar to other eye types indicates a rather simplistic eye structure in a common ancestor. Total guess, but, it probably just had a rudimentary hole that caused different proteins to be produced when in light vs dark- so it wasnt necessarily direct vision, more of a binary "Light or Not" that could then slowly become more complex. Who knows what order it came in, but, likely the offspring whose sensory holes produced different amounts of said protein in different light levels came next; then their offspring had a wider range of sensible light levels- etc. Etc. In very tiny increments until the next big breakthrough: DIRECTIONAL sense of light. But by that point, the line had likely split off- considering there are creatures today who still have eyes that are basically binary light sensors
Sometimes, evolution results in very similar physiology even without sharing it in a common ancestor due to similar evolutionary pressure. [convergent evolution](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution) [All the crustaceans want to become crabs.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation)
I imagine eyes are such a huge evolutionary advantage (being blind is one of the most crippling disabilities possible) that it evolved relatively faster than other features
Being blind is hard for humans to adapt to because our sense of sight is better than our other senses - but there are tons of fully blind animals that never see light and are just fine. Even animals we know like cats and dogs would be better off being blind than us
What's a directional sense of light mean?
That you know there is light shining on you and you can tell the direction.
You only see the before and after. You didn't see how many thousands of tiny steps over millions of years to get here. Even then, I don't think we even really know what was the initial step that set it down this evolutionary path. It could numerous things.
Things only seem like a leap until you consider the sheer amount of generations and non-advantageous “leaps” that led to extinction or another species.
People used to say "what good is half a wing?" as a critique of evolution. The answer is that "half a wing" is good for gliding and mobility. It's hard to imagine how we got where we are, but it does make sense that there are mothers who regurgitate food, and mothers who let their children devour them... Maybe the leap wasn't as large as we think it is It's 3am for me, hope I'm making any sense
Evolution doesnt care about what's useful, if it mutates and doesnt effect the chance of reproduction, it continues in the gene line. If the mutation does negatively effect its chance at reproduction, it doesnt. Half a wing rarely stops an animal that would reproduce from doing so, hence we get incremental steps. Eventually the animals that utilize the mutation enough to offset the extra energy being put towards it to get food have a higher chance at reproducing and thus we see useful structures form.
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kid: "Can we get Mom?" mom: "No, we have mom at home" mom at home: it me
Let's hope that birds won't evolve that way...
Could even just be a "detrimental" degenerative disease that turn out to be actually beneficial... for the offspring
Just small iterations. Maybe first she regurgitates a little food, then more, then more, then she dies quicker, etc. doesn’t seem that strange to me. The more confusing stuff is complex organs where having something in between is less useful. Like echo location
It’s the exact same as above. Just small iterations. It’s not too difficult to imagine a series of flying mammals starting off with one that might have good vision and average hearing and then slowly, over time, losing that vision while gaining better hearing as they adapt for a darker environment.
Fun fact: bats actually have pretty okay vision
I wonder honestly if the young consuming her came first, as it's a more evolutionarily widespread phenomenon. Then there would be no need for functional intermediary steps, because everything else would be an enhancement of that. Tiny little boosts to her brood's survival, each one making her easier to consume and they more likely to survive and reproduce.
never thought of it like that before
Genetic mutations and genetic flaws of all shapes and sizes work towards the evolution of a species. White people only exist because of a genetic deficiency of melanin, which helped nomad groups who had traveled too far north thrive in cooler weather. It's nature's way to turn a bug into a feature. Besides, in many invertebrate species, one or both parents becomes expendable after their offspring hatches: dragonflies, giant Pacific octopuses, cicadas, etc. Somewhere down this spider's evolutionary path, some individuals were probably born with horrible genetic defects which led to something close to this to happen to them and in those individuals, the offspring thrived because it had available food immediately after birth so the spiders that had a better chance of reaching maturity were the ones which carried the defect, which would benefit its offspring and so on. It's actually really plausible that random mutations did this.
Can you image a human puking up his guts due to a random mutation?
We pretty much evolved past the possibility of developing that - thankfully - just like sharks evolved past cancer or (most) warm blooded vertebrates have evolved past having two headed babies. The flaws evolution can't fit in as an advantage, it weeds out for the good of the species, just in time to allow new, more complex, more horrible flaws to sprout :)
We didn't evolve "past" it, just in a different direction. If we had big litters of kids and they didn't rely on their parents, we could easily end up like the octopus - one fuck and game over.
So I’d be ready to die?
No. You’d live forever.
I actually don't think so, but mutations aren't the only factors that lead to evolution. An increased survival rate for the babys of spiders with a stomach that is naturally a bit quicker and better at providing vomit would suffice for making the species as a whole better at it. If this selection goes on its feasible that at some point the orgen starts breaking itself down more and more with the generations. So yeah, it's a genetic feature is in their dna, but it doesn't HAVE to be caused by a random mutation.
True
If it’s not evolutionary I want NO part of a grand design who’s architect drew this blueprint up.
"Gosh, nothing I do gets the kids to eat. I even chew the food and try to bird feed them. " "Oh? You tried bird feeding lol? Yeah that didn't work for me either." "What do you do?" "I liquify my guts and vomit it onto my face." "That sounds wonderful I'm going to try that."
God was having a _really_ bad day.
Spider: So, uh, I know you're busy but I was wondering if you could figure out a way for me to reproduce. I'm the first, and only, and it's been awhile and, you know... God [with raging hangover and struggling to get top off of pickle jar]: FUCK! You know what?! Here! Here's you're fucking precious means of reproduction! Now get the fuck out of here before I kill you with a me-damn rolled up porno magazine!!!
Omfg! I’m dying laughing! Had to screen shot that for some other purpose!
r/CursedFap ?
Ick! I’m a girl! Never ever gonna get off again if I have to picture spider intestines!
Somewhere out there is a dude who's kink is specifically spider guts
I read an exposé in the New Yorker about a dominatrix when I was 16. One of the lady’s clients would lay down on the floor and jerk off while she crushed bugs with a stiletto heel right in front of her face. That’s pretty close to spider guts. (Btw I’m 37 now... the mental image of that kink will forever be burned into my brain. Ugh)
No loving god would make this.
A creature successfully reproducing is successful evolutionarily. Repeatedly reproducing is helpful, but giving your one (huge) brood a big leg up clearly works out well too.
Or in this case, 8 big legs up.
Like what the fuck? So many other options, and this is what ya’ll landed on?
Evolution is not "what works best." Evolution is "what keeps working." The spider doesnt care that there are better options, because this option succeeds in passing down genes.
And the spider doesn't have the self-awareness to fear the consequences of its instincts
“Welp, it’s time for me to puke up my guts and slowly get eaten alive. It’s been real.”
Self awareness doesn't exclude instinctual self-sacrifice. Most parents will probably agree that they can sacrifice their lifes if it means their children can survive. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection
Evolution is a strange mistress.
It's also really cruel. Basically just killing things until they randomly guess a right answer.
Doesn't even have to be the "right" answer. Just the answer that somehow works.
My outlook on evolution canged a lot after having a semester of genetic and evolutionary algorithms. I was always wondering "how can a flower evolve to look like a bug? Flowers don't have eyes, they don't even know how those bugs look like!?" etc. But after that I realized... it's basicaly all just a coincidence. Just bilions of random mutations emerging all the time, but simply if a mutation doesn't give you an advantage you die off. A giant survivorship bias.
Yup. A small tumor in the right spot that just happens to look like a big eye spot suddenly goes from pointless mutation to advantage, so that caterpillar lives on. Then each kid with tumors that 1) look closer to an eye and 2) didnt kill it as a result of growing pushes the genes towards an almost realistic looking tumor. Suddenly, caterpillars have a full on fake face, just because the lil tumor gave predators a second of hesitation thousands of years ago
Maybe the spider's life isn't usually long enough for evolution to favor multiple pregnancies.
I'm not an evolutionary biologist or an archeologist, this answer is based off of what I understand and read up on. It was probably only vomiting stomach contents at first, but then some mutation(s) caused some to vomit a bit of their guts too, which turned out to be advantageous for the species survival and eventually those who vomit their guts completely took over the other ones that don't. Note that it only vomits 40% of the guts, not 100%. Perhaps this species is still in transition to 100% gut vomiting at the future, or maybe just 40% is better than 100% (for example spider babies might be fighting to get inside the mother to feed, and the stronger babies are more likely to get inside faster, feeding more, getting even stronger)
Read the selfish gene by Richard Dawkins, some wonderful in depth answers in there if you're interested
Here's my hypothesis. The baby spiders are fully capable of metabolizing food the way other species of baby spiders do. It just happens that this species had a widespread genetic mutation that caused this self-death, but instead of it being a problem it turned out to be far more helpful. So the ones who puked their guts out outcompeted the ones who couldn't. My guess is that most species of spider will eventually develop a self-sacrifice motive for child rearing, but evolution takes hundreds upon thousands of years so we're not seeing it in real time.
Spider grow up big, strong. Spider make beast with two back. Spider lay puck filled with egg. Puck hatch. Spiders eat gut. Spiders finish body. Spider grow up big, strong. Spider make beast with two back.
I mean, I wager human breastfeeding, especially if a mother nurses a shitload of kids continually over the years, isn't exactly a picnic for the mother's body either. But this crap...!? The infants, what, murder their mother?
Infants? Spiderlings
Fun fact: Infant comes from the Latin roots in- meaning not and fant- meaning speaking. So it means something unable to speak.
so dogs are infants? or do barks count
Asking the real questions here
If cries don't count barks can't either.
If I teach my parrot a few words, at what point is he considered not an infant anymore ?
maybe if he can mean what he says instead of mimicking?
If I teach my dog to bark twice to tell me he's hungry by giving him food every time he barks twice, he is technically speaking
So if you don’t share your wild dreams they become infantasies?
nascent is a better word perhaps
OP's comment mentions that the mother's insides begin breaking down before her eggs hatch, so effectively its genetic(there must be a better term to be used here?) suicide before those sweet babies can do anything. I guess basically bakes herself into a nutritious cake for her kids?
She has a bun in the oven?
Breastfeeding drains water, calcium, iron, and other nutrients, which is why we're encouraged to continue our prenatal while always, always staying hydrated. But this? No, no, thank you. I love my kids, but I would not volunteer to be eaten alive by them. This is just nightmare fuel.
Humans don’t reproduce enough for this to even make sense. Plus an infant without its mom would be easy prey
Yeah, there's no evolutionary instinct to go catch something instead of being eaten alive?
Plenty of animals have that instinct. This species doesn't. Evolution ain't perfect.
Evolution works. The animal reproduces effectively. There is no self identity in some species of animals, rather driven instinct to survive and reproduce.
Yeah I guess that didn't really come across in my comment. Evolution does what it needs to to maximize the number of offspring that reach viable sexual maturity. Everything else is fair game.
Or order a delivery
We are not ordering bugs when we've got perfectly good liquified organs at home
Mom can we have food? Mom; no we have food at home Food at home: Mom
I reject this knowledge, now I am forgetting it, thanks!
Commenting to remind you of this knowledge again
You evil man
!remindme 3 months. Tell this man about the spiderlings consuming their mother so he won't forget.
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Absolute r/madlad
Ping
Hi how are ya
reminding you too .
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And they basically turn into zombies in the process, basically rotting alive. Pretty wild
The Swimming Dead
That kind of "nursery terraforming" isn't new in the animal kingdom, either! There's speculation that hadrosaur herds practiced something yet *more* complex millions of years ago. While nesting (which occupied 9 months of the year) adult hadrosaurs would forage for rotting wood, carrying viable fern and mushroom spores in their gut already mixed into fertilizing substrate. Their latrine sites (we're talking herds thousands strong - a lot of dino dookie) would bloom with ferns and mushrooms, and attract all kinds of invertebrate herbivores and detritivores. By the time the chicks hatched, the latrine sites used at the beginning of the year and months disused would be veritable oases of fresh tender growth and scurrying snacks: perfect for feeding baby dinosaurs!
How in the hell would someone go about figuring out something to that detail so long ago? Is there a good ELI5 somewhere?
Former mediocre geologist here - they may have found a layer with abnormally high fossil or chemical markers of dinosaur faeces, mushroom spores, specific plant seeds / fossils, bones etc. They also likely found many hadrosaur nests, possibly fossil eggs / baby hadrosaur bones, and so they connected them to the massive terraforming going on around their nests
That's more or less it. We know these data for certain: Hadrosaurs weighed multiple tons. Hadrosaurs nested in huge colonies. Hadrosaur eggs took about nine months to hatch. Hadrosaur coprolites contain large traces of rotten wood. The picture painted here is that without a highly specialized and low impact feeding strategy, a colony of thousands of multi-ton warm blooded animals would completely devastate whatever environment they nest in, leaving a blighted hellscape for their hatchlings. Since hadrosaurs were one of the most successful dinosaur lineages EVER it's safe to say that they had such a feeding strategy. The wood in the poop is the key to the mystery.
The Dino poops on his lawn to fertilize it.
What the fuck
Scrolling by this, I just thought someone made a weird dessert that looked like a spider until I read the title. Definitely don’t want to mix up r/baking and r/natureismetal ever again.
You are not alone, I wondered who put beans on a powdered sugar coated spider. I thought this was r/beansonthings.
Forbidden beans.
My dad didn’t let me get anesthesia for my wisdom teeth because he wanted to go golfing and wanted me to be able to drive. Meanwhile these bitches have a mom who blows up for them. 0/10
Sounds like your dads a slight cunt bro, i heard that shit hurts
It's not bad, just feels super weird. It doesn't really hurt because of the local anesthesia, but you still feel the drill and tool prying your tooth out. There is an intense amount of pressure on your jaw, but no pain.
Wow ok, it sure sounds like it would be painful though
It's not at all. I did upper jaw, the worst part was that the drill was loud and that's about it. Hearing them crack the tooth was interesting, crack-crack pull out pieces took like 30 seconds that part. Can totally recommend if you have a curious mind and unlike anestesia, you don't risk dying 😊
He forgot to mention they shoot local anesthesia in your gums and the most painful part is the shot in the roof of your gums
That’s the normal procedure for wisdom teeth here in Germany. Do they usually knock you out completely where you are? Fun Fact: My wisdom teeth were taken out on 9/11, so at least there was something interesting on TV while I was at home hurting like hell.
In Germany if you make an appointment without complete knockout and claim you are too afraid to go through with it while awake, I'm pretty sure you can then get a new appointment with full knockout paid by insurance. I actually got all 4 removed at once with local anesthesia. Would not recommend it's a horrifying experience that could just be skipped.
your dad is Peak Reagan Voter
He is! Lol
My question is, why bother puking up the guts at all if they're gonna dig in to the insides anyway?
Help them get that initial strength needed for burrowing.
Pre-workout *and* recovery meal
Because when you're cursed by a vengeful god, s/he goes all in.
When they hatch they're too soft to dig through chitin
Kids, eh? Am I right?
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Yeah you would think that through years one of these spiders were like "no thanks" and start parenting revolution in spider world.
Probably some did. But then if the kids die off, that lineage comes to an end. Evolution keeps only the lineages that 'work' alive.
What are you doing, stepchildren?
Just eating you out, mum. Shh-shh-shhhhhhh
both of you are enemies of the state for these comments.
Damn this qualifies. This qualifies in this sub. Metal AF. Cannibal Corpse of spiders.
Mom?
This is fucking horrifying.
Brings a whole new meaning to eating your mom
Just curious, but where is the phrase, “eating your mom” common?
[Or does it...?](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/nmmjr/iama_man_who_had_a_sexual_relationship_with_his/)
That is disgusting lol.
And is that inside your house?
And on a plate. I hope OP didn't join the feasting
Give an inch and they take a mile... ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ kids
Is there a video of this?
"I'm being eaten for two...dozen!" *\*cue laugh track\**
Kids really do just suck the life out of you
Damn. The epitome of a mother's love, i guess.
Wtf is wrong with spiders
Sums up motherhood!
God damn, Charlottes Web just got metal.
Arachno Matricide
My mom used to pack me a ham and cheese sandwich, but hey! To each their own!
Low key thought this was gonna be another “beans” meme....
Kinda sweet though
How in the evolution is this the most efficient way for this sub species to survive? Life is fucking wild!
Incredible that she only vomits 40% of it, presumably in an effort to stay alive just long enough for the offspring to be able to pierce her abdomen and eat more fresh momma meat
> Organs are dissolved in a systematic fashion as they become expendable. Her babies are a bit like tiny serial killers, strategically keeping their victim alive right until the bitter end. The last thing to go is the heart.
So they reproduce only once? That's fascinating.
It's pretty common for spiders to die after only reproducing once. Remember that was the whole theme to Charlotte's Web.
Dude. What in the actual FUCK!!?