Why are spiders more scary than sharks?

[Anomalocaris]

Think the title says it all....

Given the amount of damage each creature can do, and one is our predator, why the imbalance??

Legs.

MM

And eight black, pupilless beady eyes staring back at you.

[Tonus]

On a different track, I got up on Saturday morning and nearly stepped on a dead rat in my lounge.

Heh. I can top that one.

[The Valkyrie]

On a different track, I got up on Saturday morning and nearly stepped on a dead rat in my lounge.

Heh. I can top that one.

I'm listening.

[Tonus]

This was quite a few years ago (late 90s probably). I was laying network cable along a row of cubicles (like I said, the 90s) and it was slow going as we had to carefully work it past any and all obstacles. One of those, in a corner office, was a pair of file cabinets. So I flip the cable over the cabinets and am pulling it through the other end, and it's stuck. So I feel around back to see what's got it caught, but after several attempts I can't quite get my hand far enough. Fine, I decide, I'll pull the cable back out on the near side.

The cable comes back, stuck to an old glue trap... with a mouldering mouse right next to the cable, just inches from where I'd stopped and given up. I could see the black patches of rotting skin where the fur had fallen off. I didn't actually touch the mouse, but I kept imagining that I'd gone ahead and felt just another inch or two further and felt that fuzzy-- BLEEGHGHHGHG I still get this chill up my spine just thinking about how close I came.

Not the worst way to learn that lesson, though. I was much more circumspect when I was laying cable after that.

[The Valkyrie]

This was quite a few years ago (late 90s probably). I was laying network cable along a row of cubicles (like I said, the 90s) and it was slow going as we had to carefully work it past any and all obstacles. One of those, in a corner office, was a pair of file cabinets. So I flip the cable over the cabinets and am pulling it through the other end, and it's stuck. So I feel around back to see what's got it caught, but after several attempts I can't quite get my hand far enough. Fine, I decide, I'll pull the cable back out on the near side.

The cable comes back, stuck to an old glue trap... with a mouldering mouse right next to the cable, just inches from where I'd stopped and given up. I could see the black patches of rotting skin where the fur had fallen off. I didn't actually touch the mouse, but I kept imagining that I'd gone ahead and felt just another inch or two further and felt that fuzzy-- BLEEGHGHHGHG I still get this chill up my spine just thinking about how close I came.

Not the worst way to learn that lesson, though. I was much more circumspect when I was laying cable after that.

Ha.

Okay, gross story time.

When I was a first year student I worked part time in a hospital working in the morgue. When I moved onto my second year, I had to train a first year to replace me in the morgue.

The day he was sitting in on his first autopsy, I had told him not to eat for 24 hours beforehand. Unfortunately he decided to eat.

The moment they opened the y-incision he threw up - on my shoes.

[TaraJo]

Think the title says it all....

Given the amount of damage each creature can do, and one is our predator, why the imbalance??

I've actually heard that there may be an evolutionary reason we're afraid of spiders. Specifically, the kind of places that are good for spiders tend to be the dank, dark places that aren't very good for humans. We evolved a fear of spiders to keep us away from places like that.

[ManMachine]

This was quite a few years ago (late 90s probably). I was laying network cable along a row of cubicles (like I said, the 90s) and it was slow going as we had to carefully work it past any and all obstacles. One of those, in a corner office, was a pair of file cabinets. So I flip the cable over the cabinets and am pulling it through the other end, and it's stuck. So I feel around back to see what's got it caught, but after several attempts I can't quite get my hand far enough. Fine, I decide, I'll pull the cable back out on the near side.

The cable comes back, stuck to an old glue trap... with a mouldering mouse right next to the cable, just inches from where I'd stopped and given up. I could see the black patches of rotting skin where the fur had fallen off. I didn't actually touch the mouse, but I kept imagining that I'd gone ahead and felt just another inch or two further and felt that fuzzy-- BLEEGHGHHGHG I still get this chill up my spine just thinking about how close I came.

Not the worst way to learn that lesson, though. I was much more circumspect when I was laying cable after that.

Ha.

Okay, gross story time.

When I was a first year student I worked part time in a hospital working in the morgue. When I moved onto my second year, I had to train a first year to replace me in the morgue.

The day he was sitting in on his first autopsy, I had told him not to eat for 24 hours beforehand. Unfortunately he decided to eat.

The moment they opened the y-incision he threw up - on my shoes.

I've eaten one of these, it's called a 100 year old egg (yes, that greeny black stuff is the yolk).



MM (that's 'em' 'em' not Mmmmmm)

[Anomalocaris]

Ha.

Okay, gross story time.

When I was a first year student I worked part time in a hospital working in the morgue. When I moved onto my second year, I had to train a first year to replace me in the morgue.

The day he was sitting in on his first autopsy, I had told him not to eat for 24 hours beforehand. Unfortunately he decided to eat.

The moment they opened the y-incision he threw up - on my shoes.

I've eaten one of these, it's called a 100 year old egg (yes, that greeny black stuff is the yolk).



MM

That's nothing more than an normal egg marinated for a couple of weeks in a strongly alkaline solution. You more or less embalmed the egg. The egg acquires an odd and strong, but not unpalatable, taste. There is no smell I can detect.

If you want to see something really gross, try Swedish Surströmming. It's lightly salted fish left to ferment for six month until the thing becomes sticky, slimy, as acidic as lemon and stink to badly that it is customarily eaten outdoors.

Modern chemistry have discovered that certain food, like fish and soybean, that when fermented until they stank, develops a odorless chemical, called monosodium glutamate, that is quite addictive. This explains why people come back to stinking food like flies to shit.

There is also a Chinese dish called stinking tofu. When they say stinking, they are not kidding. Appearently when it is served in restaurants it has the effect of vacating the entire establishment.

The Japanese also have a stinking dish made from soy bean so rotten that they become slimy.

[Thumpalumpacus]

We evolved alongside spiders. It stands to reason that a healthy aversion to them would be selected-for.

[Anomalocaris]

We evolved along side of many mor dangerous animal. Why do we not have comparable aversion towards them?