News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

In trouble – again

You would think that with over 70 years of dealing with the nature of this wonderful old Earth I would know better than to say, “All…”

Nope, not this thickheaded old naturalist. I just keep blundering along, hoping a rock doesn’t fall on my head. Well, one did…

Not too long ago, while verbalizing on the lovely attributes of spiders, I said, “ALL spiders contain venom.” The truth of the matter is, ALL do not.

I was in a discussion with a few friends regarding spider venom recently, and one person asked about a spider he had seen in Florida that had “feathers” on its long forelegs. He described it so accurately that it took me only a moment to find it in my spider bible, in the Uloboridae Family — pronounced, U-loob-or-eh-dee-ah.

Imagine my absolute shock when I read that this particular family of spiders does not have any venom! None. Therefore they can not be blamed for any injuries to humans from venom. They are also known as the “feather-legged spider” because of the tufts of “hair” that fringes the first pair of legs that are longer then the body.

Uloborids spin an orb web, but are not in the orb-weaver family, such as “Charlotte” and her kin. Because the Uloborids do not possess venom, they have especially efficient silk glands that allow the spider to wrap their prey with greater quantities of silk and immobilize them faster. Then they “bite” the victim and inject an enzyme that digests soft tissue, as do other spiders, but DO NOT possess or use venom.

Now you know about one family of spiders — among over 30,000 species (described so far) in the world — that does not possess venom.

I made a similar error back in the ’60s while giving a snake lecture at West Sylvan School in Portland. I was big on snakes and owls in then, and as naturalist with OMSI (the only one), I was in demand to give a variety of talks in classrooms and auditoriums.

That day I was showing off our beautiful and humongous boa constrictor, Boa c. constrictor, to an audience of about 150 children in the school auditorium. I was doing great until I said, “ALL snakes are at the mercy of their environment, as they do not have the capacity to manufacture ANY body heat.”

Talk about putting your foot in your mouth… My voice had no sooner echoed off the back wall of the auditorium than a hand shot up and began waving in the audience. It was like seeing a missile headed for me; I knew I had just shot myself in the foot. There was no way out if it, so I walked to the edge of the stage with all 15 pounds of boa draped over my shoulder and said, “I think I just made a mighty blunder; would the young man waving his hand please come up and tell me what I said that was incorrect.”

With that, the entire audience turned to look at the kid waving his hand, who then eased himself out of the seating and walked up the aisle. I invited him to come up on the stage, which he did with solemn dignity. I handed him the microphone.

While looking up at me and with one hand resting on the boa, he said, in a clear and strong voice, “The Indian rock python is noted to raise its body temperature by 3 degrees while incubating eggs. Thank you,” handed the microphone back to me and walked back to his seat with a thundering ovation from his schoolmates filling the auditorium.

You’d think I’d have learned my lesson, but just the other day I did it again. But that’s another story…

 

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