Eco Worldly – May 7th, 2009:
Scientists studying northeastern Greenland’s hairy, meat-eating wolf spiders have discovered every arachnophobe’s worst nightmare.
It appears that as the Earth has been warming and summers have been getting longer, the 8-legged hunters have been steadily growing larger and more numerous. And it’s likely that other creepy-crawly species around the world could be growing larger too.
The precise cause of the trend is still a mystery, but the growth was strongly correlated with hotter, longer summers. For instance, in years when spring came 30 days earlier, many spiders grew exoskeletons which were 10% thicker than usual. Translated for the squeamish: that means the spiders were bigger, hairier and more difficult to squash.
And they aren’t just getting larger, they’re increasing their numbers too. The study also discovered that most of the species growth happened among females. Since larger females tend to produce more offspring, that means more spiders overall.
Whatever the cause, the news highlights how many of the effects of global warming could be unexpected, and it’s not yet clear how the larger, more numerous spiders could effect local ecosystems. Or human psychology, for that matter.
# 17 MikeN, “they accounted for that.”
Who is they, the author of the article DiPuccio, William, a Phd in Religious Studies?
No wonder your a neo-con repugnican.
A meat eating spider? Is it an omnivore or a carnivore? Or maybe just an insectivore.
And what size are they? Dust mite size or bigger than a tarantula?
So living things (we don’t happen to like) are getting bigger and more plentiful. If were a favorite food source, we’d be very pleased by this news. So maybe we ought to think about it in a positive way. Something else eats these spiders, and gets bigger too. And maybe they’re what we like to eat.
Spiders don’t get bigger because it’s warmer. They grow in size when there is more of what they eat, around. Which are usually flying insects. So a longer warm (and wet) period (if true) could be allowing insects to multiply and survive longer. Which may “bug” us. But I’m sure it will please the birds, fish, and frogs that also eat bugs. And some of those are fine eatin.
B-u-t. Wasn’t G.W. once predicted to make a desert of our world. And instead, it appears to make thing grow bigger, and live longer. If only we can stand a few inches of higher tide, in a couple of decades time. A supposed 60mm increase in five decades is hardly alarming. That’s less than 3 inches, in case you don’t know the metric system. How does that translate to “1 meter in a 100 years”? More like 1/10th of a meter. Maybe. Assuming more ocean water does evaporate to compensate.
The thing about the Global Warming scare, is that it’s big business now. Like Prohibition was, once all the politicians jumped on that bandwagon, decades ago. It’s a career builder. There are no well paying jobs, or government grants, for someone saying “everything’s fine, no need to worry”. So naturally, there are going to be lots of Chicken Littles, screaming that the “sky is fall”, since it’s now their job to scream.
And I suspect that if Al Gore owned coal stock, instead of oil stock. He’d be singing a different tune. North America’s plentiful and cheap coal supply, is really putting a damper on oil tycoons’ ability to stick it to us for electric power rates. Which is also why they oppose electric cars, that don’t burn a drop of their oil. But they’re behind Bio-fuels, because they know it’s mostly still a crude oil blend. And they control it all, anyway.
I like wolf spiders. For me, this is a small piece of good news out of an otherwise horrible situation.
Back when the globe was really warm and Greenland was green (Viking era) they used to dine on these humongous spiders. You can actually get some pretty nice filets of tenderloin from them.
Very cool, I love spiders.
#11 JimR – I agree with you 100%.
This give a whole new meaning to swine flatulence/flu.
There will be spiders from mars next