Andrés Valenzuela

RESC 098: Exploring Nature

Professor Camuto

20 October 2017

Thinking like a Spider

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a spider? Close your eyes, you

are now one. Like a distracted fly not noticing the spider web in front of it, you are now

trapped in an immersion into a spider’s world but unlike the fly you will be able to get

away from the spider. You are small; everything around you could easily kill you or disrupt

your arachnid schedule, in fact, so small that a good wind could easily blow you away. You

feel the air around you lifting you from the floor like floating underwater but this only

makes you more agile and fast. In order for you to start thinking like a spider you need to

understand how spiders live and recognize their world.

Most spiders rely on their sensibility to vibrations and touch to perceive their

surroundings. Contrary to popular belief, they do not have good eyesight in general, and for

most spiders their six to eight eyes have a supplementary function that only becomes useful

when seeing in darkness or perceiving beyond the visible light spectrum. Is because of this

that in order to think like a spider we must understand that unlike us where our main

perception is through vision, spiders perceive by detecting vibrations. All of these crucial

dimensions of a spider’s existence give us information on their way of living but there is

one more dimension, which is as important. This is the fact that they live in a matriarchal

arachnid society ruled by the dominant female sex. Is because of this that spiders think like

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their dominant females do; this also means that you are either a female spider or you will

soon be eaten by your mating partner.

Spiders have a unique combination of thoughts. They can think of committing

cannibalism, creating art, finding shelter, reproducing themselves, and many other thoughts

that when compared to each other, it does not make sense for them to come from the same

being. There is one though however, that overarches all of the previously mentioned ones

and gives more sense for a spider to have such a variety of thoughts, this is their survival

thinking. Their approach to survival is based on reacting to their environment. They react to

lack of food by eating each other, survival of the fittest, giving us a hint that spiders do not

really think of their fellow spiders as a reflection of themselves or as an arachnid comrade

but just as another possible resource available. They react to competition by developing

different skills and strategies to surpass their adversaries, such as jumping, producing silk,

and developing specific eyesight abilities. Due to this, they obtain higher chances to survive

and gain power over other creatures. They also react to hunger by creating web traps or

hunting, putting their creativity to the limit in order to secure their food. Ultimately, their

survival nature drives spiders to take as much advantage as they can from their

surroundings without equating anything but survival into their thinking. This is yet another

factor for spiders to have such a bad reputation and to be considered as malicious and

fearful creatures.

Thinking is a matter of life or death for any spider. While being very agile they have

to be meticulous when moving. Spiders cannot allow themselves to waste energy in a world

where food is scarce and the competition for it translates in a scenario of eating or getting

eaten. One arachnid way of thinking is like a web-knitting spider. These spiders construct

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their intricate geometrical webs to catch any distracted insect or arachnid fellow. Despite

their striking beauty in patterns and architecture, these adhesive silk houses invite small

creatures for a final meal where they are the main course. A spider can sense her prey’s

vibrations as soon as they touch her web, when this happens she rapidly goes and paralyzes

itl by biting and delivering her venom to her victim. Spiders do not have the capability to

eat directly their preys so they cover their prey in silk and vomit stomach acid to help them

digest their food and make it soft and edible. A knitting spider cultivates patience. She

spends almost her entire life waiting for her preys to be caught. She places herself in the

middle of her web quiet and attentive in order not draw any attention. Her main strategy is

to be unnoticed so she can have control of the world around her.

Another arachnid way of thinking is the more conventional hunter mindset, present

more widely in nature. These spiders do not knit webs or patiently wait in one place to

catch a prey. Instead what these spiders do is to silently go hunting in hopes to find a

vulnerable victim. Even though they do not knit webs, they can still secrete silk to trap their

victims or hang from them. Once a victim is caught and paralyzed by their venom, they

proceed to take it away and store it or eat it in the spot. They may also use their silk as safe

lines to prevent losing a strategic position, which could be the difference between life and

death for such a small creature. Since resources are limited, a hunting spider must always

be cautious of its movements and act at the right moment. The survival mindset of hunting

spiders is more active and explicitly fierce.

There are two major paradoxes that contrast the behavior of spiders and their

existence. One is how much life they can bring by the amount of eggs a single spider can

lay, resulting in numerous new-spiders, but how they still live for most of their lives alone

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and almost without interacting with other spiders. The other is how their webs are a symbol

for connectedness and relations but spiders are still one of the most lonesome creatures. It is

counterintuitive and perhaps even ridiculous that concepts like support and beauty can be

so highly contrasted with ideas like selfishness and lonesome. These paradoxes in the

nature of spiders shows us how a living being can never be just one single thing or have a

single truth but a complex addition of things. Having said this, it is time to recognize that

this approach to thinking like a spider is very narrow to what the most general idea of being

a spider is. Nevertheless, another perspective on this is how fake spiders are. They show

themselves as diligent web knitters and expert pattern designers when in reality all they are

doing is just waiting for that an insect to fall into their trap. All a spider is looking for is to

obtain and appropriate something from her surroundings, which makes these contrasting

behaviors to be polar opposite of each other.

We as humans are always trying to homologate our experiences to nature, probably

in an attempt to understand our own life experiences better. When thinking like a spider and

its nature, it is noticeable that some of these arachnid attitudes are highly present in

humans. Even though we are not eating each other literally, there are people taking

advantage of others in a way that only benefits them and harms other people. Just like a

spider, we wait for the right moment to use our agility and we wait for the best moment to

take that something away. Figuratively, this is like eating someone else in society because

the person being harmed is pushed closer and closer to the edge of the cliff. We do this

when we recur to physical and mental violence, oppression systems and exclusion. It is not

only that spiders try to possess as much as they can but they also create illusions of

marvelous creations that are only a tramp. This deceitfulness is another attribute that it is

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replicated in humans. We present ourselves in a certain way that deceives every one of our

real purposes. In a way we have all smiled or nodded at someone to obtain something in

return.

Thinking like a spider is not very complicated after all, we humans have more

things in common with spiders than what we could expect. In a way, humans have been

thinking for the longest time like spiders. Today we still find a strong sense of patriarchy in

our world where similarly as the spiders, we leave a dominating sex dictating what the

norm is for us. Spiders do teach us and show us something, nevertheless. They show us

what life could be like if we lived by these thoughts that characterize spiders to be

mischievous and antagonists.

As it was said in the beginning, unlike the fly you will be able to get away from the

spider, but there is no way to get away from the spider if the spider is yourself.