I have zero issues with spiders living in my home, they just have to stay out of my sight.
If they evolve to be better at hiding, it's a win win.
In our house the rule is spiders can stay if they're out the way (up high, etc). When they get too close for comfort for my wife's tolerance limits, I pick them up and put them outside. Spiders are friends.
That almost rhymed, how about:
In our house the spiders can stay
If they're out of the way.
If they get too close,
Then it's time to vamo(o)se
Spiderbro does an important job eating the more annoying bugs.
The reclusiveness selection argument makes sense, but why intelligence? Brains are crazy metabolically expensive, and I can't see why a smart reclusive spider would survive humans any better than a merely reclusive one.
Probably thought that you need to be smart to hide well, which is not at all how it works for most animals but IS how it works for humans.
I don't kill spiders. They are my unpaid exterminators.
They accept payment in flies.
They can have all of them they can catch. I'll even toss any I catch into their webs.
I have the same thoughts about hitting squirrels with my car.
Not that I do it on purpose or feel good about It, but I tell myself that at least the survivors will pass on their survivor traits to the next generation.
You'd think we'd have accidentally bred smarter deer by now
Deer kill more americans than any other animal. If anything they're becoming more top heavy and more lethal to make drivers hesitate before hitting them. Eventually evolution will make them explode and send a cloud of shrapnel out when struck by a car.
My house spiders are cool. They eat the flies etc and I fish them out of the way before I have a shower. The only disagreement we have is over their little lair in the kitchen. There's a tiny hole in the skirting board in one corner, and cobwebs gather there. Now and then I brush away the webs and plaster over the hole. A week later the hole is back and the webs too.
Birds also only eat spiders they see. Not sure how that’s any different
You're forgetting all the spiders that crawl into the bird's mouth while it's sleeping.
Nah that's just spiders beord throwing off the averages.
Also, any effects we may have on arthropod selective evolution by randomly killing visible spiders is going to be vastly overshadowed by the very rapid and immediate changes we're making to the environment broadly.
We would need somewhere between centuries or millennia of very predictable and consistent behavior killing visible spiders before we saw any change to their overall behavior, meanwhile we've all but destroyed the ecosystem at their scale anyway, which is going to have vastly more dramatic impact on populations and evolution, assuming they survive at all.
When was the last time any of you remember getting your windows covered with bugs after a summer drive?
I’ve gotten brave in my old age. I only relocate them if they become extremely inconvenient …like my doorway spider (sorry frank). I ignore house spiders entirely as they transit my house. Good luck, leggy friend.
I have a pretty orb weaver on the porch (or I did last summer). Hope I get another.
As long as the spiders don't break our agreement they can stay. They eat the bugs and pests, and they can live in the corners of my house. As soon as they come to the floor they're dead.
That's why I only kill the roaches that venture into my house, if I see a roach in the street I leave it alone to thrive that way all future offspring will be selected for street only living.
I think this every time I kill a mosquito or fruit fly but they don't seem to be getting any faster, smarter, or quieter. Where's Darwin when you need him to answer some questions?
There's just so many that the relative few getting killed by swatting aren't having an impact on their genetics.
Also we've been doing it for millennia. The evolutionary pressure is already there. These are just the ones with the random mutations that make them slow enough to slap.
It's like asking why gazzel aren't fast enough to outrun a lion.
Any flies that fly into my house are given a chance to leave. If I can herd them out the window, they get to live and make lots of new baby flies.
On the other hand, their chances of getting a close up view of the fly swatter increase exponentially with every minute they spend refusing to leave and ignoring the fact that I'm literally showing them the exit.
this isnt true tho. we kill loads of them without seeing them.
i like the idea tho
I eat seven spiders every hour
wow, you must be jacked
This is why you shouldn't kill rattlesnakes. If we kill the rattlesnakes that make themselves known, over time they adapt to not rattle before striking.
So they will be just called snakes.
yeah I accidently killed my pet invisible spider :( his name was bob
Good, we should make them even more reclusive and smarter. Honestly, an army of highly intelligent bug killers specialized in keeping out of my sight hiding in the interstices of my house sounds like an awesome idea
If I never know that the spider is there then we shall both live a peaceful life.
I like smarter spiders, but not the cost of getting there.
I always knew I was right to scoop them up and put them outside. My wife just murders them outright.
I catch them in a glass and cover the top with a piece of cardboard then dump them outside. Spiders eat bugs. Go be free little guy!
I once tried making a similar argument to a game warden about only hunting deer during the day. They were not appreciative of the take.
This was after I hit a deer with my car while driving home from Thanksgiving, it was not a good time.
I only kill spiders without opposable thumbs
fine by me. as long as i don't see them, they don't exist.
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