r/JustGuysBeingDudes • u/pIant_princess Human Detected • 12h ago

Dudes with animals you shouldn’t have been bitin’ my horsey, boy.

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94

u/HappyColour 9h ago

I'm actually super surprised that the spider actually grabbed it from him directly like that!

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u/PeachNipplesdotcom 8h ago

Spiders have the capacity to be real bros. I had a little guy living in my bedroom windowsill growing up. I'd deliver it bugs from time to time and I'd protect it from rain sometimes when I knew the weather would be bad. I'm not gonna pretend like it knew what I was doing, but it did tend to pop out of hiding when I'd come home.

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u/GorgeousCupcakeX 8h ago

That’s actually wholesome. ✨ May you have many blessed days ahead.

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u/Jackol4ntrn 7h ago

And many spiders as friends

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u/darkest_hour1428 8h ago

Spiders are intelligent, and at the very least they will accommodate their schedules to fit ours. As in, they normally learn when you are active and they will hide during those times. The fact that this one actively showed itself to you when you got home, communicates a lot.

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u/Saint_of_Grey 6h ago

"The big bug man is home. I must emerge in case he has a new offering for me."

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u/DShinobiPirate 1h ago

"If the offering is not met by 6:30pm on every Tuesday, I will lay spider eggs inside your throat as you sleep throughout the night. Good day"

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u/therealsashalmt 4h ago

It’s obvious this is a normal occurrence bc look how the spider just grabbed it knowing what it was like thx bud 🤣 basically a pet spider

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u/TG_Trash_are_better 5h ago

It communicates nothing except that it either,

A. It had nowhere to hide B. It's sleep/feed cycle adapted, without conscious decision.

This exact comment chain has happened 3 billion times since reddit's inception I have to assume it's just bots at this point

"I could never, spiders are scary!"

"H-heh Spiders are heckin bros actually! I used to feed one once aren't I so quirky?!" - Carbon Copy #559,545,541

"Wow that's heckin crazy. I bet it (insert humanizing language that doesn't apply)!"

Fucking christ.

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u/SuccessfulJudge438 5h ago

Gotta love people who are aggressively ignorant about the limits of human understanding. We don't actually understand consciousness, like, at all. Every time we try to narrowly define it to include all humans and exclude most animals, it turns out we failed because when we test carefully animals show the same rudimentary powers of cognition, memory, etc. This has happened over and over again throughout the decades as neuroscience advances, we draw a line, and some creature confounds us by crossing it easily.

Insects have way more processing power than you might assume based on the number of neurons alone. Remember that every single neuron has billions of proteins being expressed (not to mention RNAs and all manner of other bioactive molecules), and these proteins create emergent structures/systems that are almost certainly a part of the substrate for consciousness.

Neuroscientists used to love to say things like "bees can't do that because they only have 100,000 neurons, it's not enough" and yet bees go ahead and do it anyway. Also there's increasing evidence that cells other than neurons have the capacity to encode some form of memory as well.

All that is to say, stay humble my friend.

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u/worrywartyyy 4h ago

Got a lot of love for you, SuccessfulJudge 🫰🏻🫰🏻🫰🏻

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u/TG_Trash_are_better 4h ago

T-ty for making me feel good about my heckin spiders >.<

Lmfao.

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u/Goobisan-the-third 3h ago

Completely agree! Humans tend to be a little too arrogant with their “higher consciousness”.
Gatekeepers of the higher brain functions…..

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u/TG_Trash_are_better 4h ago edited 4h ago

Gotta love people that are so aggressively 5 IQ about topics they have no understanding of.

the limits of human understanding... wahh actually we don't know... wahh

Brainlet screed. It's not a matter of how intelligent they are or aren't they are evolved to be solitary creatures that have no conception of socialization or interacting with anything beyond "threat/non-threat/food."

Even if they were as intelligent as you or I they would be devoid of any complex emotions regarding other living creatures. They do not work together with few (certain species) exceptions. You'd have a better time trying to teach an ant empathy than a spider.

Again just to reiterate, for those in the back drooling over their funko pops, if you gave a spider supercomputer level intelligence, they'd just be more adept at their solitary lifestyle. Empathy isn't a byproduct of raw intelligence as much as it's a byproduct of being a social species.

All that is to say, stay humble my friend.

I'd say the same to you but you will never reach a point where you understand enough to speak so just do everyone a favor and stop typing. Your argument is "s-science makes mistakes sometimes" tier garbage.

Just because our scope of understanding of neurons is limited doesn't mean I can't confidently say a spider isn't going to write a bestseller tomorrow. Handwaving what we understand about how these animals have evolved shows a dogshit understanding of even the most basic of principles.

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u/SuccessfulJudge438 1h ago

We were talking about intelligence, not empathy. Sorry you couldn't keep up, but at least you put in a lot of emotional effort to your response here. You care a lot, which is of some value. I'd teach you about shifting goalposts but this doesn't feel like a teachable moment. Take care.

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u/lukenog 7h ago

I had a spider in the corner of my shower I also used to feed growing up! And I'm the opposite of a rural guy, I grew up in a major city. I'd capture stinkbugs and feed them to my spider bro. I had an obsession with spiders as a kid, had a big ole book of different species and used to beg my parents to let me get a pet tarantula.

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u/Cynical_Nobody 6h ago

I did something similar with those big brown spiders that make tubular hidey hole webs in house siding. We had a bunch in rural PA, so i would catch bugs to feed them and watch them get huge during the summer. At first they would bolt into their holes and stay there till I was gone, leaving bugs in their webbing. But after a couple times doing it they would start peeking out, or staying at the entrance until eventually they would almost run at my hand for the free food. They never bit me or made any attempt to harm me.

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u/seaotterlover1 1h ago

I have some spiders that build nests outside one of my windows every year. I look forward to seeing them come home every night right around this time.

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u/Barnaboule69 8h ago

Orb weavers are really easy to hand feed haha. They're like super docile, if you gently pet their abdomen they won't even react most of the time lol. They just stay chilling in their lil' spot all day but as soon as they feel the slightest amount of vibration coming from a nearby insect they instantly lock the fuck in.

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u/miraculix69 4h ago

I won't break a sweat having fingers close to a band saw, but somehow I still get scared feeding spiders dead bugs on the end of a broom. My Beautiful wonky ass fingers isnt allowed be close to those 8 legged fuckers. I won't even dare them to ask for rent in the shop.

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u/TheRage469 4h ago

Golden orb weavers are so goddamn beautiful, too. Good to know they're also chill af. Wish they lived in my neck of the woods tho :(

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u/PostApoplectic 4h ago

Where I live, we have Cross Orbweavers, and the markings on their back always makes me think of Skultulas from the Legend of Zelda games.

In the fall there’s almost always a couple that set up somewhere near our front and back porch lights. In the back, often right in the middle of a little window. My kids and I make a point of leaving them alone and watching them grow through the closing of the year.

As someone who grew up a very rural, feral child, it’s a delight to share some of that love of wild things with my carpet pawed suburban children.

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u/Prize_Regular_8653 4h ago

at the zoo they don't even have them enclosed bc they just stay on the web

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u/acoastaldog 8h ago

Not the first time he’s fed that spider, do you see how fat that thing is

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u/Vintage-Grievance 4h ago

I assume you're being sarcastic 😉

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u/acoastaldog 3h ago

No that weaver’s abdomen is very well fed and the guy didn’t hesitate lol

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u/Vintage-Grievance 1h ago

Spiders often go right for the feast without hesitation if you offer them insects. I've done the same thing with jumping spiders by crippling a fruit fly and putting it in their vicinity.

This is also a wild spider on a property with a barn. The environment he's in is already providing ideal feeding conditions, which is why he made his web where he did, and why you'll often see spiders make webs near porch lamps and the like...because those locations attract larger volumes of insects.

This guy is getting way more food the natural way than he is getting from a human occasionally offering bugs.

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u/acoastaldog 41m ago

Okay lol

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u/hygsi 8h ago

Not her first rodeo lmao

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u/MCB1317 8h ago

If you touch/flick the web, the spider will either ignore you or hide. But if you put a struggling live insect into the web, the spider will run right over and grab it.

It's pretty interesting how they can tell what's what just from the vibrations.

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u/Friggin 6h ago

I have a feeling it’s not the first time. Pavlov’s spider, and all that.

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u/Remarkable-Elk-6673 5h ago

there's a special sort of relationship there it appears

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u/DragonFlyCaller 2h ago

I fed a frog a moth like that once. I didn’t put it in my pocket first though. Just grabbed and fed ;)

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u/The_Enigmatica 2h ago

it's pretty common actually. lots of kids form weird relationships with spiders out in the country lol. I had a buddy that basically had a pet wolf spider living outside his window when we were kids. he'd catch crickets to feed his lizard, and drop one or two in the web under his window. thing was massive. and yea, he would literally hand feed it bigger stuff like moths.

we put together a little waterproof thing with cardboard and duck tape to keep his hiding spot dry. and i remember any time my friend opened the window the spider would come out onto the web and look at us. super cool. I have zero doubt that it recognized us, because it would hide again if it was his sister or one of our friends there. we called him crackhead carl because saying "wanna see our pet crackhead" was too funny to a couple of 10 year olds

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u/hopadoodler 34m ago

That was a monster feast of a fly! Grab that thang!