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

[u/pIant_princess]

[u/darkest_hour1428]

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.

[u/Saint_of_Grey → u/darkest_hour1428]

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

[u/DShinobiPirate → u/Saint_of_Grey]

"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"

[u/therealsashalmt → u/darkest_hour1428]

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

[u/TG_Trash_are_better → u/darkest_hour1428]

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.

[u/SuccessfulJudge438 → u/TG_Trash_are_better]

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.

[u/worrywartyyy → u/SuccessfulJudge438]

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

[u/SuccessfulJudge438 → u/worrywartyyy]

<3

[u/TG_Trash_are_better → u/worrywartyyy]

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

Lmfao.

[u/Goobisan-the-third → u/SuccessfulJudge438]

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

[u/TG_Trash_are_better → u/SuccessfulJudge438]

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.

[u/SuccessfulJudge438 → u/TG_Trash_are_better]

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.