In a quiet university building at Oxford University, there is one of the worst nightmares of a spider-phobic person — a laboratory filled with thousands of cannibalistic spiders.
"I guess it's a lot of spiders..." Alistair McGregor said casually, swirling to grab a plump, long-legged woman who was fighting for her freedom. But we'll never have too much – they devour each other. ”
We stood in front of his spider room in his laboratory at Oxford University, home to 10,000 American indoor spiders and a herd of other disturbing animals, from centipedes to tarantulas. The air is deliberately moldy, and to mimic the dark corners they prefer to lurk, the walls are lined with shelves of glass jars, containers, and Petri dishes that support rows.
"Sometimes crickets will run away, and we can hear them singing in the aisles," McGregor chuckled softly—then quickly added that they had never let a single spider get away with it. (His students later told me that this happened a lot.) ）
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On the front of the room is a heavy door, like the hatch of a submarine. Because of the old age, sometimes the door would get stuck, and his students would be trapped inside.
Indoor spiders in the United States are the most common spiders in North America (Acknowledgements: Zaria Gorvett)
Keeping an eye on the exit, I picked up a jar and looked inside. A spider was reclining on a silver silk cushion. Eight long, thin legs protruded from under her perfectly rounded spherical body; it was so clumsy that it looked more like a marble that rolled over and crushed her. "They usually have a male there too, but she must have been close to him," McGregor said.
When they feel caught, they pull out more silk onto the victim and then pull it into their mouths.
Some spiders can eavesdrop on you from the other end of the room with their bristles. Other spiders are able to camouflage their bodies and live like a leaf. At least 18 species of spiders swim and fish, while the brown stealth spider has a powerful, flesh-and-blood venom (and a penchant for hiding in sheets and shoes).
But McGregor's arachnid greenhouse spider has only the ability to make rough three-dimensional webs. "They've been much later lately than those that make symmetrical cobwebs." He explained that it seemed to justify them to some extent. Instead, they produce creepy spider silk that hangs from chandeliers in horror movies.
American indoor spiders are "near-home"; although they can survive in the wild, they prefer to live with humans.
However, they are not underestimated. In North America, the most common spiders are surprisingly effective at trapping insects, and individuals are often seen dragging fragments of debris into their webs to hide behind. When they feel caught, they pull out more silk onto the victim and then pull it into their mouths. They then suck up the bodily fluids of their prey, leaving an empty shell in the back.
But McGregor's spider wasn't here to scare reporters. In recent years, scientists have moved away from their long-standing reliance on medical research stars like flies and rats to embrace a range of bizarre creatures, including near-invincible miniatures and fish that can hunt on land.
McGregor's lab is basically a breeding program for spiders
Spiders may also soon be part of this trend. In fact, they are ideal subjects for study for two reasons. First, they share a genetic secret with humans.
While we've evolved over 800 million years and have been separated, and they don't even have a proper heartbeat, spiders and humans are very similar. For example, we already know that spiders use the same gene Pax-6 as we do to make their four pairs of eyes. Take this ancient gene from humans and replace it with a spider version, and the real spider you create will grow normal human eyes.
According to a survey of North Carolina households, 68 percent of bathrooms and more than three-quarters of bedrooms have spiders (Acknowledgement: Wikimedi
Of course, many animals, from cats (90% common genes) to cows (80% common genes) are more 'close to humans'.
However, spiders have an advantage. In our evolutionary history, an ancient spider accidentally gave two complete sets of genetic instructions, rather than one. This is a big problem. This phenomenon has always existed in plants, but it has only happened five times throughout the entire history of the animal kingdom. Two of these occurred in the ancestors of all vertebrates, including humans.
However, there is a way that spiders have a compulsive advantage. In our evolutionary history, an ancient spider accidentally gave birth to a juvenile spider with two complete sets of genetic instructions, not one. That's a big deal. This phenomenon has always existed in plants, but it has only happened five times throughout the entire history of the animal kingdom. Two of these occurred in the ancestors of all vertebrates, including humans.
On the surface, the extra copy of each gene sounds like a very, very bad idea. After all, Down syndrome is caused by an extra chromosome. But they are actually the main drivers of evolution. When the first copy must continue to perform its original function, the second copy is released to accept the new role. In the early ancestors of vertebrates, they were thought to help turn soft tissues, such as cartilage, into bones.
By studying spiders, McGregor's team more generally understood the consequences of these rare events. This leads to the second reason why they are useful. Many additional genes play an important role in early development; in order to study their function, scientists need embryos.
Brown occult spiders have venom that corrode flesh and blood and like to hide in shoes (Acknowledgements: Alamy)
Here, spiders are not going to be beaten. People with amaphiobia may want to skip this paragraph unless they want to know that a female spider can lay as many as 400 eggs every five days. They are completely translucent, allowing scientists to observe the development of embryos without killing them.
We collected something that belonged to us from a student's basement – Alistair McGregor
To ensure he has a steady supply, McGregor's lab is basically a breeding program for spiders. It all started with a silk cocoon, which was woven by an expectant mother in the wee hours of the morning. These eggs are fertilized when they are laid (unlike some spiders, they fertilize their eggs in the ovaries), so each egg is at the exact same stage of development – which is very useful if you are a scientist.
Each cocoon has its own Petri dish that can develop for 10 days. When they first appeared, the spider larvae were immobile, hairless, and translucent, except for a little red in their eyes.
But within a few days, they were like their terrible parents. The covered Petri dishes turned into a squirming fluffy mass as they began to move around, making spider silk and eating their siblings.
It's a bit tricky place. They swallow each other well because they don't need to be fed. But leave them in your own device and eventually each Petri dish will end up with a very fat spider. Instead, some of the lucky survivors were separated and placed in their own private residences.
The world's spiders eat 400-800 million tons of prey each year, which is more than the combined weight of all humans on Earth (Acknowledgements: Zaria Gorve
Since then, they've been fed a feast of flies — mcGregor's other half of the lab studies fruit flies, by the way — and crickets from pet stores. Eventually, after several rounds of growth and fading off their hard shells, they grow to 9mm long and are ready to mate.
My host looked thoughtfully at a small bottle of spiders. "I was just wondering, are they mating, or is she about to eat him?" he said. In the wild, courtship seekers tend to run away after that (in contrast to male red widow spiders, who force themselves to feed females by constantly putting themselves on the female's jaws), but in this closed environment, there is little good ending for them. Fortunately, most spiders only need to mate once.
I was just wondering if they were mating or if she was about to eat him—Alistair McGregor
Now, all of McGregor's spider offspring are individual spiders from 10–20 spiders from Göttingen, Germany. "When scientists speak at conferences, they tend to show slideshows of where they collect animals — usually beautiful islands and beaches." "We were collected from a student's basement," he said. ”
According to legend, male long-legged spiders are poisonous, but their fangs are unable to penetrate human skin. In fact, the opposite is true: they are not poisonous, and
They can pierce human skin (Acknowledgement: Alamy)
While spiders have been studied for less than 10 years, it has already sparked some interesting insights into what is known as "gene replication." One example is the knee.
At first, a group of scientists at Georg-August University in Göttingen wondered why some spiders had relatively short legs, while others had creepy, slender types. They turned to a gene that was sure to find the answer: the dachshund gene, which was named after the ugly, stub-legged dachshund.
The scientists compared two ordinary indoor guests, the American indoor spider and the aptly named long-legged uncle — much to the horrors of arachnophobia sufferers around the globe because of its very long limbs. They looked for genetic differences — but didn't find them.
Instead, you see, both spiders have extra genetic replication. To find out which gene was added extra, the scientists extracted it from spider embryos in the United States. When mutant spiders are born, their knees merge with their legs, in a separate section —they don't have any kneecaps. This structure allows spiders to fly across the bathroom floor or carefully choose their route in a slimy spider web, caused by a huge evolutionary error.
There are other breakthroughs. Over the past few years, spider research has provided clues to a wide variety of diseases, such as heart disease and aging, and the proteins found in their venom could one day treat brain damage, muscle atrophy, and even impotence.
I would say that I would never look at their furry bodies, eight eyes and fangs in the same way... But, no, I'm sorry. They're still creepy.
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Original link: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170913-the-lab-thats-home-to-10000-spiders