Look who is playing peek-a-boo
I decided to call this one Nigel. Cheeky thing.
Look who is playing peek-a-boo
Alan Stainer
Tech head through and through.
Alan Stainer
Tech head through and through.
Look who is playing peek-a-boo
I decided to call this one Nigel. Cheeky thing.
Heidi Bouman I found you another spider. ;o)
That’s nothing Alan, the spider we caught on the stairs last week wouldn’t fit in a large pint glass :s.
Last seen roaming Storrington in your direction ;)
It’s probably a younger brother of your one then Malcolm Oakley
Thanks Sherrill Duce :D
I like Nigel Alan Stainer :))
His Great Grand Daddy came round my place last year…
https://flic.kr/p/a6eKmE
I have two cats… who are too lazy to catch spiders.
I have an Old Tom (a nonagenarian) is past pouncing on Boris, but my little 10 month old Queen is a game girl when it comes to anything small and scurrying about.
The “Harvester'” is actually not a true spider, although they do look exactly like one.
The creature in the photo-header is not a ‘Harvester’…it’s a real spider.
Pussy.. that is barely a spider at all, THIS is a spider
Almost fifty years ago, I was bitten while I was sleeping on my right-arm by a ‘brown recluse’ spider. My fore-arm became ‘reddish’ ‘hot’ and swollen for 72 hrs. or so and returned to normal…but the area of the bite refused to heal! (an area the size of a quarter)
A ‘crusty-scab’ would form over the bite, but the instant it was touched the scab would slough-off leaving ‘weeping’ tissue underneath.
It was not all that painful like a burn would be…in fact, the ‘raw’ tissue itself didn’t cause any pain, just the very edges of the wound would hurt if scraped with a nail. It took weeks for the bite-area to heal, and even now there is whitish-patch of skin on my fore-arm with no pigment or hair present! (it’s barely the size of a dime now)
About four years after I was bitten, a man named “Moon Mullins” who was a circuit-court judge in N. Las Vegas (an elected position there) was bitten on the heel of a foot while sliding his foot into a house-slipper after taking a shower…Mullins suffered from “Type-2′ diabetes that did not require insulin to control, just a very controlled diet.
To make a long story short…the spider-venom caused so much tissue necrosis in the foot it became gangrenous and had to be amputated…and within two years the leg as well! He died at Sunrise Hospital the same year he lost his leg.
The death was attributed to ‘diabetic complications’…but the real truth is the spider-venom killed him! An amount so small it would measure at a millionth of a gram!
That means the venom is as least as potent as plutonium as a deadly agent if present anywhere in the body, no matter the quantity.
It may take years for cancer to occur from radiation exposure…just as it took years for the spider-venom to kill.
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It made me think that had I been older when bitten, and maybe not quite so strong as I was then, I could have lost my right arm.
Alan Stainer Thanks!
You would be surprised to learn just ‘how many’ people there are who spend their lives studying various spider-venoms.
It is regarded as a ‘worthy pursuit’ because of the tremendous implications involved in knowing how these venoms work…it’s possible a synthetic ‘venom’ could be used as a ‘specific target’ regarding destroying astrocytomas in brain tissue for instance, which are notoriously resistant to any treatment (like the one that killed George Harrison)
Imagine being able to utterly dissolve a tumor in hours, instead of weeks or months!
With no concurrent ‘side-effects’ that are frequently harmful of themselves.
Gerry Nightingale almost always we turn to nature to find the best answers. Spider silk is a case in point. Studying it has lead to materials that are stronger than steel.
Alan Stainer Yes…just so. it takes millions of dollars worth of sophisticated equipment and computer programming to manufacture something that still does not have all the qualities of common spider-silk…carbon-fibers tend to break-down under ultra-violet and oxygen exposure, yet spider-silk can last for decades exposed to the same conditions.