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Comment by teeray | Hacker News Reader

It’s always amusing in the garden center at Home Depot looking at the enormous spider webs (and the fat spiders) around their sodium vapor lamps. It must be that the number of calories required to produce bioluminescence to create this effect must be greater than the calories that could be derived from hunting that way. But if someone else provided that free energy for hunting…

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Or you are observing evolution in action. A bioluminescent spider would likely be an easy target for birds or bats. One by the lamp is not because hunters have simply not adapted yet. Or maybe, spider webs used to be enormous and profitable everywhere, only that insects dying globally makes them profitable now only in those light spots.

Interesting. I sometimes wonder how they end up near the lights: there wouldn't seem to be a light source at night for most of their evolution. Maybe they used the moon in the background.

But is it correct to assume that, if something is naturally possible (e.g., bioluminescence), and provides significant evolutionary advantage, the species will evolve it?

If so, why are we the only intelligent ones (so far)? Why didn't chimpanzees, sharing a common ancestor with us 7 million years ago, evolve intelligence?

My guess is that apes with similar interests started socializing because it was enjoyable and more stimulating than hanging out with apes who could not/would not perceive the nuances of the world the same way.

My guess is that spiders build webs in many places, but only the successful ones remain. In other words, survivor bias.

This spider-webs-covering-lights phenomenon is replaced over and over and over in every Northern Ontario community. It was unreal when I worked at a camp on Lake-of-the-Woods.

I am sure there was enough webs that you could stuff several pillows with them.

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