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Comment by traceroute66 | Hacker News Reader

Portia labiata spiders are also fun:

"Females try to kill and eat their mates during or after copulation, while males use tactics to survive copulation, but sometimes females outwit them."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portia_labiata

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also check out the book Children of Time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Time_(novel)). Reading it now (not sure how I missed it originally), pretty good evolutionary world building based on this species :)

Children of time is such a great work of fiction. It was strange for me to root for spiders over humans

A book that has pride of place on my shelf. I found myself speed-reading through the drama surrounding the human beings so I could slowly savour the progress of the spider civilization.

A truly wonderful work of sci-fi

> The conspicuous main eyes provide vision more acute than a cat's during the day

Curious how the spider processes all this information with their tiny brain ...

Tiny brain with 8 eyes…

I was always wondering if brains all these spiders and flies have the capability to reconstruct the surroundings in 3D like mammals do, or their sophisticated eyes are only light and motions sensors. Observing e.g. fly evading flyswatter which resembles random walk, it's likely the latter.

Their eyes are not going to have evolved past the point of providing any incremental benefit, and a fly is after all a simple critter who's main concern is finding a pile of shit to eat, and avoid being swatted by a cow's tail. I'd guess their eyes (& visual system) are perhaps better regarded as crude visual sensor rather than anything much like the visual system of an animal that benefits from recognizing whether that shitty ass belongs to a cow vs a tiger.

In general it may be the latter. Portia spiders in particular, though, will observe a target, observe their surroundings, then navigate a complex path around and through structures that block their vision of the target to reach a destination that will allow them to attack it. Suggesting very much that they form some kind of model of their surroundings, plan a path through it, and remember that path.

SF author (and marine biologist) Peter Watts as a great little overview of Portia's "thought process" along with links to some more in-depth articles: https://rifters.com/real/2009/01/iterating-towards-bethlehem...

I'll have to check that out! I linked Children of Time in this thread which also does this well using this species

Why is it eight-legged creatures doing this what’s going on

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