Spiders (especially jumping spiders) are much smarter than you think

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Chris S.
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Spiders (especially jumping spiders) are much smarter than you think

Post by Chris S. »

Ars Technica has an article: Spiders are much smarter than you think; researchers are discovering surprising capabilities among a group of itsy-bitsy arachnids.

Article here. If you're in a hurry, scroll down to the heading "Spiders play mind games" for the most interesting bits.

As usual, for Ars, the reader comments are informative. To get the best, click on the comments and sort them by "insightful."

--Chris S.

MarkSturtevant
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Re: Spiders (especially jumping spiders) are much smarter than you think

Post by MarkSturtevant »

That is very interesting! I get strongly conflicting impressions when watching a spider build an orb web. Are they mainly automatons playing out a fixed action plan of behaviors? Or are they also thinking about what they are doing?
Mark Sturtevant
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ldflan
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Re: Spiders (especially jumping spiders) are much smarter than you think

Post by ldflan »

"Are they mainly automatons playing out a fixed action plan of behaviors? Or are they also thinking about what they are doing?"

I don't know, but I strongly suspect the answer is in some ways "both."

A British naturalist and fellow of the Linnean society named Benjamin T. Lowne performed a very interesting experiment with wood pigeons to try to determine if their unique nest building is entirely an innate skill, or learned. He penned a wonderful little article in an 1879 issue of the British periodical "Popular Science Review Quarterly" that describes the experiment here:

https://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wa ... ne1879.pdf

I won't go into how he did the experiment, but I think his conclusions (rather unscientific I suppose, but getting into the mind of another creature arguably requires as much imagination as science) are fascinating. He basically says that his impression was that the birds, who had never seen a proper wood pigeon nest but figured out how to build one when given the materials and environment they needed to do so, seemed to have a special aptitude for figuring out how to built a nest in the wood pigeon way, as though they were remembering the process based on circumstances that triggered them to think it through.

"The whole phenomenon had a striking similarity to the slow return of memory, brought about by a series of associations. There can be no doubt as long as the birds remained in a comparatively confined space, without the use of their wings, and without a natural branching tree to build in, they would never have built a characteristic nest. My own belief is, that the tree acted as a stimulus to their instinct, and that the natural surroundings prompted them, as it were, and awakened their dormant inherited powers. Although my impression is, that the final site of the nest was determined by the place where the sticks fell, which they failed to fix above them, I am by no means assured in my own mind that even this was not determined by a subsequent awakening of an instinctive act, and that the sticks were intentionally dropped upon the branch below them. The want of readiness in some things which these birds exhibited at first can hardly be considered surprising, when we remember the number of generations in which it is probable no natural nest had been built. Indeed, it is quite possible, and I think even probable, that their progenitors had laid their eggs on hay or straw on the floor of a dove-cot for fifty years or longer."

The suggestion is that the mind of a creature may be predisposed to think in certain patterns, such that these kinds of behaviors are as much "remembered" as figured out in the moment. So perhaps spiders are indeed figuring out web construction as they go along, but are also strongly predisposed to figure out the problem in a given and highly determined way because their brains have evolved to think the problem through in certain ways. What we call intelligence and innate behaviors are probably both, it seems to me, usually shackled to the evolved characteristics of the brain in many ways...

Leonard

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