Interesting how the hourglass mark is drawn on the top of the abdomen instead of underneath. I guess it makes the spider more recognizable as a black widow even if it’s not as anatomically accurate.
As someone who lives in a place where I have to check any black spiders I see to make sure they’re not black widows, that’s the first thing I noticed, too. It’s not like drawing the hourglass on the bottom makes it harder to see/recognize, especially when the text explicitly identifies it as a black widow.
I guess the artist has never seen an actual black widow and this is done out of ignorance rather than as a conscious design choice. It’s possible that there are multiple subspecies of black widow, some of which have the markings on the top, but I’ve never heard of that. Then again, I’m no biologist…
I’m from Australia and I always thought it was on the top. Turns out our black widow, affectionately known as a redback, has the marking on top. Not sure if the two are actually related, though.
Yes, they are all in the Latrodectus family, all have venom containing the neurotoxin latrotoxin, which causes latrodectism (pain, vomiting, muscle rigidity, sweating).
Yeah when I looked them up via image search in case I might be wrong, and there were occasional depictions with the hourglass on top but they seemed to be photoshopped images or illustrations that would be used for a “5 ways to kill these pests!!” clickbait websites.
In most cases it probably is from a lack of real world exposure to the spiders in question. They were pretty common where I grew up and I was taught to be on the lookout for the black shiny abdomen because you can’t always see the hourglass.
Black widows are so common where I am, I don’t even need to see that hourglass to know it’s one. I can even identify males, which don’t look very similar to the iconic females.
They also do sometimes have red markings on their back. Just do an image search for black widows; many of them have a whole band of red that goes from the belly up the back. Can’t say I’ve seen any like that IRL, though.
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, With such name as “Never again”. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
For tomorrow, we arm for our own type of war.
– modified heavily from obvious; also TIL that “nevermore” can also be interpreted as “never again”
Fredric Brown wrote a fun very short story (he was known for page-long short stories) about a scientist who discovered immortality and took the serum, but he had a cold at the time, so the bacteria also became immortal, took over his body, became pneumonia and put him in a coma. Eventually, his colleagues buried him.
Edit: Found the story. Got the details slightly wrong, but the gist was the same- fb2.top/…/part-16
I just hate how fast we reacted to that damn turtle with a plastic straw in its nose and now we will forever suck on moist paper straws for the rest of our lives if we are lucky. But we do shit about the real bulk of the plastic in our oceans. Oh but the cute turtle… We must act now!!!
The world is doomed by greed brothers. We are fucked.
I dimly remember my grandmother having straws made from actual straw (or something similar at least). I don’t remember how well they worked unfortunately
Every time this comes up I have three words to say that seem like a perfect solution and I don’t understand why it isn’t the default: dry pasta straws.
Compostable, cheap, stronger than paper, even edible if you really want
The good news is the soft plastic bags that turtles think are jellyfish are still getting dumped into the ocean en masse. That’s what you get turtles for ruining our iced latte drinking experience /jk
People really think this. Most peoples knowledge stops at “evolution is when thing become better”. And people that do realize don’t talk about evolutionary pressure in the gut microbiome in the comic community.
I mean, what kind of immortality are we talking about here?
If your cells have been locked into “last known good configuration” then there’s no reason for anything inside you to evolve because nothing is changing.
Or maybe you aren’t immutable, but like a ship of theseus, in which case why would your internal biome evolve away from the eternally balanced environment it lives in? Crabs haven’t evolved for millenia because once perfection is achieved, where else can you evolve?
Tldr, what I’m saying is, vampires should be more worried about bursting with crabs than dinos.
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