Large, terrifying and impressive...
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...but enough about my penis. ;-) Here's a spider in Australia carrying a mouse up the side of a fridge.
In Australia: giant spider carrying a mouse is horrifying and impressive
Forget pizza rat and cigarette crab and prepare yourself for spider mouse, the super strong and very hungry Australian arachnid
Now, that's pretty cool!
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@DoctorJones +1 because AAAAAARGH! WHERE'S THE ROLLED UP ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA!?
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@DoctorJones said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
...but enough about my penis. ;-) Here's a spider in Australia carrying a mouse up the side of a fridge.
In Australia: giant spider carrying a mouse is horrifying and impressive
Forget pizza rat and cigarette crab and prepare yourself for spider mouse, the super strong and very hungry Australian arachnid
Now, that's pretty cool!
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@DoctorJones said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
...but enough about my penis. ;-) Here's a spider in Australia carrying a mouse up the side of a fridge.
In Australia: giant spider carrying a mouse is horrifying and impressive
Forget pizza rat and cigarette crab and prepare yourself for spider mouse, the super strong and very hungry Australian arachnid
Now, that's pretty cool!
Yay, spiders!
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@DoctorJones said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
Now, that's pretty cool!
The spider's cool - but I would be beyond creeped out if I walked into it's web!
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mmmm, fetishes for breakfast!
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This is why everyone needs an assault rifle in their house.
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@anonymous234 said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
This is why everyone needs a
n assault rifletactical nuclear warhead in their house.FTFY.
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@mott555 said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
@anonymous234 said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
This is why everyone needs a
n assault rifletactical nuclear warhead in their house.FTFY.
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@DoctorJones I know.
I used to be scared of spiders, but now I'm only scared of certain spiders (brown recluse, black widow, banana, etc.)
Too many moments of awesome with spiders.
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How did this go in Terry Pratchett's FourEcks (his parody version of Oz)?
Quoting from memory here:
Death walked into the library and demanded:
BRING ME THE NAMES OF ALL DANGEROUS ANIMALS IN FOURECKS
When Alfred had dug him out from under the avalanche of books, he stated somewhat chastened
BRING ME ALL NAMES OF THE HARMLESS ANIMALS IN FOURECKS
Alfred and Death waited. After a while, a small leaflet fluttered into Death's hands. It read: "Some of the sheep."
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@Rhywden said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
How did this go in Terry Pratchett's FourEcks (his parody version of Oz)?
Quoting from memory here:
Death walked into the library and demanded:
BRING ME THE NAMES OF ALL DANGEROUS ANIMALS IN FOURECKS
When Alfred had dug him out from under the avalanche of books, he stated somewhat chastened
BRING ME ALL NAMES OF THE HARMLESS ANIMALS IN FOURECKS
Alfred and Death waited. After a while, a small leaflet fluttered into Death's hands. It read: "Some of the sheep."Seems Terry and Douglas Adams disagree.
Then again, the description of Earth could be was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Earth.
(Assuming that Oz is actually part of Earth).
Or, maybe Oz is the not-harmless part.
Fuck, that was funnier in my head.
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@DoctorJones Had the chance to move to oz a few years ago, but fuck that.
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@lucas1 said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
@DoctorJones Had the chance to move to oz a few years ago, but fuck that.
What's not to like about killer flying monkeys, witches that can make your axe chop you up, birds that devour sentient straw men, and... Russians.
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@accalia said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
A friend of mine in Argentina once encountered a massive spider--he described it as being like a tarantula the size of his hand--in his bathroom. So he did what any self-respecting South American would do: he went and got a lighter and a Raid can and let the spider have it.
After enduring the gout of flame for a long moment, the tarantula ran off under his bathtub.
It emerged a minute or so later, and he sprayed it with flame again... and again it ran off. By this time, he was thinking, "this is some sort of Terminator spider!" So when it came out the third time, he tried a different tactic: he sprayed it with Raid first and then flamethrowered it.
Being covered in flammable bug spray finally did the trick. He said the tarantula "basically exploded" at this point.
Moral of the story: Killing it with fire is all well and good, but you have to know how to go about it!
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@masonwheeler And then he had to scrape off bits of spider from everywhere.
Not my idea of a good day.
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@masonwheeler said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
@accalia said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
A friend of mine in Argentina once encountered a massive spider--he described it as being like a tarantula the size of his hand--in his bathroom. So he did what any self-respecting South American would do: he went and got a lighter and a Raid can and let the spider have it.
After enduring the gout of flame for a long moment, the tarantula ran off under his bathtub.
It emerged a minute or so later, and he sprayed it with flame again... and again it ran off. By this time, he was thinking, "this is some sort of Terminator spider!" So when it came out the third time, he tried a different tactic: he sprayed it with Raid first and then flamethrowered it.
Being covered in flammable bug spray finally did the trick. He said the tarantula "basically exploded" at this point.
Moral of the story: Killing it with fire is all well and good, but you have to know how to go about it!
Fire behaves quite a bit different from what people expect.
Also, so does electricity. (There are some people with a condition where they never sweat, so they're more impervious to shock).
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@masonwheeler said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
So he did what any self-respecting South American would do: he went and got a lighter and a Raid can and let the spider have it.
how do you deal with giant and terrifying spiders up there?
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@Jarry In the USA? Generally by not encountering them in the first place.
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@masonwheeler well, can't argue with the effectiveness of that technique
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A "large" spider up here is about the size of a U.S. quarter.
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@Rhywden said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
How did this go in Terry Pratchett's FourEcks (his parody version of Oz)?
Quoting from memory here:
Death walked into the library and demanded:
BRING ME THE NAMES OF ALL DANGEROUS ANIMALS IN FOURECKS
When Alfred had dug him out from under the avalanche of books, he stated somewhat chastened
BRING ME ALL NAMES OF THE HARMLESS ANIMALS IN FOURECKS
Alfred and Death waited. After a while, a small leaflet fluttered into Death's hands. It read: "Some of the sheep."To be fair, almost all animals are potentially dangerous in some way, and thus very few animals are truly harmless.
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@mott555 said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
A "large" spider up here is about the size of a U.S. quarter.
Is that the same size as an old dutch quarter?
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@Jarry said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
@masonwheeler said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
So he did what any self-respecting South American would do: he went and got a lighter and a Raid can and let the spider have it.
how do you deal with giant and terrifying spiders up there?
I don't think we really have any but I just let spiders do what they want, I haven't been bit that I have noticed. I try to save them from other people if I am nearby and people see one, I just put them outside.
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@Rhywden said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
@masonwheeler And then he had to scrape off bits of spider from everywhere.
Not my idea of a good day.
On the one hand, yeah, kinda gross.
On the other hand, this happens because you got to kill a giant, home-invading tarantula with a homemade flamethrower!
Totally worth it. :D
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@Lathun said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
I try to save them from other people if I am nearby and people see one, I just put them outside.
I do the same. They are doing a precious job: catching freakin mosquitoes !
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@masonwheeler said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
you got to kill a giant, home-invading tarantula with a homemade flamethrower!
I'm willing to bet that char-broiled tarantula is a delicacy in some parts of the world.
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@TimeBandit Meh. A decent bug-zapper light can do a better job of that, and without the biting.
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@PleegWat said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
@mott555 said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
A "large" spider up here is about the size of a U.S. quarter.
Is that the same size as an old dutch quarter?
I don't know, and searching for Dutch quarter only returns results about Potsdam.
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@masonwheeler said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
@TimeBandit Meh. A decent bug-zapper light can do a better job of that, and without the biting.
I've never been bitten by a spider (that I know of).
And a bug-zapper light cost money up-front and electricity to power it.Spiders do it for
freefood
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@PleegWat said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
3 grammes, 19mm diameter
Close. I guess a US quarter is ~24mm in diameter.
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@TimeBandit I'm pretty sure that bats and birds are far more efficient at catching mosquitoes than spiders could ever hope to be. Partly because they, like mosquitoes (and unlike spiders), can fly...
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@anotherusername Hint: it's a trap !
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@TimeBandit I'm pretty sure the average mosquito, even if it happened to fly right through that web, could probably do so with maybe about a 15% chance of getting stuck somewhere.
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@anotherusername said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
@TimeBandit I'm pretty sure the average mosquito, even if it happened to fly right through that web, could probably do so with maybe about a 15% chance of getting stuck somewhere.
But 100% chances of sticking to the face of pesky humans that walk through it
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@TimeBandit that's because they want to land on humans, but there's no particular reason for them to want to land on a spider's web.
Now, if the spiders could make their webs smell like humans, they'd probably catch tons of mosquitoes. But I for one don't want any spiders trying to gather BO from me while I'm sleeping.
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@mott555 said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
A "large" spider up here is about the size of a U.S. quarter.
For a split second I read it as 'the size of a quarter U.S."
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@anotherusername said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
@TimeBandit that's because they want to land on humans,
I was talking about humans walking into webs
but there's no particular reason for them to want to land on a spider's web.
They don't, they just fly through it and get stuck there.
Here is a video to show you that even large mosquito can get stuck in them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJan4tQBKN0
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@TimeBandit can, sure, but in any significant numbers, I really doubt it.
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@anotherusername said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
@TimeBandit can, sure, but in any significant numbers, I really doubt it.
From the size of some spiders I saw, I don't doubt it
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@xaade said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
There are some people with a condition where they never sweat, so they're more impervious to shock
Impervious to shock, you say. Interesting. At what voltage? DC or AC? If AC, what frequency?
Yeah, I'm calling "bullshit" on that.
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@tufty Voltage doesn't kill you, Amperes do.
I've had 15000 volts through my body while doing the electron wind experiment with shoddy school kit. It hurts, but it doesn't kill you because the amps are low (V = IR).
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@tufty said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
@xaade said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
There are some people with a condition where they never sweat, so they're more impervious to shock
Impervious to shock, you say. Interesting. At what voltage? DC or AC? If AC, what frequency?
Yeah, I'm calling "bullshit" on that.
I don't remember.
I just remember him holding a live wire.
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@lucas1 Yes, yes. I know that.
What I was getting at is that although the skin has a relatively high resistance (usually somewhere between 1KΩ and 100KΩ dry), whereas the interior of the body (being wetter, amongst other things) has a much lower resistance.
Under no circumstances, though, does human skin have infinite resistance, so being "impervious to (DC) shocks" is obviously cobblers; at some point, you're gonna get hurt. Generally that hits when you have a potential difference in the low hundreds of volts, you start getting dielectric breakdown in the skin, current enters your squishy bits where resistance might be a few tens of Ω and things start getting crispy.
Once AC comes into the equation, though, all bets are off. In a number of fairly common circumstances, the skin acts like the dielectric in a capacitor, and the current "jumps the gap".
AC mains shocks are pretty unpleasant. I've had a few. Recently, even, when I learned that "a UPS keeps feeding you current even if you get a hit and trip the RCD at the wall". Don't try debugging a shonky power adaptor with its casing off when it's plugged into a UPS, kids...
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@tufty I've had some (AC shocks) as well.
I am sure @xaade meant that he didn't seem to get hurt in any noticeable way, which is believable.
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@tufty said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
AC mains shocks are pretty unpleasant. I've had a few.
110V: not that bad.
220V: fuck that is unpleasant.
347V: please, never again. Once was enough. It felt like I was hit on the forehead with a sledgehammer.
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@TimeBandit Depends on the person, which seems to be the point of the discussion. I got zapped by a T1 line once (something like 90V I think) and it felt like I got kicked. On the other hand, a good friend of mine could hold on to a 110V with no problem, and didn't even think our (extremely painful to me) electric fences were very uncomfortable.
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@mott555 said in Large, terrifying and impressive...:
@TimeBandit Depends on the person
Exactly. Up to 110V, it doesn't really bother me.
When I see 347V+, I reach for the main switch ;)
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@lucas1 Yeah, but that doesn't make them impervious to shocks, does it? Holding a live wire, as long as you're only touching one conductor and are well insulated, for example, is not dangerous of itself. It's "only" dangerous if you touch the other conductor(s) or manage to earth yourself.
As an aside, one of my grandfather's favourite tricks was to pop the bonnet on his van (a "Commer") whilst the engine was running, feign poking around looking for some problem, put a finger on the top of a spark plug, then ask you to go and get something from the van. He was expecting the shock. You weren't. Bloody dangerous and irresponsible, my grandfather. :)
Even getting a mains hit needn't be life-threatening. Grabbing live and neutral of a single phase supply in one hand, as long as you're not earthed, keeps "potential" danger away from your squishy pumpy bits. Hurts like hell, but probably ain't gonna kill you.
One hand in the pocket when dealing with HV.
Twenty-five cent coin (Netherlands) - Wikipedia
