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Spiders on drugs.

22:46 / 01.10.06

I've been reading about spiders on drugs and how their web spinning is affected depending on what drug they've been given.

This is a normal web:

And this is the web of a spider on caffeine:

When spiders are given benzedrine they become impatient to finish the circles:

Apparently the spiders show similarities to human behaviours on drugs. It's fascinating.

I don't think you should go around giving spiders drugs, but it made me think, what do spiders think?

There was a spider on my wall this evening and I was looking at him. I was thinking about him, and then I looked away for a second and then when I looked back he'd legged it. And I thought maybe he somehow heard my thoughts, that I was interested in him, and that's what made him go.

So how does their brain work? I mean I know their brain cells are not geared up to psychological debate but how much thinking power do they have?

Do you think the spiders knew they were on drugs like we would know, or do you think they just felt weird?

How many brain cells does a spider have anyway?

paranoidwriter waves hello

22:55 / 01.10.06

I think they were spiked and they might have known it. The web might be a spider message that says "fuck off and stop spiking me". I dunno, I don't speak spider...

Plus, many creatures take drugs themselves, of their own Free Will.

When you eat, drink, smoke, exercise, take stimulants it causes chemical changes in your body and brain. Simple.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

23:14 / 01.10.06

Wasps get drunk. I don't know if it's on purpose or not.

23:15 / 01.10.06

So do some birds and definitely pigs. Pigs actively seek out rotten or fermented apples. Drunkards.

paranoidwriter waves hello

23:17 / 01.10.06

Many animals use drugs to reach trance-like (one might say) enlightened states. Not sure what they're thinking though.

One might ask them, but I suppose you need to lear their language and rules first, eh?

I like pigs.

23:22 / 01.10.06

I think parrots can certainly 'hear' your thoughts. My parrot knows if I think to give him a piece of apple or somethingl, but parrots are known to be clever. I don't know if the same can be said about spiders.

paranoidwriter waves hello

23:24 / 01.10.06

What about Magpies? Can they hear your thoughts?

23:49 / 01.10.06

How do you even give drugs to spiders?

I thought they lived exclusively on the blood of insects?

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

00:12 / 02.10.06

I recall reading/hearing/whatever something about deer deliberately seeking out rotting apples in orchards because they start to ferment after a bit and the deer can get a wicked buzz off them.

00:18 / 02.10.06

On the site it says that the nets were made by 'spiders fed by drug-dosed flies' which leads to the question how did the flies get drugged?

I also wonder if a web made by a stoned spider would look like a normal web to a stoned human?

01:50 / 02.10.06

Ha ha ha!

My feeling is that spiders don't think so much as they intuit the Tao, so here you have a fair representation of how the Tao is affected by drugs. That is, this is not so much a matter of drugs messing up the spider as the spider perceiving the Tao from a drugged perspective. The way you drug a fly is to drug a human and then when he poops you collect the flies that land on it. There are many ways to drug a human, including but not limited to: put drugs in a cow; drugged porn; grind up the drugs and mash them into a Grant Morrison interview; broadcast drugs.

06:18 / 02.10.06

Don't forget drugged onions!
I remember that article from yonks ago (I'm sre I was still at school) and was freaked by the idea that one of the worst possible drugs if you want to concentrate was caffeine, when everyone was popping the then-new Pro-Plus to finish their essays.

pointless & uncalled for

06:36 / 02.10.06

It's true, the only essay that caffiene will help you write is one entitled; I stayed up all night and bounced off the walls wishing I could write my damn essay and now I feel guilty and a little nauseous.

In Lapland a certain amount of reindeer hearding is done with fly agaric mushrooms.

17:37 / 02.10.06

I can't get past how beautiful the first web is.

18:00 / 02.10.06

spiders on drugs site.

Stoned spider web.

18:00 / 02.10.06

You should see the web of the spider on LSD...

18:23 / 02.10.06

This one?

18:38 / 02.10.06

To prove my own amzingness, I present:

Spiders Being Injected

Spider's Drinks Being Spiked

Of course one wonders why they didn't just feed them butterlies.

18:44 / 02.10.06

Here's another caffeine one. And by the way they don't feed them drugged flies;

While I was studying, we saw pictures of rats that had been drugged then had lights fixed to their backs then filmed in a box over time- so the end picture was where the rat had gone in the time it was drugged, making pretty patterns. A clean rat goes round in circles and criss crosses the box, then they showed all the variants- for example, a rat on E goes round and round twice as fast but didn't cross, repetitive behaviour. Fucked if I can find it on the web though.

18:58 / 02.10.06

The important question this raises to me is that of cannabis as a gateway drug, do spiders after taking cannabis then search out ever-stronger drugs to get their illicit highs such as LSD, crack-cocaine or even heroin.

Are spiders really to blame for increased drug use amongst insects or is the drug-crazed-spider-epidemic a symptom of our failure to deal with the junkie-fly-drug-menace that stains the rundown lawless inner-cities of our once great nation?