#Random #AskFedi

[afreytes@mastodon.gamedev.place]

#Random #AskFedi

Spiders do not posess self consciousness, or at least I have never read that they do.

But...

Would a spider know or "know" or recognize a spider web not made by itself or one of its kind? Would a spider get caught in another spider's web?

(Please, do NOT ask "ai" or search engines (I could do that myself, cmon), answer from your own experience/expertise only)

PS: Now I wonder if there are spiders that hunt in packs, I have also never seen that.

[vilelasagna@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@afreytes Spiders that HUNT do it always alone, AFAIK, but some do build communal webs.

Also some spiders are spider hunting specialists, so they'll intentionally wander in other spiders webs to try and eat them.

As for more general understanding the structure of webs and whatnot, hard to say....

[clew@ecoevo.social]

well I just had a pleasant moment imagining how a spider reads any web, even their own. The spoke-and-spiral ones I might understand, but they’re relatively simple. Can they locate tension through the ones that are more cross-connected, do you suppose?

The experiments on this must be very photogenic sometimes…

@afreytes

[afreytes@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@clew I had not thought about web complexity. Imagine a spider getting lost in another spiders more complex web... Such a thing happens to me everytime I drive anywhere far

[afreytes@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@VileLasagna Solitary hunting is what I have always read. It makes me kinda sad TBH

[vilelasagna@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@afreytes Even communal webbing is generally uncommon. Vast majority are solitary. They're just too hungry =P

[licho@kolektiva.social]

@VileLasagna JRR Tolkien LIED TO ME. Do they at least speak the language of darkness that the one ring allows you to understand?

@afreytes

[vilelasagna@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@licho @afreytes For all the downsides that fucking ring HAD BETTER let me talk to spiders!

[licho@kolektiva.social]

@VileLasagna Bilbo could understand them in the Mirkwood. I don't remember if they understood him ^^'

@afreytes

[melioristicmarie@tech.lgbt]

@afreytes

is part of your assumption that humans can detect consciousness of other living beings?

the other parts of your toot are out of my wheelhouse, but this one bit is something i work at, namely human ways of knowing. and i can, with a mediocre english reading / writing man's degree of confidence, posit that living beings are aware they exist in ways humans can and cannot know.

humans are some of the youngest species on earth, spiders are more than 200 million years older than humans. any assertions we make are trivial compared to the knowing of spiders today. until a few thousand years ago europeans asserted the sun rotated around the earth. heck today english speakers claim an average / most common number calculator can 'learn', 'think' and 'hallucinate'.

[vilelasagna@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@licho @afreytes Maybe they're just a higher class of spider. More sophisticated... we're gonna have to bring Hornet to give some expert opinion on this one

[afreytes@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@melioristicmarie Humans cant even define intelligence, thats why they confuse stochastic generation of character strings as "AI"

Ive never read (and otherwise cannot presume to know!) that spiders posses self conciousness. But I'll tell you this, I dont assume that lacking consciousness means spiders are a lesser species as a whole

Asking: "How do spiders know which webs are theirs?"

Would make even more replyguys come out to argue with the question instead of answering in good faith

[melioristicmarie@tech.lgbt]

@afreytes 💜

[cptbutton@dice.camp]

@afreytes

I recall from the 2013 movie "Spiders" that "insects, like spiders"* form colonies. I don't recall if the colonial spiders hunt together though.

They wouldn't film it if it wasn't true!

* That is what the scientist said.