Taken in Namibia?
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Sometimes it happens that a person comes to the Museum with a dead snake asking if he did well in killing it and asking the confirmation that it was a poisonous one. Of course it is always an harmless one… This subjects should stay at home rather going to the wild.
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Among student who are taken to the countryside or to a woodland to collect seeds for germplasm conservations there are some who seem to be horrified by natural habitats.
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Hey, let’s be objective, what should we expect from the average social media user? Anyway they possibly are a good representation of the society
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Hey, those people you see on the phone may be using iNat. XD It’s hard to tell the difference when we’re using our phones and checking our iNat feeds, haha!
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Oops, sorry, didn’t realize I had posted to an old thread there!
I guess it probably wouldn’t be your first choice to watch the video I made “Three Talented Spider Families in South Carolina” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T19SvMsin9M
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I’m fairly sure the spider at 2:17 you have labelled as Platycryptus undatus is actually a female Hentzia, maybe H. mitrata. Ask @salticidude to be sure. The spider at 2:58 labelled Argiope argentata is a juvenile Argiope aurantia. The spider at 3:10 may be Cyclosa turbinata (I’m not 100% certain on this one: I think I can see a pair of humps on the abdomen.) The full name of the black widow at 3:45 is Latrodectus mactans.
I give you these corrections because this is a really nice video, and I’d love to see it made even better!
P.S.: Are any of these observations on iNaturalist? Nevermind, found them.
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Glad you liked the video Thank you so much for improving its accuracy! I’m going to pin a comment with these corrections to the video. I do not yet know how to add new titles to a pre-existent video. I’m much better with plants than with tech.
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Well, happy to report that my spider fears are seriously diminishing with increased exposure and excellent iNat community encouragement (errrr…tolerance?) by folks like @JeremyHussell who consistently corrects, adds IDs, and muddles through my poor photos. However, now I’m kind of really friends with some spiders. Salticids are my buds and crabs and orbs are the other gateway spider families that hold fascination for me. I’m noticing that with all organisms, my interest in behaviors pushes me to spend a lot of time with individuals and thus lessens my fears gradually over time and produces some very limited, but nonetheless functional, field knowledge.
I love the video! I have wanted to make similar videos (probably with me dressed as a spider or something equally less sophisticated) but I have abysmal tech skills and little patience when it comes to learning such things (just ask the fellow mods here!). It’s relevant, though a little self-indulgent but I’ll reopen this topic if you want to add something there as well.
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Delighted you enjoyed the video. Yes, jumping spiders are adorable-so fuzzy and with such big eyes. I liked reading the other related thread very much. I’d be glad to link my video there as well once I get access to my desktop computer after my husband finishes his video conference for work.
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As some others have deomonstrated, the way to combat negative memes is positive memes. I’m reminded of the cute jumping spider memes. They kind of poke fun at that irrational fear response against spiders and they focus on some of the benefits spiders bring.
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I did not use to be afraid of spiders, but now I’m afraid of large ones. Jumping spiders and other small spiders are still cute to me, but anything bigger is scary. However, since a) I use iNaturalist now, so I have to get good pictures of them, and b) I actively dislike being afraid of spiders, I am working on reacclimatizing myself to them.
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100% agree. These are definitely a ‘gateway spider’ of sorts, and can lead to more curiosity about other spiders. Same I assume would go for reptiles, insects, and other taxa some may not be a fan of.
I will admit to recently finding a very large wolf (?) spider in my garage that I could not bring myself to document–somewhat irrational fears can run deep since avoiding venom is generally good policy! I swear the thing was 1.5-2" in body length (not including the legs!), maybe it was a tarantula, but I believe it was pretty uniformly gray and not especially hairy.
Though I’ve become more tolerant of spiders, I learned that I still have a limit of tolerance, for spiders other than black widows, I have a strict ‘live and let live’ policy toward spiders, and as far as I know the nightmare fuel continues to live happily in my garage!
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I used to have somewhat of a large following on Google+ in its heyday. Well over a thousand people in my circles. I posted everyday, from articles about new species discoveries to my own photos of various critters in my day to day life. I treated these animals (and I mean every animal) like folks would treat their pets or their families and friends on other social media platforms. If I took a photo of a snake, I used lots of positive words to describe my experience. Saying things like, She stayed for her beauty shots, or, Look at this gorgeous thing! Or, This little one gave me a bit of a run-around but totally worth it!
After a time, I began getting personal messages from strangers. Things like I helped them get over their fear of snakes, or spiders. Mainly snakes and spiders. That I helped them gain new a appreciation for these animals. The truly ‘nope’ folks came and went and eventually stopped following or even blocked me entirely since it was common for my photos to trend on the site, I guess they couldn’t be helped. lol
But, yeah, that’s my experience. Treat your subjects with kindness and respect. You can’t change everyone’s mind, but those who remain curious just might come around to you.
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My phobias that I run into on iNat are a bit more obscure than the usual animal ones, but I have found I do a lot better with photos of carnivorous plants than I used to. Before I joined iNat, I had been badly startled by an illustration of a sundew, but now I am ok with photographs of them.
I think the nope response is partly that some people feel that they have to respond to everything online, so whether the nope is a phobia or a joke they post it, whereas if I ran into a picture I struggled with, I’d either ask if they could give a warning for that sort of content or just move on.
The difficulty in giving warnings on somewhere like twitter means I really don’t post as many nature images there as I’d like, which decreases the ability to educate about more obscure arthropods, which come under the heading of “argh, bugs”.
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And, educational programs really do help.
As a kid, if we squeaked when we spotted a spider in the house, my mom would usually catch it on a piece of paper or cardboard and move it outside. She reminded us spiders help us and eat up the mosquitos.
My first encounter with a live snake was in a classroom. A man brought in a large boa and gave us a talk. He let each of us come up and gently pet the snake, which I recall felt nice to my fingers, smooth.
I was still pretty nervous about insects, spiders, worms, and stuff. I was okay as long as they didn’t catch me by surprise. I was super afraid of worms, though (of all things!)
Much later in life, I was a person going into schools with snakes, and toads, and tarantulas. Getting used to actually handling the critters was surprisingly easy to me, and I loved the work. My co-workers and I felt like we were scattering little seeds of knowledge. Some would sprout, sooner or later.
The “Nope” says, my mind is closed and I’m proud of it; it’s my individuality. Kinda tricky to respond to a Noper when it’s a point of individual pride. Maybe, something along the lines of…
I know you love other things, though (be it kittens, butterflies, or unicorns). Practicing love is good. The more we practice, the better we get.
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Maybe so, but when the response to a picture of a spider is, “Well, I’d better burn the house down now,” I can’t let that pass. I am afflicted with gephyrophobia – fear of bridges – but I don’t react to a picture of a bridge by saying it needs to be burned down. That kind of extreme response oughtn’t to be socially acceptable, even if the fear itself is.
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I think those “nuke the site from orbit” responses are so obviously over-the-top that they are expected to be received as hyperbole for comic effect.
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But it’s not funny, like wow, you hate something alive you have no idea about, that’s a perfect original joke. 
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No matter how much someone knows, it’s really hard to ignore or overcome an emotional or physical reaction. I feel that it’s better to acknowledge the reaction, and use humour to diffuse the situation. Humour is a great tool for getting over/through fear and when combined with learning can be a great way to become more comfortable with the animal.
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Jokes about killing only feed the fear, you can’t overcome it if all you see is that people would rather set place on fire than deal with the animal.
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