Friday, October 31, 2003

VR Therapy for Spider Phobia"Researchers at the University of Washington?�€™s Human Interface Technology (HIT) Lab measured aversion and anxiety responses of students, some of whom had a clinical phobia of spiders, before and after undergoing VR therapy. During the therapy, some of the subjects touched a realistic model of a large spider while grasping a virtual one. Those participants were able to come twice as close to a real spider after completing three therapy sessions, and reported a greater decrease in anxiety during treatment, than those who underwent VR therapy alone." for some reason i cant edit the above wrong link so try this one instead:VR Therapy for Spider Phobia

Thursday, October 30, 2003

The MySpiderCenter Bookstore these guys seem more obsessed about spiders than me, but then the site smells suspiciously like a bot.

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

Wolf Spider Animation- Becky Chu's project: "In Eileen Hebets' research of courtship display among wolf spiders, video playback is the precise technique used in her studies. In order to address the issues surrounding this methodology, I began working with my advisor Bruce Land, to determine what types of simulation programs could be developed that would assist Eileen in her experiments. The primary goal of this project was then to create a user controllable simulation of a spider." See here for a nice overview.
Mate or meal: A female wolf spider's first exposure to courting could mean life or death for her later lovers. Really cool experiment-"in the case of wolf spiders, Hebets found that immature females encountering a courting male preferred when they reached mating age to mate with males who looked like those they had met as youngsters. And, they were more likely to attack and eat unfamiliar males than to mate with them."

Sunday, October 26, 2003

SpiderTalk: SpiderTalk Has Everything You Need. A great discussion site on spiders. Mostly tarantulas, though.
Spider fossilvery very very rare. can't begin to tell you how rare.

Friday, October 24, 2003

'Spider Wrestling', local tradition in Japan!: "At Kajiki town in Kyusyu, Japan, Argiope amoena has been raised and used by the local people for the exciting match on the stick for tha past 400 years. 400 spiders gathered this year from Tokyo and from various regions of Kyusyu, watched by some 1000 visitors. People carefully captive-raise spiders aiming to get larger, long-legged, aggressive players. No spiders are harmed in the match thanks to skilled referees treating spiders."Video clip(16Mb MPEG file). see also the main page (mostly a collection of links to spider stuff, mostly in japanese)

Wednesday, October 22, 2003

Eating Spiders: "dedicated to the much underrated pleasure of scarfing hot 'n' crispy tarantulas."

Tuesday, October 21, 2003

BlackWidow Clothing "clothing with a bite": spider themed stuff

Monday, October 20, 2003

Spiders at Brazos Bend: the site has some clips as well as pictures. Check out the Nephila ones.

Tuesday, October 14, 2003

Monday, October 13, 2003

Spiders Use "3-D" Webs As Shields From Wasp Attacks The study compared prey of wasps and found that there were fewer 2D spiders than 3D spiders. However, 3D spiders are less common anyway.
Spiders Photo Gallery by Mark Plonsky check out the freshly molted one.

Tuesday, October 07, 2003

Sunday, October 05, 2003

Friday, October 03, 2003

Thursday, October 02, 2003

A Beast of Prey: "Here is an very unusual article (about the garden spider) from the Strand magazine that is over 100 years old!"