A sea spider. Deal with it.: And this one's not even giant.
Courtesy NOAAHave y’all heard about the dang sea spiders? The giant, antarctic ones? Of course you have--you’re Buzzketeers, and, hence, are all over this Internet.

Not me. I’m not really into the Internet. Scrapbooking? Yes, I’m into that. Gin Rummy? Yes, that too. Sharing my feelings? God, yes. But the Internet not so much. Plus, I just moved, and I don’t have internet at my new home yet. I’m not actually sure that Internet even exists in West Saint Paul (I think they have to pipe it in, or ship it in trucks).

At any rate, apparently “giant sea spiders” are all the rage these days, and I had no idea. It’s frustrating, partly because it’s in my professional interest to know what’s going on with strange new creatures, and partly because I feel that the lives of these giant sea spiders must mirror my own so much--pale, slender-limbed things living in the dark. I can relate.

Sea spiders themselves are nothing new. People have known about them for hundreds of years, and, in fact, have existed since at least the Devonian Period, a hot, sticky mess of a time, full of leggy fish and 30-foot-tall mushrooms, about a hundred million years before dinosaurs even thought about existing. Sea spiders are arthropods, but not technically spiders. They can have four to six pairs of long, wormy legs, a tiny body, and a proboscis that “allows them to suck nutrients from soft-bodied invertebrates.” An enviable skill, that.

The giant sea spiders were found during an Australian scientific survey of the Antarctic sea floor, are attracting some extra attention, I suppose, because they are, you know, giant. Giant, obviously, being a relative term. The “giant” sea spiders are a foot or more across, so, you know, you still wouldn’t want one in the tub with you (or maybe you would - check out the video and decide for yourself), but it’s not like they could destroy Tokyo, or anything.

Along with the “spiders” the census revealed dozens of bizarre deep-sea creatures, many of which had never before been catalogued. The expedition was also part of an effort to monitor the sea floor (over 1000 meters below the surface in this case) as it undergoes environmental change. Rising carbon levels, for instance, will make the water more acidic, and will hinder the growth of coral and creatures with calcium carbonate skeletons.

As it happens, the sea spiders have non-calcareous exoskeletons, which is lucky for them, but contributes to my general reaction to their existence: they’re weird, and they make me uncomfortable. I don’t trust them. Invertebrates have been separated from us chordates for so long... there’s just no telling what could be going through their heads at any given time. And when you consider something like giant sea spiders, living at the bottom of an icy Antarctic sea, just... squirming around. It almost too much to bear. They’re probably into the weirdest things. And if you accept that arthropods are bad, well, don’t even get me started on molluscs--squid and cuttlefish with their fancy brains, they just give me the willies. I’ll do a Buzz post on them someday.

All tags:

Tags : antarctica and sea spiders

How would you tag this story?

My tags:

A comma-separated list of terms describing this content. Example: funny, bungee jumping, "Company, Inc.".

• Email
• Delicious
• Digg
• Facebook
• Google
• Yahoo