Blue Tarantula Article in the Atlantic

Olan · Dec 1, 2015

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/11/why-so-blue-tarantulas/417501/

natebugman · Dec 1, 2015

Very interesting...that's something I never really thought about before.

GG80 · Dec 1, 2015

Interesting article. It has been recently theorized by scientists that humans could not see, or perseive the colour blue up until modern times. I remember reading something about the Ancient Greeks refering to the sky as bronze.

Here's a short article on the subject. Not T related but related to this thread. http://www.iflscience.com/brain/when-did-humans-start-see-color-blue

viper69 · Dec 1, 2015

Olan said:
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/11/why-so-blue-tarantulas/417501/

Excellent article, I read the article on NPR and shared it here. It answers questions and creates new ones.

Only thing in the article that isn't accurate 100% is they are not all the same hue of blue. A geroldi are a deep blue almost black. I mira are more like H pulchripes than say a GBB or P metallica. Still a very good article.

One fascinating thing is blue is the last color word that developed in every society known to man.

Olan · Dec 1, 2015

Yeah, that's true. The blue does differ between species a bit. But a very cool mystery. Maybe some natural predator of tarantulas doesn't like the color blue? But that predator would have to be in South America, Southeast Asia, India, Africa, and Central America....

Radium · Dec 2, 2015

I always assumed it's because bright blues on the green side of the spectrum don't show up often in nature, and it helps distinguish them as "not good eatin'" to potential predators. Sort of the way many humans are turned off by artificially-dyed blue food.

Cavedweller · Dec 2, 2015

I heard somewhere that I. mira's lil blue socks are used to lure prey, is that true?

viper69 · Dec 3, 2015

Cavedweller said:
I heard somewhere that I. mira's lil blue socks are used to lure prey, is that true?

No scientific data on that. Poec and I do believe that may be possible

Arachnomaniac19 · Dec 7, 2015

Olan said:
Yeah, that's true. The blue does differ between species a bit. But a very cool mystery. Maybe some natural predator of tarantulas doesn't like the color blue? But that predator would have to be in South America, Southeast Asia, India, Africa, and Central America....

I'd assume that would mean different species of closely related migratory birds.

AphonopelmaTX · Dec 8, 2015

For additional reading on this subject see the following publications.

Hsiung, Bor-Kai, et al. "Blue reflectance in tarantulas is evolutionarily conserved despite nanostructural diversity." Science Advances 1.10 (2015): e1500709.
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/10/e1500709.full

Foelix, Rainer F., Bruno Erb, and David E. Hill. "Structural colors in spiders." Spider Ecophysiology. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2013. 333-347.
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-33989-9_24

Foelix, Rainer. Biology of spiders. Oxford University Press, 2010.
http://www.amazon.com/Biology-Spide...1449605863&sr=8-1&keywords=biology+of+spiders

Foelix, R., B. Erb, and B. Wullschleger. "Worauf beruht die Blaufärbung gewisser Vogelspinnenarten." Arachne 14.3 (2009): 4-12.
Arachne is the journal of the Deutsche Arachnologische Gesellschaft http://www.dearge.de/

Blue Tarantula · Dec 9, 2015

Neat article

Blue Tarantula Article in the Atlantic

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