The Infinite Monkey Cage - Australia’s Scary Spiders

Episode Date: February 25, 2023

Brian Cox and Robin Ince end their Australian science adventure with an episode all about spiders. They are joined by ecologists Dieter Hochuli and Mariella Herberstein and comedian Claire Hooper. They learn about the strange physiology of spiders, including skin shedding, weaving sperm webs and having hundreds of babies at once. They find out exactly how spiders copulate - a process full of surprises - from males having two penises to females cannibalizing the males once the deed is done. Dieter comes to the defence of spiders: despite their deadly venom, they haven’t killed anyone in Australia in over fifty years. Perhaps they aren’t deserving of their fierce reputation after all. Producer: Caroline Steel Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox and we're back for a brand new series. New episodes will be released weekly, but if you're in the UK and can't wait, you can hear it all. Right now, before anywhere else. First, on BBC Sounds. It's a wonderful platform.

So good. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Brian Cox. I'm Robin Ince. And this is the Infinite Monkey Web, our final Australian show for now. Actually, it might be our final show ever, because there's a high chance things will go horribly wrong. There's not a high chance.

This is fantastic. It's my favourite thing of actually seeing Brian scared of something. Because he's not normally scared, right? As you know, Brian is an adventurer. He's the kind of person who likes going fast. He likes flying high. He likes getting drunk in South American Amazonian jungles with pirates.

A lot of that was not kept in the show for various reasons. It was edited out that way. Alcohol, criminality, and then it went really crazy, didn't it, when you started putting on that eye patch. But anyway, so we have now found that there is one Achilles heel that Brian has. And, of course, it's a lovely Achilles heel, I should say. It's much smoother than mine. It's a beautiful heel. He works that heel out. It's a muscular heel. But nevertheless, it a lovely Achilles heel, I should say. It's much smoother than mine. It's a beautiful heel. He works that heel out. It's a muscular heel.

But nevertheless, it is his Achilles heel. And that heel is the Achilles heel of spiders. I'm not a fan. For British people in particular, everyone, when they go to Australia, always shake your shoes out because you never know, there's probably a poisonous spider in your shoe. Never sit on the toilet. There's always something hiding in the toilet. Brian hasn't gone for three and a half weeks, right?

So the front row, this could be quite a waterfall. Every time he nearly gets in, hang on a minute. The funnel web's coming for me bits. The funnel web's coming for me bits. Coming for me bits. Today we are exploring the reality of spiders. Should we be scared of spiders, or should they be scared of us? How many species of spiders are there?

How do they behave in the wild? And how do we study spiders in their natural habitat? And of course, most importantly, will a bifurcated, irradiated spider really give you superpowers, but at the same time leave to thwarted teenage love? Not doing that. We should do that. I think now the Infinite Monkey Cage has reached the point where it needs to be part

of the Marvel Universe. Benedict Cumberbatch can play you. He'd be good. Benedict Cumberbatch would be a good you. And I could be played by a piece of sponge. In a cardigan, yeah. Today, we're joined by three humans and several spiders.

We'll let the spiders introduce themselves later on, but our humans are a professor of ecology, a professor of ecological behaviour, and a cake expert who has studied the psychology of Kylie Minogue. And they are... Oh, hello. Hi. I'm Mariella Herverstein. I am a behavioural ecologist, evolutionary biologist at Macquarie University.

I have personal fears and professional fears. My personal fear, swimming in the sea in Sydney, is of course sharks. Professionally, I think I have to watch out in fieldwork, particularly for snakes and crocodiles when we go up north. And it is often a difficult job to explain to my colleagues and also my students that the crocodiles are really everywhere and they have to watch out. I'm Dieter Hockeli from the University of Sydney. I'm an ecologist. I study insects and spiders and bats and birds and plants and humans in cities. I'm interested in how nature survives and even thrives in cities.

In terms of animals I'm scared of, actually the saltwater crocodiles are the things that probably scare me the most. They're one of those few animals that if they kill you, they're actually doing it deliberately because they think you're food. They actually look at us and say, yeah, yeah, I could eat that. And yeah, so saltwater crocodiles, it's very hard to go near a puddle after you've been up in the top end for a while. I'm Claire Hooper. I'm a comedian. And as of about 10 seconds ago, my most feared animal is a crocodile. Never occurred to me before, but I'll be taking that home with me tonight.

And this is our panel. Now what worries me is that you said they look at us and they see food. And my anxiety would not be that I'd be eaten by a saltwater crocodile, but it would reject me. Send you back? Yeah. No, there's another swimmer over there whose legs look more delicious. Your ex must rather put me off.

The ex was made of 36 different herbs and spices. Anyway... Yeah, it's funny you should say that. There's a crockwise program in the top end of the Northern Territory and the basic advice to locals is basically try not to look like crocodile food. Stay away from the water. Don't put your fish or clean your fish near the water. It's actually reasonably straightforward to avoid being eaten. Is there a way of, I mean, when you say don't look like crocodile food, is there also some cosplay that we can do?

You can, but it won't help with the crocodile thing. Just a quick question. Is it too late to change the topic to crocodiles? Oh, don't think there have not been whole shows which started off being about something like lightning and ended up being about tadpoles or anything like that. I believe it was Mario. I said, have you heard any episodes?

She went, yes. It very much seemed like a kind of form of organised chaos. And now what you've realised is the organisation comes in the edit. The chaos is what is handed over to our producer. I can bring it back to her. Mariella, how many species of spiders are there? So right now we've probably identified about 50,000 worldwide. 50?

50, yes. So they're quite diverse, lots of them. Australia is magnificent for spiders. There's lots of them. They're colourful, they're large, they're everywhere. It's a dream. What are the smallest spiders? What are the largest spiders?

Most venomous spiders. Okay. All right, Spider Olympics. All spiders are venomous. The question is how does the venom affect you, your species, humans, and you personally? So the bad news is we all individually could have anaphylactic shock to the protein, so similar to bees, so some of us would react really badly to a spider bite. In Australia, there are really only two species that are associated with death,

the funnel-web spider, and there you really have to go and get a vaccine but the last death was in 1978 or something like this since then we have anti-vaccines everywhere and the good thing is you won't miss it the bite it's very very painful so you won't overlook you won't go oh i missed I missed that, and I'm going to die. But the... It's nothing nice to hear a scientist say, the good news is it's agony from the outside. It really is. Very painful. And the second one is redback spiders,

and that's not absolutely deadly. The venom is a chemical that interferes with heart rate and breathing. People that have problems with the heart, or small kids or very old people they may get into trouble but you know healthy people young people it's a bit like covid isn't it um they um also very very painful yes painful but repic spiders are lovely they really are lovely lovely lovely spiders very gentle. Very gentle. You said you were bitten in the thumb by what spider was that?

Can you tell us a little bit about the experience? For the radio viewers, Mariella is demonstrating her thumb to the audience. So I was in the field and I was looking at a spider that twirls a leaf in the web and Sydney sighters may have seen this.

This is a web and in the middle is a twirled leaf. And I was looking for males that cohabit with the female in the leaf. And so I was breaking open the leaf. So there was a female in there, but not the male. And I looked away and then the female, very upset with me, jumped on my left thumb and bit my thumb. And it was an immediate pain like a bee sting. And then I could feel the venom move up my arm, this painful pull up my arm to about my armpit,

and then it stopped. And so, you know, I did the usual, filled out a report for the university. Thank you. filled out a report for the university. That's not the medical advice if you get bitten by a spider. It's not the first thing you do, is it? Fill out the report. I still have, and I'm happy to show everyone who's interested,

a scar on my thumb from this bite from many, many years ago. It was the only bite I've ever had throughout my entire career working with spiders. See, now we've opened up this scene from Jaws. Dieter, it's your chance to say what scar you've got. Mine are mainly emotional, but... LAUGHTER I think... You know...

When Mariella mentioned that, I thought the chill that went down my spine was the paperwork. It was just... But, I mean, Mariela's also pointed out one of those really interesting stories about our killer spiders, and that's just that very few of them have a decent body count. Very few people have been killed by spiders, and the reputation that Brian and Robin have been attracted here to probably isn't deserved i mean we've got a bunch of spiders that

you aren't doing what they should apparently you're right claire we do need to change the subject of this show we were promised death and mutilation and it appears we're just going to be given fascination well there's plenty of death and mutilation but it's the spiders doing it to other animals all the spiders being mutilated but But there's this marvellous giant orange wasp that's quite busy around this time of year in Sydney and she spends her time looking for huntsman spiders to go and catch and she'll sting it and paralyse it and then she'll drag it to a hole or a spot and stash it, lay a single egg inside the living but paralysed spider. Her baby, the baby wasp, the larva will then grow inside the live but paralysed spider until it's, the baby wasp, the larva will then grow inside the live,

but paralysed spider until it's eaten all the non-essential bits and then it'll spin a little cocoon and pop out. It's, I mean, nature's beautiful. I was going to say, my little brother got bitten by a red-backed spider when he was three. He had floaties on in the swimming pool and there was a red-back the floatie, and my mum couldn't grab him in time, and it bit him on the ear, and he wasn't happy about it. But yeah, he was fine. I mean, you know, like you said, they were friendly. Maybe it was just a little bite. Maybe it didn't...

Can I ask about why these particular spiders are so venomous? Because there clearly needs to be a reason why that venom evolved in that way. And if it can really mobilise or essentially kill something as large as a human being, what's the point for a funnel web spider? So I did some research before I went onto this panel. Because I thought maybe this is going to be a question. There's actually a paper...

I like the fact you've given away, you're not an expert on spiders at all. The real Mariella is somebody going, help me, help me! Bound by the own webs that you've made. This paper that I read was saying that, yes, funnel webs, and their venom is against vertebrate predators, because they're a decent meal for a little rodent type thing. But the fact that humans react so violently against the venom

is really a coincidence. This venom is not for us, it's not meant for us, and there's other vertebrates that it doesn't really work on either. I mean, dogs get upset and it's painful, but they don't die like humans. So the effect on humans is quite coincidental. The British perspective has always been, I think since Billy Connolly particularly did a routine about funnel webs, that seems to make it. But there was this, when people come here for the first time,

this perpetual sense of kind of anxiety around. Does any of that actually exist when you live here? Robin, foreigners coming here are so afraid of the deadly spiders. The people that live here are just afraid of foreigners coming here. I don't know if this is everyone's experience, but growing up, my father made sure we weren't afraid of spiders by, you know, if there was a huntsman in the corner of our bedroom, he would get rid of it, but he'd put it on his arm and he'd let us look close up.

We didn't generally accept it on our own arms, but I really appreciate that he did that because now in my household, I'm the person that takes the spider out. There has to be one in every house. You the person that takes the spider out there has to be one in every house you don't always want the job but if no one else will do it so yeah I'm not afraid of spiders somehow though I haven't been able to pass that on to my own kids I now have two little kids who are terrified of spiders which either means I have not shown them enough or I've shown them too many I'm not sure oh Dita I just I mean I may regret asking

you this but well we're inside right now in a big venue with like a couple of hundred people how many spiders are close to us right now people have actually tried to estimate how many spiders exist per square meter in the wild and this is googling I did it was on wikipedia so I think it's true um um people are talking about in the wild you get hundreds of spiders per square meter because you know they're not all big and there's a lot of them that are living vertically as well but there's probably about uh 80 per row i'm just i made that up do you know what right you're allowed to claire was saying that due to the spider bravery gene being possibly a recessive one her children don't have it and i just wondered

what do we know about why people seem to have? I would say it is an irrational fear because it's very rarely because someone has actually got a story of, you know, and that's how I lost my arm or whatever. You were going to get the part in the Fonz the Musical and then that thumb damage, it was all over and done with.

Because in the UK, there aren't deadly spiders. And yet, if a spider, you know, is in a bath or something like that, there will always be people who are kind of screaming or jumping up on chairs so I think there's sort of two types of explanations probably sort of the in-between one is there is an evolutionary basis for it the fear of spiders and snakes because they can be dangerous for humans and the other one is really a social hypothesis where, Claire, you tried really hard with your kids to be calm, but they may have observed other children, other adults freaking out about spiders, and they just pick it up like this and just perpetuate it. So I can't dismiss

the fact that there could be a selective benefit and evolutionary basis that it is good to be a selective benefit, an evolutionary basis that it is good to be a bit startled by snakes and by spiders. But I think that most of the behavior we see is really copying other people. And is there a component of the fact that they have a strange body plan? They're very, very different to us. Could you outline the basic body plan just briefly of a spider? You talk about the segments and the... Just describe a spider. Me or Claire? Claire, you start, and then, Dieter, you come in when you feel it might be necessary or not.

That's a real good test, isn't it? No, you start. Let me say something about the little legs and whatever. I'll clear up any of your messes after this. Thank you, Claire. Well, the biggest split is probably the front pit, the head and the second part which is sort of an abdomen or opus. Essentially basically I've got a lot of the legs and the eyes are all in the front part and the abdomen which is there for storing a lot of the food and the fat and producing the silk is in the second part. They've got a couple of different

sets of mouth parts that starts off with a pair of pretty bitey choppers or you know. I can see Mariella twitching. Yeah sorry yeah. Bitey chop choppers yeah they've got the next things are probably a thing called petty pups and they're really fascinating so if you ever see a spider with what looks like a sort of a leg with two big sort of boxing gloves on it it's going to be a male because they're adapted for him to help transfer sperm and then they've got the eight legs and that's sort of the main part of the first part of the body can i ask a question and i'm not proud but somebody has to if a spider has eight legs, and that's sort of the main part of the first part of the body. Can I ask a question? And I'm not proud, but somebody has to.

If a spider has eight legs and eight eyes, how many penises does it have? Two. I knew it was worth asking! It's zero and two. They don't have a penis. They have a genital opening. They ejaculate the sperm out of the genital opening onto a web. So males build a tiny little sperm web. They ejaculate onto the sperm web. And then they dip their little pedipalps, their first pair of legs, into the droplet of sperm. They take up the sperm into their legs. Then they search for a female. Then they insert one of their little legs into the female genital opening. They ejaculate again. If they're lucky, they get to do it again

with the other leg. Hang on a minute. Just to check that I've got the order right. They ejaculate and then they find a female. Yeah. Yes. And then it's the left leg in and the left leg out. Once they shake it all about, little spidlings everywhere. It's absolutely fine.

And then after all that, they get eaten. So in many species, he's eaten, maybe even after the first mating already, after the first copulation, he's already eaten. Some of the families, he also breaks off bits of his bits that get stuck inside the female and it prevents other males from accessing that opening. Wow. He plugs the hole.

Yes. And that's what it's called. It's called genital plugging. So that's... That is... That is the... That's the official term. Well done, Claire.

Cool. Well, I've got some big ideas to take home now. Do you think if the spider waited until she'd just eaten, he might get away with it? Do you know what, like, is she eating him because she's hungry? Or... No, because they're tiny. They're just an hors d'oeuvre. They're... Just a little snack.

So they're not substantive. So it's not about satiation, not about hunger, although hungry females are quite grumpy. I like to tell my husband he's just an entree to me. This is my favourite thing is watching Brian try to recover from this. I'm thoroughly enjoying that. So why?

Why do they do it? There's different stories for different species. So it's not a universal explanation. In red-backed spiders, males are encouraged to be cannibalised. When the male inserts one of his little legs, he somersaults into the mouth parts of the female. And only then does she start nibbling on him. If he doesn't do the somersault, she doesn't eat him.

And the advantage to the male is, if she eats him, she prefers his sperm over the sperm of another male and fertilises her eggs with his sperm. So that's one story. It's marvellously harmonious. The other more aggressive story is with the San Andreas cross spider, for example, or Adita, you've worked with the golden orb web spider. It's much more about, I think, female control over mating and copulation,

where females can stop copulation and therefore control how much sperm they receive from a male just by cutting off that, had enough, I'll eat you instead. I'm done, thank you. Yeah, let's wrap this up sort of thing. But I think, Claire, you said something really, really clever about, but what if she's eating? In fact, males wait in the wings for the female to catch a big piece of prey. Then she's busy wrapping it up.

And then they just rush to the female, jump on her, quickly, quickly inseminate her to then escape without... Because she's busy dealing with something else. This is very exciting, by the way. The programme is going to be available on the radio as a podcast and also as a fever dream. Is there anything you'd like to add, Dieter? I think the message from watching Spider-Sex is don't try this at home.

We talked about already some quite complex behaviour, let's put it that way, with spiders. And, of course, webs are the thing that most people think about when you think of spiders, also very complex. So how intelligent are spiders? They are probably more intelligent than we appreciate them to be and have better cognition than we think they are. What they don't do is they don't wait on your ceiling until you fall asleep

and abseil into your mouth. So that's not what they do. But they are good problem solvers. There's a very famous jumping spider by the name of Portia, and she can detour, she can work out escape routes, she can really perform really complex tasks. This is a specific individual. No, the species is called Portia.

Oh, right. You thought that was going to be our special guest. Please welcome, Portia, all the way from that eave over there. So this is really problem solving behaviour. There's also learning so with learning meaning taking an experience and learning from the experience they can learn to build better webs for example.

So many of you walk through your garden and there's a spider web and you keep on walking through the web. Spiders actually learn that there's always damage on the right hand side and so they start shifting to the left hand side so that's a sign of learning thinking of webs i remember seeing some research that was done where giving spiders different kind of things like coffee and cocaine and lsd yes i saw those yeah and then seeing the kind of webs that they make. And I wonder what we can imagine from seeing that process.

You can see them online. It's absolutely amazing, the different kind of stimulants, et cetera, that you can give to a spider and how it will affect their web. It's like the caffeinated spider making its web super quick. The caffeinated one was one of the worst webs, wasn't it? Do you remember? That was the surprise to me, that the LSD spider did better than the coffee spider.

Yeah. The Coke spider said, I've done the best. You've only done a web at all. Everyone always says that, but I'm really great at doing webs. Much better than that LSD spider. I'm fine. I'm just doing the web. I'm going to start a business doing webs, actually, and I'm going to do heaps of webs and I'm going to have eight employees doing my webs. When we're talking about learning, the other thing is that they're really good at doing is finding profitable places to build those webs. So even though we've just bagged them out for being a bit thick compared to the other spiders, they are good at finding good places to build. If you've got a light outside, you'll often find speeders, well, speeders, spiders. To be fair, we were

talking about speeders as well. We were talking about speeder spiders, so you're allowed to talk about that. Speedy spiders, yeah. But I mean, Mariella's point about those ground-dwelling spiders with the big eyes, big forward-facing eyes, being super smart, is a really fantastic thing. If you've got a jumping spider at home, spend some time hanging out with it and watching it. It will be there watching you. It will literally walk across your table, turn and look at you,

and then keep walking. They're incredibly engaging little dudes and girls. And you said, Mariella, those eyes, so they exhibit something that looks like REM sleep. A researcher in Germany had very recently just discovered this. So all animals sleep or have some sort of sleep state. And she watched that the little jumping spiders were actually suspending themselves on the thread at night.

And then as she kept on watching them, they started twitching like your puppy or your cat twitches in sleep. And then she filmed that. And so there were sort of uncontrolled twitches, also the spinnerets twitching. And then when she filmed the eyes, she could see that the eyes were moving as well in some uncoordinated ways, very reminiscent to REM sleep. So, you know, the question is, are they REM sleeping? And if

they're REM sleeping, like us, are they dreaming? And what might a spider be dreaming? It's a wonderful idea that a spider can dream. I mean, it's speculative, as you said. We have some spiders, actually. We have some samples. Well, they're not samples, they're living spiders. Oh. Wow. That is actually not in a box. Hang on. Brian, do you want to swap seats?

I've been assured. To be fair, Brian, it is in a box. It's just that the box is not fully closed. So we have a very large spider in a very large web. That's not large. To me, it's large. I'm sorry, I came over all Crocodile Dundee there, but that's not a large spider.

So this is a St Andrew's cross spider. This particular one is from Queensland, which we collected whilst looking out for crocodiles with great care. And she's built an orb web inside a frame that we have in the lab. So this is how we get a three-dimensional frame. It's about 10 centimetres wide and 30 by 30 centimetres in width and in length. And the moment she builds the web, she's actually quite happy on the web and you can see she's quite calm and so on.

I've also brought a male, he's tiny, he's very much smaller than her. I'm just going to put him here at the bottom of the web. We'll see what he does, whether he'll start climbing up on the web and start courting. It is a bit late for them, so maybe he will, maybe he won't. Sometimes it's just better to watch a TV show and go to sleep, isn't it? will, maybe he won't. Sometimes it's just better to watch a TV show and go to sleep, isn't it? Well, he's now come out of his jar and he's having a look around and he's got sensors in his legs so he can taste the silk and it gives him information about the female. And if he's interested, he'll move into the web and into the hub with the female he'll

nibble her legs a little bit caught her create some vibrations and maybe and then will he do all the things that you described him what what is his what what is his what is his fate if he does that i think a 50 chance that he'll survive the first mating. Good odds. It feels really sinister to watch. I get paid for that. Literally, they pay me to watch them. No, I'm serious.

I mean, nobody ever told me that was a career option when I was a school girl. So what species was that again? So the species is called a guiape. They're beautiful. They have a stripy back, yellow and white stripes, very gentle spiders, never bitten me. So I've worked with them for many years. You had that just under the table you sat at there.

And has she remained in exactly that position? How certain can you be? So she will remain there until the lights go off, and she... LAUGHTER Whoever is in charge. I've got £50 over there. Let's see how much we've got over there. When she rebuilds her web,

which is sort of at night or early morning, that's when she starts moving around and that's where she explores and she'll come out of the cage, of course, and she'll find... Dieter said, you know, they're good at finding spots. And so she may just, you know, come out of the cage and find another

spot. Well, it's not exactly a cage, is it? You've brought some other spiders as well. We'll keep you updated for the listeners at home on what the fate of that chap. I brought some huntsman spiders. So who's a fan? Let's find out who loves huntsman.

Who's a little bit more edgy with the Huntsman? That's good overall. I think they're very much accepted. Yes. There are two types. There are solitary Huntsman. They don't like to hang out with other Huntsman. And then there are social ones, and they form little social bonds, groups, and they hang out together, they hunt together, they sit on the bark together.

I read recently if a huntsman bites you, you are meant to, hang on, let me get the phrasing right, remain calm to stop the spread of venom. And I thought that that was a very ambitious suggestion. I have to be honest, you know, huntsmen, they are pretty, they spook me as well, because they're so erratic in their movements. Sorry, they're erratic in their movements? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're just the scuttlers. So to describe a huntsman, so these are, what, about the size of my thumb in total, I would say, but how large can a huntsman get? Oh so these are juveniles they're about maybe five to six

seven centimetres long the adults can get quite big maybe a span of 20 centimetres and the females really big big big bottoms like really nice and fat lots of eggs inside and then she of course lays a cocoon and then she'll hang on to the cocoon and the little babies hatch and then they stay with mum. They stay with mum for weeks. The social ones never leave mum. The solitary ones eventually go away and leave mum. Again it's surprising behaviour. It goes back to some kind of intelligence again doesn't it? At the moment you say family group kind of have a sense. Parental care is a really interesting thing in spiders because there's a fantastic group called the wolf spiders or the lycosids where the babies or the spiderlings will be there on the back of the mother.

She'll walk around with them. She hasn't got a web. She's relatively free living. And it's just an amazing sight to see a mother spider. And these are really dramatic spiders, the wolf spiders. They're a spider with their forward-facing eyes. They're hunters and in the bush at night. You can actually go spotlighting for them

where you'll point your torch at them and you'll see thousands of little eyes reflecting back at you because you just... And it's really quite magical, I know. I'm trying to be serious. It's kind of like staring up into the stars and seeing everything glittering, which some people are very fond of.

But... LAUGHTER But you're looking at the ground and you literally have hundreds of animals, so thousands of eyes, staring back at you. It's a really exquisite thing to look at. It's a really special moment. But in terms of parental care, there's a lot of different models,

I think, in the sport. Some of it's not very caring at all, but obviously some of these animals do a fair bit of work. And the babies eat the mum in the end. So that happens as well. So she sacrifices herself to her babies. Claire, you were going to... A moment ago, you looked like you had something you were about to say,

but now you've heard about the cannibalisation. Certainly everything's changed. That was a nice Mother's Day card, isn't it? I think that's why animals can't be conscious, most animals. Because if you knew the destiny that you had, so I give birth, you give birth, and then you just remain there. You don't go anywhere. It's like certain forms of kind of octopus, things like that.

You just stay under that bit of rock, and your children grow bigger and bigger and bigger, and you kind of start to rot, and then they eat you, and then they leave. And you'd go, no. Do you want to have kids? No, no, no, no. I'm just going to stay a happy, Disney-fied octopus.

Hang on. Now, do you have kids, Robin? Yeah. One. Because that means that even if they do start to cannibalise me, it'll take them a long time. Have I had more? Always thinking start to cannibalise me, it'll take them a long time. Have they had more? Always thinking about the cannibalism issue.

I'm so sorry, but I just think human parenthood's exactly the same. If somebody explained it to you clearly, you would absolutely not do it. So let me get this straight. It'll cost approximately $10,000 more and you won't sleep ever again and you won't go out at night and also they'll hate you. Yes. Like, do you know what? I don't think the spider version of parenthood sounds that much

worse. And then we should check in terms of when your children were conceived, how far away was that from the previous story we were told? Do all spiders molt? Because I only found this out really recently that they do all of them i just so they don't grow they just shed a skin and then they're bigger i just when i think about trying to wriggle out of a tight pair of pants and then imagine that pair of pants has eight legs i'm just how do how do they how do they get out of those eight trousers? And they're bigger. Four trousers, weren't they?

Yeah. Sorry, of course. That's why we have him here. He is very good at maths. So they can only grow by molting. So because they have an exoskeleton, a hard shell on the outside, so... Oh! Forget the pads, it's all right.

What is happening? So the male has moved up the web and he's now in the hub of the female. So she's not aggressive at this stage. She's... Oh, hang on, there was a twitch. Yeah, that's him, he's twitching. All the under-12s must leave. He's going to do a few vibrations.

He's going to tug a little bit on the silk. Mariela, can I please be the godparent of the babies? Yes. 300 little eggs. There's quite a... Well, you need to do a kind of a sports commentary on this. I'm happy to do it. It may take

a few hours. Are you okay with that? Have we got enough drinks at the bar for that? So we were talking about the exoskeleton. How do they get it off and how are they bigger when it's off? So there's a chemical reaction that softens the exoskeleton from the inside out's a chemical reaction that softens the exoskeleton

from the inside out. And so you get a crack in the exoskeleton. What's under the exoskeleton is quite soft. And so they kind of slowly just pull themselves out. They're still suspended on a piece of silk. And then they're super, super soft. But then they use the hydraulics to expand. That's the growth.

And then they wait in this expanded state so you can really see them just stretch out the legs and then the exoskeleton hardens and that's when they've stretched their legs. Have you watched that? Yes, yes, yes. How long does it take? Oh, it does take a while.

Yeah. Life as a spider is, I think, pretty crap. A lot of things are trying to wait you all the time mariela just mentioned that she's going to have 300 babies but you can guarantee that an overwhelming majority of her kids aren't going to make it you know because me mariela hasn't had her genital plugging yet tonight i'm so sorry then cut that please don't that won't make the podcast. I'm so sorry. Now, you see, if we cut the earlier bit, that's going to be a really interesting one. Hang me out to dry. I just wanted to ask about that, the ecological niche that spiders inhabit,

because we hear about, for example, you often hear it said, well, wasps, we could do without wasps. wasps they're pollinators for example that the world without wasps would be a much worse world in terms of spiders what ecological niche are they operating within their predators and their voracious predators particularly of a lot of other insects and one of the reason i think so many of you were supportive of the huntsman as you know that they're in your homes happily chomping on the cockroaches you might not want to have at home their role as predators is really significant but they're probably what people like to call meso predators where they're sort of they're not the top predator so there are things that are trying to eat them while they're trying to eat other things so there's a really interesting I suppose chain of events that comes with their

ecology so losing a spider you know there are potential cascades and the like that could happen where if you lost the spiders you might get an increase in numbers of their prey items but I think I mean it's always a really difficult conversation because people say what's the use of this animal what's the use of that animals you know what's the use of anything I mean the reason we want and keep these things they really enrich our lives and I think that's one of the things that's really important a lot these animals do an enormous amount your poll pollinators, your parasitoids, your spiders and they're going about their business doing it but this notion of people saying kill it with fire and stuff like that, I'm a big fan of live and let live and our spiders have

clearly got a reputation for being deadly when they haven't killed that many people. It means that we should really sort of celebrate them a little bit more I reckon. I reckon. That is one fact that we haven't got to yet, which is the deadliness of the huntsman. A situation where a huntsman can be deadly is, of course, the huntsman in the car. And freaking out the driver, causing accidents. And just before the show, I was looking at all the news articles

that had exactly that storyline, including where people are injured and killed because of the accident they caused. I had one on a visor once, on the sun visor, flipped it down while I was driving. Yeah, it was intense, but I mean, I kept my calm. I just, like, I made a really long noise for the whole time

it took me to gently guide my car to the side of the road. And then I was like, need a new car. Because we did a sound check earlier where you did scream. So can we just have a little sound of that long noise? You know, like, obviously, if a spider takes you by surprise and you can get away from it, then it's a...'s a right you know like the noise that your mum makes right if she's not expecting you to come in right right that one um but if it's in the car then it's a long one so it's like because you can't jump away from it so you put the sun visor down there's the

huntsman you just go for the whole time until you're out of the car. And then when you're out of the car, you kind of go... Like that. Don't you? Isn't that what everyone does? Brilliant. How's it going over there? We'll have a quick last report. I think he's changed his mind. He's just sitting there. Very wise. He's not feeling it.

No. It's his choice that she's not going to do anything at the moment she's sat in the middle of the web. She's going to stay there. Yeah. So it's his choice to proceed, and he spins a mating thread and suspends himself and then strings the mating thread, not unlike a guitar.

And then it is her choice to move on to the mating thread, not unlike a guitar. And then it is her choice to move on to the mating thread. And she has to hang at a particular angle, otherwise his legs won't reach. And then he'll take a run-up and... LAUGHTER No, yeah. And insert a leg. LAUGHTER and insert a leg. I was looking to Claire for a comment

and you seem speechless. As if there's anything I can say off the back of that except, wow, that's a long birds-in-the-bees chat for those spider kids. Thank you very much to our fantastic panel there, Mariela Herberstein, Detoxically, and Claire Hooper. We asked our audience a question too, and it was what makes you jump most if you found it in the bath?

So what would make you jump most if you found it in the bath? Petros just started with, my ex-wife. Though I like the way you've spelled ex there with just one not ex, just ex, to suggest that again, still in the Marvel universe there. Gordon said Robin in Sea Wincy Spider.

Someone had to do it. Someone had to do it. Schrodinger's cat wearing one of Robin's cardigans. It's delivery, Brian, it's delivery. I mean, let's go back again to your delivery. Show Brian how to deliver. Oh, OK, that's a bit too much pressure. Also, there is certainly more value in a joke

when it hasn't been heard before, but I'll give it a go. What would make you jump most if you found it in your bath? Schrodinger's cat wearing one of Robin's cardigans. Yeah, yeah. You'll notice there was a tonal change there, Brian. Your perpetual

just didn't sell it. My teenage son, who'd be least expected to be there. Rubber duck quarking. So thank you very much for those. Thank you very much. This is the last show for the time being

that we're doing in Australia, and I hope we're going to be back to do more shows here. You've been a fantastic audience and brilliant panels as well. And we don't actually know at the time of recording, we don't know what next week's episode is going to be, but we do know that it won't be about nature because Brian gets very cross, don't you,

if we do too many things about living things because you don't understand them. So it'll be... Imagine. Some cold, cold, indifferent bit of the universe. Claire, have you got... No, I was just going to say, imagine if Brian Cox spun a web,

it would be a perfect grid. And with that, goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. In the infinite monkey cage Without your trousers In the infinite monkey cage Till now, nice again. Is Batman actually a baddie? Monkey Cage!

You're now nice again. Is Batman actually a baddie? Wayne Enterprises have a huge carbon footprint. What's really going on with Marvin Gaye? The moment you play it, everyone's raising eyebrows. Was Cleopatra a snake or a saviour? She's manipulated. Roman leaders.

Maybe she had a great personality. I'm Russell Cain and this is Evil Genius. It's where I join a panel of comedians to reveal surprising things about historical icons. Not even the hobbits are safe. I'm on board. Have you dated any? Evil Genius, with me, Russell Cain. Listen on BBC Sounds.

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