Pushy Pringles® pareidolia!

The snack food company Pringles® is making a move for arachnologists to rename a spider. I think this is a great idea, if they agree to one caveat.

The patterning on the spiders is highly variable. plus, the “mustache” bends in the wrong direction!

At least three different news outlets have covered this story (one, two, three).

The spider, which Pringles® incorrectly identifies as Araneus mitificus (it was transferred to the genus Bijoaraneus last year), is a small orb weaver native to SE Asia. It has been called the “kidney garden spider” because of the kidney-shaped dark patch on the dorsal abdomen.

In a bit of pareidolia, Pringles® thinks this should be “The Pringles® Spider” because they see the face of their logo on the spider. The company has petitioned various arachnological organizations to rename it.

It’s not the first time spiders have been implicated in a bit of pareidolia, but it’s never happened in a bid for corporate branding before.

Pareidolia lead people to see a face on mars

The request to rename the spider is dumb, but not as biologically-maddening as I originally thought when I first saw the news. The naming of species is a highly-formalized, somewhat-arcane process reserved for those who carefully describe the species in peer reviewed scientific journals. The naming conventions (currently overseen by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature) go back hundreds of years, and result in a Latin-styled “binomen.”

For this spider, that’s Bijoaraneus mitificus. Changing this name would require careful, peer reviewed scientific research as was done by Tanikawa et al., who studied five different genes as well as the reproductive morphology of this spider and its close relatives. This is what it takes to change the “official” scientific name of a species.

Without a small team of trained arachnologists on baord, it seems highly unlikely Pringles® will be able to change the scientific name of the spider. However, on closer scrutiny, they are only really proposing to change the common name, which is not “official” in any way. So, it would be the “The Pringles® Spider” instead of the “kidney garden spider.” This change is far easier to make, since you don’t have to spend years studying spider taxonomy. Common names of spiders are not formally codified, as they are for birds, so Pringles® can actually do whatever they want here.

spider not to scale, and incorrect web type depicted.

Basically, the name will stick if enough people use it in writing and everyday speech. You probably don’t think of spiders as part of “everyday speech,” but the world is very different to arachnologists! There’s an old quasi-truth about humans never being more than three feet from a spider, which may creep out the average person. Your typical arachnologist, though, would hear something like that and think, “Cool! How do I get closer?” Anyway, it’s highly unlikely anyone who studies this species will refer to it by the branded name.

Why should they? Pressure from a snack company backed up by a few thousand (!) online signatures doesn’t really amount to much. Plus, the key contribution this company has made to humanity is the idea of putting potato chips in a tube instead of a bag. Wow, way to think outside the box...er, bag.

Never mind the fact that their chips taste like what would happen if a round piece of cardboard came to life and made a wish with a devious genie to become a chip, and the genie fulfilled the wish without adding flavor or completely over-writing the original cardboard textures. The cursed piece of cardboard would then be forced to live its life awaiting the sweet release of death in the form of a disappointed impulse shopper at a gas station.

Ultimately, the company is getting the publicity they want, so...congrats. I’m actually happy about all this because I learned about a new spider, and maybe this stunt will inspire someone to care more about spiders. As a member of the American Arachnological Society (though certainly not speaking on their behalf!), I accept Pringles’® bid, with the following caveat:

Anyone who eats Pringles® chips now has to consume them the same way The Pringles® Spider eats its prey.

Typically, this means the chip would first have to be captured in a web, bitten, envenomated, and wrapped in silk. It’s a bit much to ask consumers to do all this themselves, so Pringles® should carry out these steps at the food production plant. The wrapped, paralyzed chips would then be packaged in the tubes and shipped to stores worldwide.

Once someone decides to eat a chip, they would have to vomit on it repeatedly, thoroughly coating it with digestive enzymes. The gooey chip bolus would then begin to break down into a manageable slurry, ready to be slurped up by the consumer. Including a straw with each tube would really facilitate the process, and a straw is just a tube anyway! Hey, maybe their packaging idea worked out after all!

Anyway, I’m sure what I described above wouldn’t be much worse than what they’re already selling:

sadly, this is a real product intended for human consumption