Apples — Blog — Michael Sitvarin

Two stories came across my radar recently, both of which highlight how spiders get involved in strange news stories.

In the first story, we are presented with "evidence" of some kind of giant spider spotted via Google Earth.

The image seems pretty straightforward to me: find a satellite image of a remote island and slap a blurry spider image on there. The story about this image surfaced on a UFO blog, including this statement: "...goes to prove that scientists don’t have the slightest clue about the hidden giant species that exist in the oceans of the world."

While it is true that the ocean is poorly explored and even large species can escape our notice...spiders? Really? Spiders? Spiders.

Spiders do not live in the ocean, do not grow to the size of a bus, and would likely have been noticed by now if such spiders existed. If they are coming ashore, then they should be more visible than deep sea giants. Also, they'd have to eat a lot, as spiders are voracious predators. Spiders, as fluid feeders, cannot feed while submerged, though I suppose these giant marine spiders could find a way to make it work. Pushing the obviously ridiculous claim over the edge, the person who shared this image did not include coordinates, thus preventing independent confirmation of the image.

The other weird, though less crazy, thing that happened with spiders in the news goes in an unexpected direction. At a grocery store in Sweden, a large spider (tarantula of some sort) was found in with some apples. Now, as I've described before, large spiders do occasionally show up with bananas, but apples are an unusual crop, especially for coincidental tarantulas.

The real twist here, the one that puts this story in a different category than any spider-in-produce news piece I've ever seen, is that a person was seen putting the tarantula on the apples. So, how do we make sense of this behavior? Was the spider being dropped off, perhaps with the hope it would find its own way in the world? Why apples? Does the Swedish education system create some kind of link between tarantulas and apples? Or maybe this is simply the face of modern Swedish terrorism?

Maybe the owner intended to come back later and pick the spider up, using the apples as some kind of tarantula day care. I'm going to assume this is what was going on, and encourage grocery stores to have a more explicit location for spider drop-off and pick-up. Putting them next to the apples might be ideal, because then the spiders could at least gaze at the sweet, crispy bounty. Please write to your local grocery store and demand a safe, clearly marked place for people (Swedish or otherwise) to deposit their large arachnid pets!