We know you wanted to learn about giant sea spiders today. Because if it weren’t enough that giant spiders have taken over the east coast (okay, they haven’t really and that’s greatly exaggerated), now we also have to worry about giant spiders when we go swimming in the ocean. I don’t know about you, but that feels like way too many places with giant spiders to me. And I’m sure that list actually has way more entries on it than that. Land, air, and now sea, these creatures live everywhere, it turns out. And these giant spiders are trying to make… more giant spiders.
You might think you see one spider in the video above, but actually, you see two. And it turns out these spiders are trying to “match pores” aka attempting to create more spiders for the ocean. At first, the E/V Nautilus researchers also thought they only saw dinner plate-sized spider, they estimate 20cm long. But once they got a closer look, they saw a lot of legs were exactly present in the shot. Too many legs, if you ask us.
They can’t say for sure if the giant spiders are romantic or cannibalistic. And we have to ask if we actually ended up watching an episode of Hannibal. But seem to conclude the spiders’ closeness has happened for reproductive reasons. We can’t tell if that feels better or worse than if they spiders united for lunch.
The researchers also share that sea spiders mate using pores in their legs, which they need to align. “After fertilization, the males will carry the eggs in special organs (called ovigers) until they hatch.” Very interesting stuff. And apparently, this video offers a rare sighting of the process. But we still feel uneasy about all these sea spider limbs.
Overall though, this spider duo lives at 1684 meters below sea level. So you probably won’t run into them on the street. Unless you’re Aquaman or Namor the Sub-Mariner, but then you probably have bigger monsters to worry about anyway.
