Tilting the Void

More pictures later. As you can see, she's pretty small. After the molt, she's gained about 1/2 an inch!

Why are we people so generally freaked out by terrestrial arthropods (insects, spiders, oogly-boogly things) and not freaked out by ocean-going creatures?

Heck, we even eat ocean-dwelling arthropods, but not too many of us (with a nod to Asians and indigenous South American tribes) eat terrestrial arthropods.

What is up with that? I'm starting to get really curious about this. The further I pursue my own interests in bugs & insects, which seems to be growing by the day, the more I notice I'm not nearly as frightened or skeeved by bugs as I used to be--and I was a fairly squealy, annoying girl when it comes to frightening bugs.

Anymore, I'm all "OH COOL WHAT IS THAT THING?!?"

Anyone have thoughts on why we'll scarf down the shrimp and crab by the pound, but get wall-eyed and skittery when the littlest spider goes scampering across our bare flesh?

The sheer variety and strangeness, the clever adaptations, make arthropods in general just endlessly fascinating to me. It's like discovering alien species at every turn, as if I've got Deep Space 9 in my garden. How could anyone ever get bored? And no, I don't cuddle these creatures or want to hold them--but I often find myself just awestruck at the beauty.

Yes, okay, I'll go crawl back under my nerd rock now