A spider was trapped in the bath-tub, so I threw a towel over the side so that he would have an escape route. The spider immediately dashed onto the towel. You would think that the spider would be scared by the movement and run away from it. But as soon as the towel landed he ran straight onto it. Of course it could just be pure chance.. the spider started running and happened to end up on the towel. But that seems unlikely to me - as there was plenty of space for the spider to run away from the towel.
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It might be possible, but there's really no way to draw a conclusion from one example.
As you said yourself, the spider could just have run in a random direction.
The only way to evaluate it would be to repeat the situation over and over... looking for consistent results.
The other thing to bear in mind is that we don't know what the spider was responding to. We are primarily visual animals. We see the towel, follow it with our eyes, and see that it leads out of the tub.
Spiders don't sense the world like that. They rely as much on vibration sensing as they do vision, and can see into the ultra-violet spectrum. (and that's about as much as I know about spider sensory abilities - there might be more differences).
Maybe it's a simple behavioural thing - that type of spider always starts off running in a forward direction when startled, the same way houseflies always take off with a backward jump, even if the threat is coming from behind them. Just the way they're wired.
All fun to think about!
Here's a cool link to a little interactive spider:
http://www.onemotion.com/flash/spider/
As you said yourself, the spider could just have run in a random direction.
The only way to evaluate it would be to repeat the situation over and over... looking for consistent results.
The other thing to bear in mind is that we don't know what the spider was responding to. We are primarily visual animals. We see the towel, follow it with our eyes, and see that it leads out of the tub.
Spiders don't sense the world like that. They rely as much on vibration sensing as they do vision, and can see into the ultra-violet spectrum. (and that's about as much as I know about spider sensory abilities - there might be more differences).
Maybe it's a simple behavioural thing - that type of spider always starts off running in a forward direction when startled, the same way houseflies always take off with a backward jump, even if the threat is coming from behind them. Just the way they're wired.
All fun to think about!
Here's a cool link to a little interactive spider:
http://www.onemotion.com/flash/spider/
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Yes I believe so, I see a documentary on the TV that showed a spider that by looking up at a fly caught in a another spiders web, that it must have worked out how to get to it. When you seen it could not have been by chance.It is their life to work out where to go for food, just like us.
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Creatures can have intelligence but surely not as much as we have.that's why it could not save it's life as spider even got a chance to escape.
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spiders hate putting on their shoes in the morning.