We worship cats here

Major not minor, any pronouns, who cares it's the internet /╲/\╭[ -- _ --]╮/\╱\

[mosertone]

Olmec Penis Man, Mexico, 800-1200 BCE

[ymirjotunn]

there are two female Pholcus phalangioides cohabiting the same web in our bathroom. they've been there for about a week. this is baffling because they are definitively not social. they typically eat whatever ends up in the same web, including other P. phalangioides. the extent of their association is mating (where the male is often eaten afterwards), and a nine-day period where the mother watches newly hatched spiderlings. there are no spiderlings. one of them might be gravid but they're too distant for me to be able to say that with any kind of likelihood, it's just a possibility bc her opisthosoma is a little bit bigger. (you can tell the difference between the two bc one of them is missing a leg + has the larger opisthosoma.)

there's no way they aren't aware of each other. these spiders sense by vibration, you can't share a web with a pholcid and have them just not know about it, and they routinely swap positions in the web (ms. missing leg is often on the opposite side of ms. 8 legs that she was when last observed).

obviously i'm not mad about this, it's fascinating behavior and i feel so privileged to get to see it, but i have absolutely zero explanation for it. in my investigation so far i haven't been able to find any documented association between pholcids that isn't mating or motherhood or cannibalism. they're sedentary web hunters, they can't afford to share a capture web with another conspecific, and there are almost no flying insects in our bathroom (their web is in the corner of the ceiling out in the open, which is also kind of unusual for pholcids, they tend to prefer going below overhangs, and i suspect they'd actually have more success with a web on the floor bc we Do get crawlers like millipedes and carpet beetle larvae pretty frequently, but also we keep the bathroom dark 100% of the time even when in use bc of my photosensitivity so perhaps they've been tricked into thinking this is more secure than it is based on the light levels?), so i have no idea how they're getting enough prey for the both of them. surely they can't be sharing?? i haven't actually seen them capture anything in this web so far but obviously it's possible i've missed something, i only watch them when i'm in the bathroom.

i can't help but think eventually one of them is going to eat the other, which will be sad for me personally because i've grown quite fond of them but i do want at least one of them to live. and i just can't imagine they're getting much prey. should we try to capture a fly or something and tenderly feed it to them. well, 2 flies, i guess. i don't think pholcids would make ideal pets just bc they're relatively skittish and not very visual compared to salticids. but i do love them both and i want them to eat well.

i think i'm going to have to take some better photos and maybe send some of my observations to some arachnologists, i'm like did we misidentify them? i have no idea what else would have the pholcid body plan lol it's pretty obvious (cosmopolitan cellar spider/"daddy longlegs"). or is there some explanation i haven't considered? i just can't emphasize enough that these are so solitary that they will eat each other if one sees another, which is not an uncommon behavior for spiders (especially sedentary web hunters, for prey access reasons) but some others will have some kind of associative behavior documented Somewhere. these do not!!! they don't have enough body mass to be able to afford that kind of competition! what is going ON

[ymirjotunn]

cohabitation is still occurring. if you even care. veritable yuri situation. ms. missing leg actually got hold of prey about two days ago (!!!) (so cool to watch her eat, i had never seen it so up close before!) (looked like maybe an ant but she'd already taken some very big bites out of it so hard to say) and ms 8 legs was just sitting there patiently watching her. in the same web!!! now ms missing leg has a comically large opisthosoma while she digests. a bit like right after a snake gets a dinner of dodent.

ms 8 legs is still very skinny. i fear she hasn't had a meal in a while bc she's been skinny the whole time i've seen her. she's also attempting active hunting throughout the bathroom which pholcids (and other web hunters) usually don't do unless they're very hungry. i don't know why this is the case when she could just eat ms missing leg... surely it must be love? or some kind of judgment call based on their relative strength, they are araneophagous (even invading other webs to eat their owners!) so they definitely have the cognitive skills to make that call, but idk why ms missing leg would not simply eat the weaker pholcid! strongly considering bringing ms 8 legs some food by hand because i feel so bad for her and her stick-thin opisthosoma... she's so small! i don't know how long she can go without prey... looks like at least a week but many sedentary spiders can go much longer, it's just so odd to leave their web at all that i'm quite concerned given the frequency of the behavior, i have no idea how long it's been since her last meal

here is a lower quality picture from a couple days ago as proof of their relationship. they are so elegant, i love watching them move. the rotary probing in particular is really beautiful (lifting the long front legs above the silk, making little looping movements, coming to rest again when they hit a thread). their movement and exploration as tactile creatures is very familiar to me as a tactile creature myself

ms 8 legs is much thinner now i'm afraid

[just-living-for-pretty-rocks]

I've observed this in my house too! I also couldn't find a source for this, but I've seen it twice this summer.

There was a pair in my room who were cohabiting for about a week. Initially I noticed some gentle web plucking, but then they seemed to just cohabit for a week, occasionally circling each other, both were very similar sized. Then one night I was lucky enough to see them mating very briefly before running away from each other. I've only seen one since that night, but they're in quite a dark corner so it's difficult to properly see!

The second pair are in the bathroom, again both similar size, I think both female. They've been sharing a web for over a week. The larger one has recently moved slightly farther away but still less than 30cm away from her companion. Again the first day the slightly smaller one appeared I saw some gentle web plucking but nothing since then, just sitting near each other.

Have you had any success in feeding them as I also worry when there's a lack of available prey that they might try to eat each other/starve, but don't want to scare them off.

[ymirjotunn]

oh my gosh, thank you so much for sharing, that's so exciting to hear that i'm not the only one who's seen something like this!! we never observed any physical contact, just sitting near each other like what you describe in your second observation

unfortunately they both seem to have vacated this web, as of about two days ago. they both left at the same time! i assume that they finally realized that this is not a good location bc there just is not that much prey in our bathroom haha. i should have tried feeding them sooner - i will definitely consider doing it for future bathroom inhabitants, i loved observing them.

if you want to try feeding them yourself, this appears to be very possible, based on what i've read. you do not have to hand it to them directly! as nonvisual hunters, they won't be able to see things that you're holding right in front of them like a jumping spider or wolf spider would. if you can put the prey near the web, the prey may entangle itself or the spiders may be able to sense them and catch them from their web (apparently they have been observed doing this with prey up to 2 inches away from their web! somehow!). if this fails multiple times you could try placing it directly in the web but these webs are fragile and not sticky (they work just by tangling prey, like a human tripping over poorly managed cables), very different from the classic orb weaver webs many of us are more familiar with. letting prey organically walk close to or into the web is more likely to preserve the web, less likely to make the pholcids think you're a predator, and aligns better with how pholcids locate and hunt prey

pholcids can eat things much bigger than they are and are usually not super picky, but ants are likely the easiest things for us as humans to catch and share with them. you can literally just pick them up off the ground, they won't fly away, and if you put them on a wall they will kind of just truck along right into the web. i have seen one or two sources that suggest that pholcids are particularly fond of ants but i'm not sure how true that is! in lab settings they are usually fed Drosophila flies so dipterans work just fine but may be more annoying to catch and release, same for mayflies. beetles or beetle larva would also work though they may have a slightly harder time with prey that has very hard shells. and of course they will happily eat other spiders if you are able to catch them. honestly you could give them just about anything as long as it is reasonably sized and moving, ants will just probably be the most convenient.

you can feed them as often as you want without worrying about their health; when they are satiated they will not bother catching the prey, per a few studies on their feeding habits. if you ever have concerns about their water intake, blotting paper/paper towel made damp with water is what is typically used in the lab (this works for any spider or small arthropod that might be dehydrated, btw!)

if you do decide to try feeding them, i would love to see a video or photo if it's feasible!! when we saw ms. missing leg eating her meal, ms. 8 legs did not seem concerned at all and did not attempt to take her prey, and i'm super curious how that might play out for other spiders that have already been cohabiting seemingly noncompetitively.

in truth, it seems like it's possible that my pair could have been any combination of sexes - we were never able to get a very good shot of their pedipalps and, while some sources reported that males were universally smaller in this species, it seems like that actually tends to depend on the local population, and i have no idea what our population's sexual dimorphism might really be. regardless, though, my pair did not seem to be interested in mating, so whatever sex they might have been they were still engaging in solitary-but-social behavior that is unusual for what we know of this species! if i am lucky enough to observe this behavior again, i hope i am feeling a little more well at the time so i can document it better, haha.

it is so cool that we can observe this kind of thing from our own homes! i love synanthropic animals, what a blessing. thank you so much for sharing your experience with them!!

[rowan-e-ravenwood]

new top contender

[fiyeli]

Just a fox

[polkadotmotmot]

Eva Marengo Sanchez - Special Occasion, 2026 - Oil on canvas

[theswisscheeserag]

You gotta be really publicly passionate about things if you want your friends to text you. Bc people will forget to text you because they’re human. But if you’re really openly the friend who loves identifying ants your friends will think of you when they see ants. And they’ll text you “what ant is this [blurry photo]”. And then they’ll ask you how you’ve been and we should get coffee sometime. But if they don’t know what you love they’ll never know what you like

[theswisscheeserag]

And then when the ant convention is in town they’ll be like dude… we should go to the ant convention. But they would never think to go if they didn’t know u loved ants

[theswisscheeserag]

And sometimes you need to ask them to go to the ant convention. But you Will not get anywhere hiding your passions

[damazcuz]

How did you get hacked?

I tried to pirate a game and did so wrong.

The thing about hackers, scammers, fraudsters-- is that they cast a very wide net knowing they'll get a few suckers caught in it. Let's say 10,000 people get an email saying "YOÜVE W0N!🤩 CLiCK N⁰W!?!" 9,997 of them delete it. For the three people who get sucked in, it's life ruining.

They rely on the fact that, at some point, they are going to get you while you're not thinking clearly. Maybe you're sick. Or tired. Or work is stressful. Or you just had a fight with someone and you're mad. Your kid is going through something, your dog is at the vet, your car broke down, you got fired. Or you're in the middle of planning a big event, or you're so super excited for a convention-- and something comes across your desk. Maybe it's an email, or a phone call, a link, a text, a file. But for whatever reason you're not thinking 100% clearly and you don't question it, you trust for a minute and that's all that they need. You are now one of those three caught in the net.

And now you're actually on their list of suckers! They will return to you over and over and over and over again for more, because hey! You fell for it once. They're counting on that your grandma who answered a scam call and provided her credit card number once WILL be scammable again. Maybe not right away, maybe not the same way, but they'll get her. (And more often than not, they're right.)

I think most people are inclined to want to trust one another. Or sometimes we're curious. Or we think, "Wow, I didn't know it would be this easy!" not stopping to ask WHY it's so easy to get something good for free.

I work at a financial institution and I help people all the time who have been hacked and lost hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars. They are always terrified- will I get my money back? Am I safe?- but they are also consistently ashamed and embarrassed. They feel guilty for having trusted and for not having stopped to think for a second longer. They verbally berate themselves. "I'm so stupid. How could I have fallen for it?"

Currently I'm only out about $300, which I'm being told I'll get back. That number could go up-- I'm still working on securing everything. Do you know how many passwords I had stored in my browser? 192. I have no idea how many of those had a valid card attached, but so far one account was plenty to steal a couple hundred bucks from me. And I do feel stupid, and embarrassed, ashamed, humiliated. Scared. The hacker messaged everyone I had recently messaged on discord as well as every channel in every server to @/everyone with instructions to download their Spyware. Every single person I talk to knows I fell for something dumb.

It's embarrassing, it's upsetting, and I dont even know the full scope of what more is going to happen. I had tax documents on my computer-- how much of my identity is now in their hands? I've locked my credit and placed fraud alerts everywhere, but how safe am I? Who else is at risk now because of me? What other files do they have from me?

In this case, I happen to know that a number of people did what I did. I've seen a number of threads from others who ALSO tried to download tomodachi life from github. (For the record, this was not the floralith link.) I was excited, I was in a hurry. I thought, "this is so quick and easy and now I can play!" I didnt question why in the hell it would EVER be so easy. I haven't had a virus on my computer since I was a young teen, and then I went and installed a bunch of Trojans whilst going "la la la." Incredibly stupid stuff.

But that's the thing, these people are constantly TRYING to catch someone, anyone, YOU, and they count on that eventually, EVENTUALLY, someday they'll dangle just the right bait for you to latch on to. And in my case it was a fishy video game download.

[kerink]

it is INCREDIBLY easy to get scammed. no matter how safe or smart you think you are. you are more likely to get scammed than not.

i almost did this exact same thing in january of this year. i'd just applied for SSA disability and a day or two after i got an legitimate looking email saying they needed additional documents. i check my email first thing in the morning so i was physically tired and stressed in every way possible and in pain from still being post-surgical and i was scared of screwing up this process.

i downloaded the attached file. the only thing that saved me was my computer asking if i was sure i wanted to run this program.

what program? i thought this was a pdf?

no. turns out the icon was a pdf but the file type was something i wasn't familiar with.

i went back to the email and sure enough the sender was some stupid gibberish.

i dodged a bullet by an unspeakably slim margin. it terrifies me how legit the email had looked, it was properly formatted with correct spelling and grammar and had all the right logos and headers and it went to my focused inbox. this was not designed to filter people out. it terrifies me how they even knew i'd just applied and to try this.

i've had friends who've lost thousands to scams that got them at the wrong time.

it doesn't matter who you are, how protected you feel, how many defenses you've got in place, how locked down your shit seems, they will get you. it may not ruin your life, but in some way to some degree you will get got.

[harperhug]

You (and I) are not immune to social engineering.

[littleyellowleaves]

Acrylic painting on masonite board.

[sharpenededgess]

Ryoko Kimura - Banquet of Mermaids

[voydhymn]

having many trinkets and books is so cool and fun until you realize you have to dust them

[medievalera]

i have to what

[valtsv]

recurring dead wife flashback where it becomes increasingly apparent that the person remembering her has dishonestly claimed a romantic dynamic to their relationship that never actually existed and erased any conflict that ever existed between them now that she's no longer able to say no to them

[valtsv]

dead wife flashback where each time we see her she looks more confused and upset by how she's remembered, then desperate and furious, until she's hammering on the glass screaming to be let out

[valtsv]

this isn't how it happened. you know this isn't how it happened. but you still keep coming back, keep disturbing my grave so you can play out your fantasies. voyeurs crowding around my autopsy, straining for the best view; pawing through my entrails like grubby butchers trying to find some golden meaning in blood and shit because you can't bear to face the cold light of truth. you just can't bear the thought of never having really known me at all.

[chiimeramanticore]

do me a favor and reblog this and put in the tags what time it is for you and what you're currently doing/thinking about

[aspenceart]

the nightly delivery

[Image ID: A watercolor and gouache painting. Dark blue borders form an archway and in the center a bird flies upward into pink, watercolor clouds. The bird is carrying long strings of stars and the stars are falling from the strings to fill the grey-blue sky.]

[arrimorr]

The most lovable being of all

[milf--adjacent]

Let the historical record show that Mr. Beast was entirely ignorable if you were just like doing literally anything else. I've been on youtube as long as it's been around and I've never been recommended a video by him. I see him in passing as a meme. I thought he was a made up joke, a caricature of bad youtuber content miners until someone I trust confirmed his existence to me in late 2025.

[ptr-sqloint]

Poisoning - Sickness - Invasion

[ra3kiv]