this episode is brought to you by a
collaboration between the Denver Museum
of Nature and Science and the Field
Museum in Chicago Illinois back in 2004
at the ripe age of 14 I received an
email that looks something like this it
was a picture featuring two massive
nightmarish creatures with enormous
fames in humongous legs
they appeared to each be as big as a
grown man's thigh and look like they
could take off your finger the
description with the images mentions
that they have a quote vertical leap
that would make a pro basketball player
weep with envy and that they need to
jump high enough to jump onto a camel
and suck out its juices and maybe even
lay it's a exhibit stomach the thing is
most of that isn't true I mean the
animals are it's just that the force
perspective makes them look huge the
biggest one they're only six to eight
inches they're completely non-venomous
can't jump like pro basketball players
and even though they can run pretty fast
they still can't outrun you
these are camel spiders and there are
more than 1,100 known species they live
in deserts all across the world with the
exception of Australia and Antarctica
and the oldest known species date back
to 300 million years ago it was around
during the Carboniferous period and
roamed the planet from sixty million
years before the dinosaurs so even
though these guys are super abundant and
have been around for a really long time
there's still a bunch we don't know
about them which is why I came here so
the Denver Museum of Nature and Science
to talk to dr. Paula Cushing she's been
studying these guys for nearly 17 years
Paula is an evolutionary biologist and
curator of invertebrate zoology her
research focuses on arachnids a group of
animals that include spiders and
scorpions but her specialty is in camel
spiders she's one of maybe five
scientists in the world who was
regularly publishing new discoveries on
these relatively mysterious creatures so
we went to her lab to learn more about
her work so why don't more people study
though so they're really hard to study
they're hard to catch when you're in the
field they're really hard to keep alive
in the lab I started calling them the
spawn of Satan because they they seem to
appear you're out there in the desert
they peer out of nowhere they disappear
they're lonely
the wind you try to catch them you can't
catch them they're just like a love-hate
relationship that I have with these
things or these venomous are they toxic
at all no so they have they have no
venom they they act like they could take
you down but they can't so they're
really pretty harmless when I when I
catch them when I grab one by my hand
the big species like what you're seeing
under the microscope don't give you a
little nip and you can feel it and I
scream like a girl when they bite me but
they're not strong enough to break your
skin our skin is tougher than we think
can you just tell us a little bit about
their interesting Anatomy sure so one of
the most remarkable things about these
arachnids is their enormous jaws jaws of
arachnids are called chalo suri and they
can move their jaws both this way and
this way so I decide and up and down yes
and they'll grab the prey with their
using their legs using their their front
appendages are called pedipalps but they
bring that insight close to their jaws
to the tree and then they just start
tearing it apart but they can't chew so
what they do is they as with almost all
arachnids they vomit digestive enzymes
onto the bodies of prey the digestive
enzymes break down the muscles and the
tissue and then like with other
arachnids they have a muscular stomach
and they just suck in that pre liquefied
predigested meal
oh how appetizing and with males in the
family that I study I study animals in
the family ARIMA badda T and in that
family the males have no teeth on that
upper jaw of the chilla story whereas
the females she has teeth on both the
upper and the lower jaw and the reason
there's a difference when they get ready
to mate with the females the male Sophia
the male camel spider he finds the
female out there he rushes at her he
grabs her around the middle of her body
and as soon as he grabbed her if she's
receptive and ready to mate for some
reason she goes completely quiescent
it's like she goes into a trance
and then what the meal does is he moves
his jaws down to her genital opening on
the underside of her abdomen and he
sticks his jaws into her genital opening
and he starts to chew I know the male
will exude from his genital opening to
sperm packet and he'll pull his jaws out
he'll move his body up
he'll deposit the sperm packet on her
genital opening and then he box that
down and then he sticks that sperm
packet into her again using his jaws and
then she starts to wake up he books it
out of there as fast as he can because
at that point anything goes she could
eat him he could eat her they could both
went away
Wow I mean that's not good couple dates
I've been on why doesn't it seem like
they chase after you so there are
stories of soldiers in Iraq and
Afghanistan who have been stationed
there who who claim that they're running
after them they're chasing them down in
the desert and I think what's happening
is as the soldiers are working the
desert they're basically uncovering the
daytime burrows of these animals and
when they're disturbed during the day
they don't like it they don't like the
Sun they're trying to seek out shade oh
we think what they're doing is they're
chasing after the shadow of the troll
soldier and by doing so by running after
the shadow they're essentially looking
like they're running after the soldier
they have this remarkable ability to
maintain very high activity rates for
very long periods of time they have
tracheal tubes kind of like insects do
so those tracheal tubes are taking
oxygen up through little holes in the
exoskeleton into their body and are
transporting that oxygen very
efficiently all through the tissue of
the body so as terrifying as we might
seem they're pretty harmless they're
pretty harmless we don't know enough
about them yeah what we do know is
they're important predators in in very
dry xeric desert environments the
deserts worldwide are our habitats that
are at risk from agriculture from
irrigation from developments and so
these top predators like like the soul
fusion like scorpions they're important
in both controlling the insect
populations that exist in the desert
they're also important food so desert
adapted
birds mammals reptiles are are using so
fugitives as an important food item it's
important for us to understand I think
more about the biology of all organisms
on earth I mean we have one planet that
that we share you know we share with
millions of species that we know so
little about the biology of our
neighboring species on this planet
anybody can make discoveries about them
I mean there's so much left to know
about camel spiders so that's the really
satisfying part of studying these animal
yeah I I can get behind that yeah yeah I
think everybody should get behind that
yeah
camel spiders yes arachnid Haskell has
brains on it
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