What is the scariest spider in the world? There are, of course, many species of the. But the correct answer from the standpoint of science is every single one. The point here is in the fundamental features of human psychology and ancient instincts that we inherited from the first intelligent bipedal ancestors. And to force society to discuss such strange matters was provoked by the photographs of this creature.
Meet Metagryne bicolumnata. Or “ear cleaner”, as the common people call him.
Photographer Andreas Kay took these pictures in the Amazon forests back in 2017, but no one believed him for a long time. Well, really, in the age of the dominance of Photoshop, it is not surprising that there was so much misbelief- how can there be spiders with dog or wolf heads in nature? Of course that’s not true, entomologists say. Because these are not the head and the bright points are not the eyes, and such special growths are to scare off enemies. And us, people, in the first place.
Let’s go back about a million years ago, when our ancestors roamed the hot and fertile savannas of Africa. The dense grass and tropical thickets were swarming with all sorts of insects, among which almost a third part was poisonous, and spiders occupied the first place among the most dangerous reptiles. One bite from a creature the size of a fingernail, and the hero of this post is just the described size, and death is almost guaranteed. The surviving ancient man acquired a terrible fear of all these creatures, who are with paws , forever , brrr. And they passed it to us through genetic memory, so for us all spiders indiscriminately, like insects with a large number of legs and mandibles, are very scary!
And what does a person do when the danger is very close and there is no chance to escape? Shows miracles of ingenuity to save his life, and then, out of anger and resentment, he takes revenge, using the most cruel methods. For example, he can set fire to a whole grove, where he was frightened by a small spider. Mother Nature was never able to really neutralize this property, and therefore she still relies on simple methods – all living beings first try to scare a stupid person to get away, and do not rush to eat him alive right away. For this, it is not a sin to grow a creature like this, in reality, this spider is not even poisonous. It still looks ugly, doesn’t it?
