BBC Earth
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2019–2022
4:00 · 14M views · Jul 2, 2017
A BBC Earth clip from The Hunt showing Portia jumping spiders, which leap many times their body length and ambush prey larger than themselves.
HN recommends it as striking footage of how cleverly jumping spiders plan their attacks.
4 comments from Hacker News
When hearing annecdotes about the intelligence of jumping I’m always reminded of and David Attenborough’s narration of Portia this video Well worth the watch if it’s new to you! Quite the perspective shifter
They seem to be in a class entirely unto themselves. There is something about the way they move and observe the world that gives them an apparent intellect beyond any other 'bug' I've seen. I used to keep bees and they are amazing in both their individual and collective ability, but it's hard to interact with them. Portia and other in the Salticidae family are almost like little dogs or something. They watch you, seem to make eye contact even, and generally are tolerant of handling and attention. Really cool little critters. Predictably, the BBC and David Attenborough have some amazing videos about them: Hunting a spider - this video Hunting a mantid (you have to watch the end) - [LINK] Crazy mating ritual - [LINK] Another intense mating ritual - [LINK] They let you pet them - [LINK] All of this with a brain of approximately 100,000 neurons.
Spiders are amazing. Of course you should stay away from some of them, like blackwidow, the brown recluse, or the brazilian wandering spider but for the most part, house spiders (unless you're in Australia), and jumping spiders are usually friendly. David Attenborough covered Portias in one of the documentaries: this video -- It's fascinating that they can strategize their attack.
> it legit turned into horror at one point As did the first book, in a different way. Just the thought of something like this[0] whose body is ~4 feet long (let alone the legs, too) is enough to descend into horror territory for me. [0] this video