Question

Fun Fact #53: Today I shall share with you a paragraph from one of my favorite books. Written in 1912 this book is the closest thing I have ever come to scientific poetry. "The Life of the Spider" is like David Attenborough in a book (I daresay better!). Read below for a quote, written about the Tarantula's family.

Answer 1

"Huddled together, sometimes in two or three layers, according to their number, the little ones cover the whole back of the mother, who, for seven or eight months to come, will carry her family night and day. Nowhere can we hope to see a more edifying domestic picture than that of the Lycosa clothed in her young.

From time to time, I meet a little band of gipsies passing along the high-road on their way to some neighbouring fair. The new-born babe mewls on the mother’s breast, in a hammock formed out of a kerchief. The last-weaned is carried pick-a-back; a third toddles clinging to its mother’s skirts; others follow closely, the biggest in the rear, ferreting in the blackberry-laden hedgerows. It is a magnificent spectacle of happy-go-lucky fruitfulness. They go their way, penniless and rejoicing. The sun is hot and the earth is fertile.

But how this picture pales before that of [157] the Lycosa, that incomparable gipsy whose brats are numbered by the hundred! And one and all of them, from September to April, without a moment’s respite, find room upon the patient creature’s back, where they are content to lead a tranquil life and to be carted about. "

Answer 2

Oooo that was a bit longer that I thought it would be, nonetheless here is a link to the full book http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=fabre&book=spider&story=tarantula
"The Life of the Spider" by Jean Henri Fabre. -Though reading it from a real book is much better :)

Answer 3

Previous fun fact (Photosynthesizing sea-slugs): http://openstudy.com/groups/biology#/groups/biology/updates/4e8f0a390b8bfb9f23d6a99c