Nuptial gift

February 24, 2014 • 11:05 am

This is a little late for Valentine’s day, but who cares?; after all, I’m sure our hominin ancestors did a similar thing.

When I was in grad school, I tried to woo a young lady by bringing her a vial of fruit flies (Drosophila) with a red ribbon around it. I thought she’d enjoy watching the adults lay eggs which would hatch into larvae, and then crawl up the walls of the vials to pupate, eventually producing a new generation of flies.

It didn’t work.

spider

113 thoughts on “Nuptial gift”

  1. That it didn’t work probably means she wasn’t the one for you, and thus best that you got that out of the way sooner rather than later.

    Of course, if your intentions were…shall we say…less honorable, then a different strategy might have been called for….

    b&

    1. I obviously don’t know you well, but something tells me you are not doing all that well in the romance department.

    1. Me? Why me? Because of the spider? I actually think jumping spiders are cute. I have lots at my place in the summer. I even had one that would try to sleep in the toilet paper roll (correctly hung on the under position) that would tumble out from his slumber of you used it.

      1. Eeek…it never occurred to me to worry about spiders in the toilet paper roll…I hope you mean at a cottage, Diana?

        Is that a jumping spider or a tarantula in the photo? My college rommate stepped on a tarantula barefoot in her driveway in La Caรฑada (near L.A.) She wasn’t bitten, but the experience was not pleasant. I had the willies-at-a distance (official scientific term) just hearing about it…

        2. It’s a jumping spider. As you can tell from the photo, it’s barely bigger than the fly; say, about the size of a fingernail, legs and all. You wouldn’t notice if you stepped on one, shoes or no.

          b&

          4. I once saw a zebra jumping spider (the smallest of jumping spiders) totally take down a fly twice his size. Those little spiders are fast & cunning!

        3. Nope, not at the cottage – at my house. There are lots of jumping spiders. I boot them outside usually now because they won’t get enough to eat inside.

        4. I forgot to also include, “yuck” at stepping on a big animal like a tarantula & squishing it. That is awful on so many levels…mostly it sucks more for the tarantula though.

      2. Thought you might have an opinion on the value and ranking of fruit flies as a gift. I assume you are a regular recipient of gifts, if not, you should be.

          3. I liked it when he kept the good gift of the neuron drawings that his grad student picked out for Amy. I would probably do something like that.

      3. And besides cute, they’re pretty “smart” too!

        I somewhat recall a study that found that jumping spiders can identify a target, figure out a non direct path to the target that entails that they lose sight / sense of the target, and succesfully follow the planned path to the target.

        For example, a spider on a leaf sees a fly on a leaf of another plant. The spider can climb down, thus losing sight of the fly, move over to the correct other plant, climb it, and move to the part of it where the fly is. All without being able to see the fly until the end. Pretty amazing what even brains small enough to fit on the tip of a pin can do.

        1. Some of the things I’ve read about Portia, the most intelligent of the jumping spiders, are just mind-boggling.

        2. Oh yes, they seem quite smart and being hunters they notice things – it is cute how they will turn their little bodies to see thing. I try to play a game of scaring them to get them to display their front legs up but they don’t always. I think they are on to me. ๐Ÿ™‚

          1. The problem with this image is the floaty eye is way higher than my eye, especially if viewing from on the throne. Therefore the argument unravels like a nicely under hung role of TP.

          4. Comment from that site:

            Frank says:

            October 15, 2010 at 2:43 pm

            This is so true and yes perhaps I am anal about it, but when I find t.p. the wrong way in someone elses house, I always change it so that it is right. Finally an article to confirm my beliefsโ€ฆ.

            What if you accidentally invited both Frank & Diana to the same party?!!

          6. I have a friend that changes the toilet paper in the opposite direction from me. I joke that she is following me and changing it back wherever I go.

          7. 376 comments! TP seems set to rival kittehs as the no. 1 obsession of the Intertoobz…

  4. “I tried to woo a young lady by bringing her a vial of fruit flies.”

    This is what Dennett refers to as the intentional stance most amenable to punishment.

    2. Try this next time:
      r = 4โˆš(1โ€“zยฒ) ร— {sin|ฮธ|}^|ฮธ|

      โ€“1 < x < 1
      โ€“1 < y < 1
      โ€“0.95 < z < 0.95
      โ€“ฯ€ < ฮธ < ฯ€

      If you don't want a hole in your heart, use
      โ€“1 < z < 1

      Reference: Graphing Calculator app

    4. Cardoid … OIC, below.
      I’m trying to remember the compass-and-pencil construction. Is it “draw a circle ; mark a point on the circumference ; centred on other points on the circumference, construct circles passing through the marked point ; the envelope is a cardoid.
      Is that right? I don’t have my Cundy and Rollett on this continent.

  7. Hmmm…I suspect it’s just waiting for the insides to liquify before enjoys its insect smoothie. With tarantulas, the venom takes about a half hour, and in the meantime they just stand there holding it (though will move or drop it if startled).

  8. How could anyone with a heart refuse such a sweet little thing? Actually, I think I went out with him a couple of times. Called him ‘Honey.’

  10. This is an adorable picture, and I (bug nut & former Drosophila researcher) will save it for Valentines Day next year. This year I made funny Darwin Valentine for my beloved wife.
    I probably should not share this, but my wife wooed me back in grad school with a similar trick that the spider is ‘using’ above. So it does work.

  11. I was going to post this on Valentineโ€™s Day, but that turned out to be not a good day for me. But since you brought it upโ€ฆ

    No scientific Valentine? Here you are; science, beauty and eternal love.

    http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1005/NGC4038_ssro.jpg

    For the less romantic of you, this is from NASAโ€™s Picture of the Day website, frequently posted around this time of the year. Found in the southerly constellation Corvus, where two large galaxies collided. Cataloged as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039, their large clouds of molecular gas and dust trigger furious episodes of star formation near the center. Spanning about 500 thousand light-years, this stunning view also reveals new star clusters and matter flung far from the scene of the accident by gravitational tidal forces. The visual appearance of the arcing structures gives the galaxy pair its popular name โ€“ The Antennae

      1. I downloaded a background picture app & included the APOD add on so I get the picture of the day on my Android tablet each day. There is probably something similar for iOS.

    3. This, and similar photos, are also a great proof against a 6,000 year old universe. To say they were created like this is simply arbitrary, but the interaction that produced the current configuration would have taken millions of years to occur.

      Similarly for a photo such as this one, where the smaller galaxy’s gravitational attraction has pulled one of the larger galaxy’s spiral arms away from its original position; kind of like partially unfolding a paper clip.

      1. Don’t be silly. How could it take God longer that 6,000 years to say “I love you.” You must not run with a tough ‘young earthers’ crowd.

  12. I was going to post this on Valentineโ€™s Day, but that turned out to be not a good day. But since you brought it upโ€ฆ
    No Scientific Valentine? Here you are; science, beauty and eternal love.

    http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1005/NGC4038_ssro.jpg

    For the less romantic of you, this is from NASAโ€™s Picture of the Day website, frequently posted around this time of the year. Found in the southerly constellation Corvus, where two large galaxies collided. Cataloged as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039, their large clouds of molecular gas and dust trigger furious episodes of star formation near the center. Spanning about 500 thousand light-years, this stunning view also reveals new star clusters and matter flung far from the scene of the accident by gravitational tidal forces. The visual appearance of the arcing structures gives the galaxy pair its popular name โ€“ The Antennae

          1. It’s deja vu all over again. Either that, or Mark found himself stuck in a time loop for a while.:)

  14. And from the living world–a smaller piece of the cosmos–this well-known heart.

    http://onebigphoto.com/dragonfly-heart-shaped/

    Stephen Jay Gould once wrote about wanting to be in the mind of another critter (His beloved Cerion? I’m not sure.) for a minute just to see what it is like. When I’m eyeball to eyeballs with a jumping spider, I sometimes think this would be my critter of choice. How attentive and observant they appear.

  15. I’m assuming the woman for whom the vial of fruit flies was intended was a fellow grad student, or at least a biology enthusiast, because the odds that anyone else would like such a gift would seem to me to be vanishingly small; regardless that’s really cute!

    1. Fruitflies–a far more interesting and thoughtful gift than most of the boring unoriginal items industry cooks up just for commercially hyped holidays.

  17. Not a nuptial gift: when I decided for the sake of my kids I would not show any fear of spiders – and as an ex severe arachnophobe learned to actually catch them and expel them from the house alive (small ones up to an inch, still with some trepadation). One of the first christmas presents my son gave to me from his hard earned after school job money was…an Avicularia. We talking a spider about 4 or 5 inches long.

    I got used to it, but after the first time did not try to handle it anymore. They are fast; she fell to the floor and being arboreal went up the first vertical she found…my legs. I caught her and gingerly placed back into the enclosure. Since then I had several bigger ones, including a now seven year old Acanthoscurria geniculata.

    1. Ouch!
      Having had to subdue my arachnophobia to admire a lady’s tarantula while she got rid of the baby-sitter …
      Well, it’s an incentive. I don’t freak at spiders any more (which was useful when working on land jobs in Africa) … but it’s still an effort.
      I remember shuddering to read a passage in (struggle to remember book title) … ah, that’s the one :
      Climb to the Lost World Hamish MacInnesISBN-10: 0140034447
      Anyway … jungles of south America not the Himalayas; local Indians instead of Sherpas, and one day the Indians decided to cook a meal for the Brits. With a grilled tarantula as the starring serving of each person’s leaf full of grub.
      [Retching sounds from this direction.

      1. Oh yes. Roraima. As I recall*, much of the climb consisted of excavating bromeliads from every ledge.

        *According to the book, that is. As someone who gets vertigo ten feet up a ladder, I have a fondness for climbing books. I also like bromeliads.

        1. Beware bookshelves. They tend to grow on you, and next thing you know, you’re clinging onto the top shelf with the book you wanted clenched between your teeth and wondering “Well, how did I get here?”
          (Talking Heads, wasn’t it?)

          1. Well, it’s the showers of bromeliads paperbacks landing on those below that’s the real hazard…

          2. I actually had a dream last night that I had found more room for books on my bookshelf. I had been staring at the pile of books shoved in front of other books on my shelf & I must’ve fallen asleep with that image!

          3. Oh no! My house is wall to wall bookcases, up and down as well as books boxed in the attics. I have the same dream although not about bookshelf space but discovering another room in this house that is fabulously large and empty! I go as far as deciding how I’m going to use that room. I wake up happy with this new prospect and then it slowly occurs to me — it was a dream… dang!

          4. I have those dreams too – where you find a whole other room you didn’t know about in your house. I wonder what that’s all about?

          5. Exactly! And you wonder why you’ve not known about it for all this time. It’s like finding a secret garden. Maybe it’s an answer staring us right in the face and we can’t see it? But then what’s the question?

            Practical thoughts — old house with hardly any closet/cupboard space, too small yet too big without space (if that makes sense)… rather have a small house with a lot of space — not sure that makes any better sense. Need more windows so that the outdoors/nature is simply an extension of the home?

            If they ever change to include TP, we’re in trouble ๐Ÿ˜‰

          6. When I moved into this house 30 years ago I had a similar dream about kitchen cupboard space and lo and behold I actually did have one empty cupboard ( now long since over- filled).

          7. I saw the neatest thing online a few days ago. It was a bookshelf, about a a yard wide and almost ceiling high, with a hard wood surface on both the top and bottom of each. When a level was pulled, each shelf needed slid out to make a stairway so anyone could reach the upper shelves easily. Then each shelf could be easily returned to its proper location. And it was pretty. And a very useful as almost any kind of shelves. Just a little FYI.

      2. I’ve seen (on television) the eating of tarantulas in leaves. I always wondered if they tasted like crab.

        1. When people are banging on about how horrible it is to eat grasshoppers, crickets, and other insects I just look at them calmly and ask if they eat shrimp, crabs, lobster. Bemused, they dash off to Wikipedia.

        2. I forget what Don Whillans (of the wince-inducing harness) said of them I forget, but it wasn’t complimentary.

          1. Free-association is a terrible thing. This just reminded me of an acquaintance’s description after eating one of the large maggots that were routinely eaten somewhere (I heard this in Costa Rica but don’t remember is that’s where the delicacy originated): “like a condom stuffed with toothpaste.”

          2. The only one I can think of that fits that description is the Australian “Abbo” delicacy of the whichitty grub (spelling? in which language?). But I wouldn’t be surprised of there were not multiples of other contenders around the world.

      1. An old bf threatened to give me an ant farm and then wrapped something tiny and nice in a shoebox with holes punched in it and made me leave it under the Xmas tree unwrapped for a few days…

          2. You mean you’re not sure? You don’t remember?

            Looking back over my life, my most memorable Valentine’s gifts (at least, they were memorable at the time)have all faded in my brain, except for the lingerie, a special ring or the odd necklace, and maybe gardening tools to myself. Funny how the pretty cut flowers all wither and die. A living, growing wisteria vine or a weeping Purple Forest Pansy tree …. now there’s a great gift!

    2. Ant farms are never a good idea. Either the ants all die from some hidden toxin or the ants find a way out and get into everything. And it could appear to the recipient as an insult to her/him (equating his/her with seeming equating him/her in an isolated life style that runs in circles and carry out pointless tasks. Flowers and candy can almost always a ‘safe’ gift while you are in the wooing stage

        1. It could be that I just suck at ant farming. Buy still, if you are still in wooing mode and don’t know the girl well, candy and flowers are always safe. (and they last longer than any of my ant farms.)

          1. Well, again…

            Candy & flowers to me say unoriginal duty gift. But then the whole holiday seems like a contrived exercise in retail-induced guilt behavior. (And don’t ask me about Mother’s Day!)

            You’re probably far more typical…and I mean that in a positive way! ๐Ÿ˜€

          2. They are definitely unoriginal, but so is almost anything that is safe. But I love chocolate and making potpourri, so I always like candy and flowers.

      2. You’re going too deep for me. ๐Ÿ˜‰ My kids got a real kick out of the ant farm. So did I.

        Like I said in my post above, cut flowers have not been memorable for me. And one has to make sure the candy isn’t stale. Nothing worse than stale chocolate. But for a first time gift, flowers and candy are fine, but do get boring after a couple of years.

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