Many people are afraid of spiders. Even the disease is such - arachnophobia, that is, the fear of spiders. No, it’s probably nice to feel brave when, in front of the admiring audience, you pick up a terrible, many-legged monster, let it crawl on your own, and even say at the same time: “Wow, my sweetheart!”.
This, of course, is great, only for such impressive actions you need to at least understand those spiders that you risk taking in your hands. And if you do not understand them, then it is better to suffer from arachnophobia a little - it is healthier for your health.
Fear has big eyes
Take a tarantula, for example. What horrors were not attributed to these unfortunate spiders! Since the Middle Ages (if not earlier), people sincerely believed that the poison of a tarantula could kill one, two and many more people in place. The number of those killed by one spider depended on the narrator's imagination. It was also said that a tarantula can silently crawl into bed with a sleeping person, kill and literally devour a body in one night. There was a belief that spiders carry terrible diseases, are the culprit behind the fact that people go crazy and that you can get rid of the seizures caused by the bite of a tarantula in only one, rather original way, which we will describe below.
For the most part, all these stories are nonsense, invented in antediluvian times. They sincerely believed her for one simple reason: it was enough for any critic to show a living tarantula, how he immediately renounced his objections and not only agreed with all the fables about the hairy spider, but also carried them with pleasure even further, adding something from yourself. Well, what can you do, such is the appearance of a tarantula, frankly, not conducive to friendship and pleasant communication.
Big Mizgir
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The most famous in Europe is the so-called Russian tarantula. He lives on a huge territory, starting from Italy, capturing Egypt, Greece, Turkey, across the entire southern Ukraine and the Caucasus (only high in the mountains does not climb), further into the Mongolian steppes and north of China. The tarantula can be found in our North: at the sources of the Yenisei, Kama, Upper Tunguska and even on the coast of Lake Onega.
Interestingly, he is Russian, but the word "tarantula" is by no means Russian. In Russia it was called "mizgir" or the completely forgotten name "oshugar". Out of respect for the size of this furry spider, it was most often called "the big mizgir".
So where did the name "tarantula" come from? So the Italians named the spider after the city of Taranto, and so it stuck.
A very lively and cheerful dance called "tarantella" also started from the same city of Taranto. It is believed that this dance is directly related to tarantulas: a person who has been bitten by a tarantula, firstly, falls into a gloomy mood, and secondly, he begins to have convulsions. So, in order to save the patient from cramps and depression, it is necessary to make him dance this cheerful dance.
A strange treatment, isn't it? Of course, you can expect everything from Italians, but we are ready to offer our version.
Who is Biu?
So, in Taranto, there were a lot of large hairy spiders, everyone was afraid of them and called them tarantulas. When meeting a tarantula, the average Italian allegedly began to dance wildly in place, trying to simultaneously not step on the monster, run away from it as far as possible and at the same time not turn his back on him - what if he jumped and bite? So the cheerful dance of the tarantella was born. Is it logical?
In any case, the tarantula and the dancing are related. And there is one more confirmation of this. The fact is that for a long time the Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Turkmens and Tajiks, who then had no idea about the existence of the city of Taranto, the tarantella dance, and even Italy itself, called the huge, furry spider "biy". And biu is just the common name for the national dances of these southern peoples, both male and female, both single and collective. In general, everyone who meets the tarantula immediately starts dancing. One by one or all together.
The spider itself does not take part in these dances. In general, the tarantula (especially the female) prefers a sedentary lifestyle.
Digging deeper
Having moistened hard earth with water and softening it, he separates a piece of soil, wraps it in a net and carries it up. Then it descends back into the mine and wets the next piece of earth. The process continues until the shaft reaches the desired depth.
Isn't it true that such a description is most suitable for a prospector of the XVIII-XIX centuries. He digs his mine somewhere in California or the Klondike in search of gold, or maybe in South Africa is painstakingly looking for diamonds.
But in this case, the work is described not by a gold digger, but by our hero - a tarantula. Having dug a hole from ten centimeters to one meter deep in a couple of nights in an open, sunny, preferably without tall grass, place, carefully pasting, as if with wallpaper, all the inner walls with a sticky slippery web, the spider climbs to the very bottom of the hole and freezes in anticipation of prey.
You don't have to wait long. As soon as the sun begins to bake, all sorts of boogers and insects living nearby make an urgent search for a shade - they choose some cool hole or hole in the ground. Often this hole turns out to be a tarantula's hole, so that the insect does not even have time to figure out anything, as it becomes a full-fledged dinner.
Water hole
Sometimes the tarantula is too lazy to wait until the food itself crawls into his house, and then he begins to listen, more precisely, to sensitively pick up the vibration of the soil. He does it so well that he hears a bug crawling past the hole. And now, having waited for the right moment, the tarantula instantly jumps out of its shelter, grabs the bug across the plump waist, injects it with a paralyzing poison and carries it underground.
It is still appropriate to remind here that the tarantula is a poisonous spider. But there is not a single recorded case of human death caused by a tarantula bite.
The tarantula burrow is very easy to spot - it is usually surrounded by a neat ring of earth thrown out during digging. If there is no land (some spiders carry it away), then the hole is surrounded by something like a village log house made of sticks or blades of grass, entwined with cobwebs.
Why look for a tarantula burrow? This skill can be useful to anyone who finds himself in a waterless desert. The fact is that furry spiders choose a place to build a burrow that is as close as possible to groundwater. So if you start digging next to the tarantula's house, you can quickly reach the source of life-giving moisture.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №8, Konstantin Fedorov