Swarms of spiders flee into homes to escape NSW floods

Are we in danger of becoming like mice right now?

I recommend reading about the famous Mouse Utopia Experiment, you may be interested in it

Also three meals away from: revolution, anarchy, collapse. One of many great quotes that are regularly attributed to everyone's favorite, recent source. It's also been attributed to Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Lenin, Robert Heinlein. Earliest print paraphrasing Alfred Henry Lewis (nine meals).

It must have the ring of truth to it, to survive so long and offered as wisdom from so many sources.

You're right. We need to figure out how to do better than the mice.

I recall a very similar quote from Larry Niven’s “Lucifer’s Hammer”. Something about no society being more than a few missed meals from a revolution. (Paraphrasing)

Worth noting that an antivenom for the funnel-web was created in the early 80s [0], and Australia hasn't seen a single death since.

Its still more than a one day stay in hospital, but it isn't likely to cause a fatality if you actually seek treatment.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_funnel-web_spider#T...

Yep. If the huntsman spider doesn't freak you out, the FWS should.

From time to time one of my staff would catch a male Atrax robustus† in his backyard and bring it to work. I'd create a home for the spider out of a very large jar by placing in it rocks and sufficient dirt for him to make his funnel-web home. Funnel-webs would happily live there for well over year, and we'd feed them on live slaters (wood lice) and occasionally other insects (we only ever kept one at a time).

The jar used to take pride of place on my office desk and sometimes visitors who came to my office were somewhat unnerved by it. Every morning when I came into my office and switched on the lights he'd rise up in an aggressive pose (as in the photo in the link below). To impress visitors, I'd poke a pencil through the air vents holes in the jar's lid then he'd immediately attack it and you could see venom running down the side of the pencil. After a while that pencil—which was kept specifically for the purpose—ended up rather pockmarked.

We kept a number of them over the years but only males, as they are not only more deadly than the females but also they're considerably more aggressive.

I've more stories about them. When I was a kid, I had one on the back of my hand but luckily I wasn’t bitten. Once I'd been bushwalking and after climbing out of a valley at night I pointed my flashlight to the ground and saw that I was in a midst of multiple nests of females some of whom were out of their nests and roaming near my feet. I was so physically exhausted I didn't even bother moving. Another instance was when one bit someone who I knew vaguely. This was in the days before the availability of antivenene and he was very seriously ill despite being immediately taken to hospital (he ended up with pulmonary oedema and other complications and nearly died).

† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrax_robustus

That paragraph is not the journalist's writing, it's a quote, presumably transcribed from a verbal interview.

It's known as "The Grauniad" for a reason.

“itsy bitsy” stories don’t generate clicks

Democracy, populism, and individual self-interest can't lead or solve existential global threats. The only way is to eliminate and control the major sources, i.e., ICEs, FF extraction, meat ag, and unconfined clinker/concrete manufacturing, and get to massive bio-CCS such as by exploiting phytoplankton and/or kelp. Planting trees does exactly jack naught.

Since you mention plague ...

Looking at the screenshots and video in the article I kinda wondered if an event like this (flooding) might have been an originator of some Biblical plague stories from Genesis [0].

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[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagues_of_Egypt

That's it. Ssssh.

If it's any consolation, my grandfather once stopped the car in the middle of a tarantula migration in Texas. My grandmother, who had bad eyesight, opened the rear passenger door and leaned over practically to the ground for a closer look.

Also, power outages, tornadoes, hurricanes, FF extraction groundwater contamination, and everyone has guns. Would you like us to share?

Don't forget a month of orange sky as VIC/NSW bushland was on fire a month before the virus hit.

The cricket is probably about 3-5cm long. That type of spider is very, very common in Australian gardens and varies a lot in size (presumably as they grow, and not as sub-species). The larger ones would be about the same size as the cricket. The ones in the photo are likely younger.

If you go out with a headlamp at night, you will see dozens of these spiders with their eyes shining back at you.

When gardening, I encounter them constantly (almost every minute when digging over soil) but they tend to run away or stay clear and are never concerning.

They don't need to, spiders float on water. And as soon as they do they start seeking solid land, so obviously from the point of view of the spider it has no idea if it's a flood or if landed in a pond. It will just keep going in one direction until it finds land.

Was it the same article mentioning that people are praying for a flood to drown all the mice in the fields?