shallowman

Laura Loomer high school yearbook quote from 2011. This aged like shit.

In the Amazon, some tarantulas have tiny frogs as housemates. The dotted humming frog lives in burrows alongside large burrowing tarantulas in Peru. The spider, which could easily eat the frog, recognizes it by chemical signal and leaves it alone. Both species get something out of the deal. The frog gets a fortress. Tarantulas defend their burrows aggressively, and one was documented attacking a 90 cm snake that came too close. The frog also gets to scavenge bits of insect prey the spider drops, plus a humid microclimate that protects it from the desiccating heat of the rainforest floor. The tarantula gets pest control. Spider eggs are vulnerable to ants, which can wipe out an entire egg sac if they find one. The frog eats ants. So while the spider is hunting bigger prey, the frog is patrolling the burrow eating the small invertebrates that would otherwise destroy the spider's offspring. It's been documented across at least four countries, Peru, Paraguay, India, and Sri Lanka, between different frog families and different tarantula species. Which means this relationship evolved independently multiple times. Big spiders and tiny frogs keep finding each other on different continents and figuring out the same arrangement. A spider has pest control. A frog has a bodyguard.