• Jhogenbaum@leminal.space
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    4 days ago

    My cat brought one of these home when we lived in central America. I had no idea what it was, and I was terrified - I refused to believe the internet when they told me they were harmless and not venomous. It was a scary looking little alien.

    The one pictured is much more open and spread out. Obviously getting carried in a cat’s mouth would put a tiny little creature like this in defense mode - mine was much more compact and I didn’t realize it was a spider / scorpion. Edit: the body was probably 3in/7cm long, a little shorter than credit card cut into an oval.

    • Dicska@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Fun fact: as opposed to humans, spider legs are curled inwards by default, and they need to put in effort if they want to stretch/extend them. This is the reason dead spider legs are curled up - lacking extra force, they return to their natural position. Some weird hydraulics.

      I can imagine the same happens to scorpions. 🎸