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CPs - outlet for the demented

SOO... Anybody else enjoy watching justice served as a spider dies a slow, painful death on a sundew leaf as it goes after an already deceased victim?

UGH! Spiders!
 
This happens in VFT's too its even better cause their legs will twitch
 
You know...if Hindu's were right, I'd be heading straight for the chicken farm after I died.
 
Hah!

My Dionaea catch numerous Daddy long legs. Their main meal is a few flies and numerous daddy long legs, tons of legs sticking out of all these traps, basically at least 5 traps in the big pot have daddy long legs caught from the tiny 'Petite Dragons' and the 'Big Mouths' and the Wal-Mart Dionaea that have recovered have at least 2-3 a plant... sometimes it's fun to squish the bodies inside the traps that are filled with digestive enzymes and they are barely alive because you can feel the guts squirting out inside and the legs go wild. Or just plucking off all the legs is sometimes fun.

Yeah... I have problems. My Drosera do not catch Daddy Long Legs for some reason... I fed a D. capensis one for fun once, it went around it like it normally would then it wrapped around the sides of it so it was like a wrapped around ball... looked cool. A 3 inch wide spider had an egg sack or whatever and got caught by my S. purpurea ssp. venosa var. burkii... a few hours later it died so the sack burst open to immature babies with drowned as well.
 
:crazy: ...at least I know I'm not the only one with psychological disorders!:crazy:

I did feel a little less sadistic after reading this article, though:

Subject: Do insects feel pain?

Hi. This is a common question, and it's not entirely philosophical. Pain as WE experience it is based on our nervous system. We have special nerve cells called "nociceptors" whose sole purpose is to create the sensation of pain. Without those special cells, we wouldn't feel pain. There are, in fact, medical conditions which can selectively kill those cells - the best known is leprosy, but there are others. I personally had a mild seizure once that wiped out the connection to the nociceptors in my left leg, and to this day I cannot feel geuine pain in my left leg - I can tell when I'm being touched, and can tell how much pressure is being applied and to how small or large an area, but (for example) there is no difference for me in the feeling of being poked by a pencil versus an icepick, nor any difference in being touched by an ice cube versus a boiling hot piece of metal. Insects and other arthropods don't have any nociceptors. They can feel sensations, but PAIN is definitely NOT one of them. Their responses are therefore very different from ours. Aside from my own personal example of what it's like not to feel pain, consider this: if you gently grab an insect's leg and hold it, it will struggle violently. If you snap the leg off, it stops struggling and calmly limps away. If they felt pain, it would be the exact opposite.
As for emotions, no, they most definitely do not experience emotions. Things like hunger, thirst, fatigue, and sex drive are not emotions, they are physical sensations.
 
I knew it! It is more like a "O CRAP some ones messing with my leg, I have to get away" sensation, than the actual feeling of pain.
 
Well that's good. But, even my mom was quite moved by the struggling insects in the traps such as Daddy Long Legs and she told me she saw that nature truly could be cruel.

I just told her the Daddy Long Legs were simply living insect hamburgers for the plant and that's how you should think of it in their position to affix it to our lifestyle :).
 
I think spiders and sundews are a wonderful irony.

I have been known to show mercy on some bugs and release them. Not many, mind you, but some. A sarracenia recently started flickering like a lighthouse. Upon closer inspection I realized that a firefly was in the pitcher! I tried to see if I could let it out-the flicker was just pitiful to watch-but I couldn't find a way. I guess you could say that the plant had a "light" dinner that evening.

Spiders and mosquitoes and anything that is banded and stings however, need to make their peace quickly becaase they're on their own. Especially mosquitoes.
 
  • #11
I've rescued more insects from CPs than I've fed to CPs. I feel like an outcast now. Slinks away.
 
  • #12
When I was like seven, I rescued a sowbug from my VFT, and from time to time I still rescue one, but guess I've become mostly jaded. If I'm just in a bad mood, though, I'll go out of my way to grab any wandering bug and send it to its doom.
 
  • #13
Ouch!

I have an agreement with the bugs-I won't mess with you as long as you stay outside. Out there, they're on their own (hey! all three spellings of that word in one sentence!) but I'll pull a fly out of the flytrap if it is caught in a particularly heinous way. Mostly nature does her thing.

INSIDE though...all bets are off. Anybody found in the living area of the house becomes an appetizer for some plant.
 
  • #14
Last summer I was playing a show at an outdoor theater and got stung by something backstage. Angry and holding a grudge against the entire stinging insect community, I brought a bowl planter of sarrs and VFTs the next day and put them on my hood in the backstage lot.

After that show I peered in a sarr and there was a little black and gold stinging thing struggling to get out. I know it wasn't the same bug, but that was vindication enough for me. I could feel a sinister grin come across my face.
 
  • #15
INSIDE though...all bets are off. Anybody found in the living area of the house becomes an appetizer for some plant.

At my house I'm missing the screens to the old storm windows. So this summer I've learned to live among the bugs that stop by for a visit. They get to live if they follow the rules:

No jumping on me
Let me watch tv or read
Find your own food not mine
Don't bring more than 2 friends with you
 
  • #16
Rules to live by with least stress for everyone involved. And many congratulations to ilbasso for correctly spelling and then fitting those three words into a string with only one other word in between. That's impressive and thanks for pointing it out. The rest of us can learn from your mastery.
 
  • #18
:crazy: ...at least I know I'm not the only one with psychological disorders!:crazy:

I did feel a little less sadistic after reading this article, though:

Subject: Do insects feel pain?




They say fish don't feel pain either, I don't know how true that is but if I have to put down a fish I knock it out with clove oil first then freeze it. Just in case.
 
  • #19
Heh heh

DSCN4644.jpg


Found it like that when I was leaving the house.

-Ben
 
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