Annotated by Nathan Morehouse / visualised by Josie Rae Turnbull

how to read a poem to a spider

cass lynch

How to read a poem to a spider?
              I long to share the beautiful rhythms
    of our many words describing them
                               coxa-trochanter jointed limbs
                                                       pipette-fang chelicerae
                                                                        opisthosoma spinnerets

Their Noongar names
   create pleasant open vowels in the mammal mouth
Walbungkara
                         Yoogera
                                          Kaar and Kara
   their taxonomic designations
              dance syllables across the tongue
                                                                               Sparassidae
                                                                                                  Cataxia
                                                                                                              Lycosidae

Though what can poetry be to arthropods
              they lack language tongues and tympanic ears
no eardrum drums
              from the timbre of my voice
when the half-rhyme slaps
              no pleasure centre lights up in the
                                          arachnid ganglion brain
a brain not even in the head
             but spread long throughout the body
                                                                               aligned to the legs
                                                        a limb mind
             a meta-tarsal consciousness

How to read a poem to a spider
                         who is earless but not deaf
they have a hundred ways of hearing
             hairs attached to sensory organs
that bend at the pressure
                          of the particle velocity of sound
             if you hum they will hear you
                          your voice registering as gooseflesh

You could read a poem to a spider
                                                          but take out every vowel
                          spiders perceive them as danger
                                                                               a e i o and u vibrate their hairs
                                                                                                  like the wingbeats of the parasitic wasp
                                                                               hovering hymenopterans
                                                          looking for an incubating body
here poetry is perilous
                          a sonnet could pierce them
                                                          with the maggot stick
                                                                                                        a haiku could
                                                                                                                               eat away at their insides

Could you gesticulate some freeform verse?
                          sign your words to avoid the vowels
            their vision is not so good
                          most have stationary retinas
            that register just light and dark
                                       even puppy-eyed jumping spiders
                                                                          use their vision to hunt for bugs, not meaning

            Could you tap a poem in morse code?
rapping the words out on the ground might make them hungry
            a meal that never materialises
                                       draw attention to empty-belly
            drum hunger in the mandibles
                                       we might even mistake them
                                                                 for speaking poetry back

How would they read a poem to a human?
                          spider poetry is in the geometry of the orb web
                                                    the semaphore mating dance of peacock jumping spiders
                          the constellations that trapdoor burrows create in the ground
looping circles of song
                          stories told to possums looking down from the trees
                                                                  to the curlews walking overhead
               and to the ancestors listening from their burial sleep

                                                                                             Perhaps the only way to read a poem to a spider
                                                                                                                                     is to apply their limb brain
                                                                                                     spread thinking to the femur
                                                                                                                   cogitate with the tibia
                                                                                                                         inscribe your odes on your bones
                                                                                                                                  wait for earthly death
                                                                                                                      and take your poems to the ground

                                                                                                                     Long after the world above forgets you
                                                                                                          your larynxless singing limbs
                                                                                     will lullaby each new arachnid generation
                                                                      listening through their feet
                                         with their healthy fear
                             of poems on the wing

coxa-trochanter  ….   opisthosoma spinnerets   Scientists often use extremely specific words to describe the anatomy of living things. For example, ‘coxa’ and ‘trochanter’ refer to specific segments of the legs of insects, spiders, and other arthropods. These words often have long histories of their own. For example, trochanter comes from the Greek word ‘trekhein’ meaning “to run”, whereas coxa comes from the Latin word of the same spelling meaning “hip”. Other words in this string refer to spider fangs or ‘chelicerae’ (a concatenation of the Greek words for horn and claw) and the spider abdomen or ‘opisthosoma’, where spiders produce their silk using spinnerets.

Sparassidae, Cataxi,  Lycosidae    All species that have been described by scientists are named within a taxonomy, a system of scientific classification. These names, like the anatomical terms, are typically derived from Greek or Latin roots. For example, Sparassidae derives from the Greek sparassein, meaning to tear or rend, and Lycosidae originates from the Greek word for wolf (lúkos), nods to these two spider family’s eating habits and hunting skills respectively.

arachnid ganglion brain    Spiders have an unusual central nervous system largely concentrated in their cephalothorax (what we might consider their “head”). What is often referred to as their “brain” is actually three collections of neurons called ganglia (the ‘proto-’, ‘deuto-’, and ‘tritocerebrum’) fused to form a key central mass for neural computation (the ‘supraesophageal ganglion’)  connected to a larger network of ganglia (e.g. the ‘subesophageal ganglion’) and small neuropils, some even extending down into their legs. Many of the ways in which these distributed neural centers work in coordination to enable spider behavior remain a mystery.

they have a hundred ways of hearing …. of the particle velocity of sound   Spiders are able to sense vibrations in their environment using strain sensors in their legs (‘lyriform organs’) that respond to deformation of the leg in response to vibration, or through the use of mechanosensory hairs called ‘trichobothria’ that are deflected by air currents and airborne sound vibrations. Although clear evidence of far-field sound sensing by trichobothria only came recently thanks to Ron Hoy and colleagues, circumstantial evidence for these structures being “hearing hairs” dates as far back as 1883 when German zoologist Friedrich Dahl observed that trichobothria responded to the sounds of his violin. 

like the wingbeats of the parasitic wasp  One interesting finding to come out of recent work on jumping spider far-field hearing is the observation that these animals are particularly sensitive to sonic frequencies that correspond to the wingbeat frequencies of wasps, including spider hunting wasps. This suggests that spider hearing might help them to hear predators at a distance and take action, whether that be freezing in place or finding somewhere to hide.

their vision is not so good … use their vision to hunt for bugs, not meaning  Spiders are incredibly diverse in how they see the world, everything from blind cave spiders to the sharp sighted jumping spiders or wolf spiders. Much of the diversity in spider vision comes from differences in lifestyles and associated needs for visual acuity. Generally, spiders that hunt for a living using vision tend to have better eyesight, whereas those that rely on capture webs to do the work of trapping insects tend towards simpler visual systems. Arguably, jumping spiders are at the top of visual performance in many ways, from their often elaborate color vision to their extreme spatial acuity (the ability to see fine details in the world), the latter akin to a lapdog or a pigeon despite being smaller than the size of your pinkie fingernail. Jumping spiders (and some other spiders) also have the unusual ability to move the retinas of their principal eyes around inside their heads to look at different points in space without needing to turn their bodies.

the semaphore mating dance of peacock jumping spiders  Peacock jumping spiders have recently become quite famous for their elaborate courtship dances, which involve choreographed movements of their legs, pedipalps, and brightly ornamented abdomens. However, they are not the only colorful or charismatic jumping spiders. For example, the paradise jumping spiders of North America or Lesserti’s rainbow spider from India don similarly colorful ornamentation, showcasing these flashy signals with complex courtship dances and vibratory songs. What information males seek to share (or females seek to glean) from these flamboyant performances remains an area of active scientific study.