I like to keep current on all the latest arthropod news. So I was intrigued to learn of an experiment run to determine the effect on a web when spiders of different personalities entertain dangerous ideas. And, though it was hardly the intent of the U Penn and U Cal San Diego authors, its application to the current Republican primary season, and the ascendancy of Donald Trump, rang clear as I followed along.
Who knew that spiders even have personalities, much less that they can be easily measured? Jonathan Pruitt and Noa Pinter-Wollman noted that velvet spiders (Stegodyphus demicola) curl up into a ball and play dead if startled by a puff of air. But some of them - the "bold" ones - consistently uncurl and get on with things a short while later, while others - the "timid" ones - stay tightly wound until their more jangly nerves permit them to creep out into the world again.
Well, we know who comes across to GOP voters as the "bold" one this cycle. What can we learn from the velvet spiders about his prospects, and theirs, and (should the gods decide to make such sport of us as to let him into the White House) the nation's?
When spiders feel a tingling going up their legs, it means some other animal is sharing their web. If it's an ant, they are in danger. If it's prey, they should rush out as fast as possible and grab it. Inborn instinct doesn't tell them these things; they learn it.
The experimenters took some bold arachnids and some timid ones, and trained them backwards, so that they took the vibrations signifying "prey" to mean "ant", and vice versa. Then they placed them, each with nine naive nestmates, in new fledgling colonies.
The colonies with the timid spiders fared normally. Those with the bold spiders, however, followed its lead, and their populations dropped. It took them some while to unlearn the "facts" of which the wrong-headed, confident spider was so sure. But eventually they got there.
Now, who is the obviously bold, loudly self-confident one in the GOP spider nest? Undoubtedly, it's that unnatural blond who is leading all the polls. This tells us two things about how things will go.
First, there's no reality check for Republicans until the election itself. So they will happily follow the leader they find most trustworthy - because his trust in himself is so boundless - until they're caught up short by the broad electorate, whom I have every hope we may liken to a marching horde of army ants. Where the analogy perhaps breaks down is at the point that President Trump takes the oath of office. The velvet spiders, once they work it out that their fearless leader is as feckless as he is fearless, can abandon his example and the colony can start to recover. Our Constitution doesn't permit us to be as flexible as the velvet spiders, though. If we ever got a "bold" President like Trump, we'd be stuck with his spinneret-backward policies for four grisly, hungry years.