Occasional (Halloween) paper: A mother gives her all

“Spiders don’t socialise. Spiders don’t work together. Spiders don’t hunt as packs. Spiders don’t use tools. Spiders don’t organise large structures. “Because if they did, we’d all be dead.” — As it turns out, this isn’t quite correct. Some spiders do work together! They’re called social spiders, and they cooperate to build large webs that can hold dozens or even hundreds of spiders at once. There aren’t a lot of them. There are over 40,000 species of spider, and only 20 or so are social. Still, they are a thing that exists. (This is a Halloween post. So, trigger warnings for — let me think a moment — cannibalism, body horror, and spiders. Lots and lots of spiders. (But also some cool science!) So, social spiders. Probably the most famous are Australian Flat Huntsman spiders, because they’re pretty big: [each of these guys is around 2-3 inches (5-7 cm) long] But most social spiders are small — sit on your fingernail, type of thing. [little cuties!] Their webs can be pretty big,…