Spiders afloat

I rather like spiders on Granny Buttons.  They are welcome aboard, provided they don't try to share my bed, or use up all the hot water when they get in the bath.   They feed on the insects and don't breed fast, and that's fine by me. 

Unlike some people, I don't have nightmares of waking up to find a human-sized spider trying to make love to me, but come to think of it that's not such a bad dream because at heart I'm a leg man.

Mortimer Bones recently wrote that she is similarly disposed.  Yet she displays considerably more knowledge than me - she has three different models aboard and identifies each by its Latin brand name and even knows its sex. 

I call them 'models' because I can't imagine spiders as 'species'.  They always look more like robots to me.

You can tell the sex of a human by counting its legs (women have two) but how on earth do you sex a spider?  Ask Jonathan of Cosmos, apparently.

Comments

[Jonathan]

It's all to do with the size of their pedipalps...males have big ones!

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedipalp