Could We Breed Giant Spiders?

If, for some wild reason, we decided that breeding humongous spiders was a good idea, could we actually pull it off?

Hosted by: Stefan Chin

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[ilessthanbees]

FINALLY after a decade of messing around, SciShow starts asking the real questions.

[mirvannascythes]

They'd need significantly thicker exoskeletons to be scaled up as well, and the pressure within their joints would be tremendous. (My dungeons and dragons group had a debate about whether a sword would lob off legs, and discovered spider chitin is actually quite soft.)

[CarlosMartinezxFulLxArsenaLx]

I've thought about this exact question/idea for many years and my idea was to breed generations of spiders in a sealed and controlled high oxygen environment and see if they would get larger over time.

[camvalles]

The thought of a giant egg sack with hundreds of spiderlings is horrifying.

[Khailward]

In the words of one Ian Malcolm:
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they COULD, they never stopped to think if they SHOULD."

[jadusiv]

The second it started I was like “book lungs”. Knew it! Should have talked about the bugs during the Carboniferous era when there was a ton of o2. There were giant spiders around then, Megarachne. 21 in body length. Didn’t turn out to be a spider but kind of parallel evolution so still interesting.

Another fun fact: a spiders blood and digestive fluid are one and the same

[marcello]

This would make a terrifying weapon for psychological warfare. Imagine the horror of arachnophobes if scientists end up creating something straight out of "The Mist" or Ungoliant from "The Silmarillion" etc.

[flygawnebardoflight]

Better question: SHOULD we breed giant spiders?

[culturecanvas]

"We were so preoccupied with whether we could that we forgot to ask whether we should."
-- Captain Zack Laser, commander of the human resistance against Spider overlords, 2059.

[mal]

"You scientists... so obsessed with finding out if we could, you didnt stop to ask if we should"
-Abraham Lincoln probably

[Kyle-smtr]

Gonna be honest, I thought the title was "can we breed with spiders" and I just really wanted to know where they were going with this 😂

[akpsyche]

This has never been a question that I ever wanted answered, but now I'm very interested in the possibilities.

[rarepepe]

What if you bred them and kept them in a huge room with 70% or more pure oxygen? would they grow larger?

[chrstfer]

So, breed spiders in a progressively more oxygen deficient atmosphere for a while until they get more active respiration abilities, then reintroduce those buggers to the current atmosphere and breed for size?

[Asterism_Desmos]

Some things that we can do, we shouldn’t, this is one of them.

[BullnBIG]

Its not "could we" it should be *should we"... And the answer is NO

[gunargundarson]

Short answer: No

Long answer: Maybe, but it would be extremely unethical as the giantism would cause the spider to slowly eat itself from its metabolism.

[DeathsHood]

Isn't there also something of a size-limit due to the square-cube law making their exoskeleton too heavy to lift, eventually?

[Deathman]

This is NOT a question we should ask. NEVER.

[lesewing]

As cool as horse sized spiders and elephant sized praying mantises would be, it just can't happen.