Source: www.theguardian.com

Arachnids are essential for biodiversity and we are only starting to understand the medical and scientific benefits they could bringMost ecologists talk about saving the worlds wildlife from the animals perspective, which is a public relations…

“Most ecologists talk about saving the world’s wildlife from the animals’ perspective, which is a public relations mistake. Humans – one of the most wildly successful species of the Cenozoic era, which began about 65m years ago – have trouble empathising with polar bears, tropical frogs and dolphins as those animals sink toward extinction. A better way is to appeal to a human’s unstoppable desire to forward his own self-interest. This is how Norman Platnick talks about spider conservation.

“If spiders disappeared, we would face famine,” says Platnick, who studies arachnids at New York’s American Museum of Natural History, where a live spider exhibit debuted last month. “Spiders are primary controllers…