This thread contains adult themes. Parental guidance recommended for readers beneath pupal stage.

These spiders are doing their taxes.

It is very confusing to watch spiders do their taxes because they do their taxes in a very different way to humans.
Fundamentally, however, we are all the same. You need to find a way of transferring the ah, balances, from Column A to Column B, so you can ah, total your columns.

The goal is to end up with new numbers in Column C that are a combination of both previous old numbers. So you can pay your taxes correctly, of course.

These are Long-jawed spiders, which have a particularly interesting way of doing their taxes. The male, who is - do I say on the right or underneath? - is making sure to hold the female's fangs at bay with his Long Jaws. It's what it says on the packet pretty much.

This is because if the female becomes distressed about her taxes, she may attempt to eat the male and that's not very good. So he has evolved long long long chelicerae for his fangs to stick out of and it's like having a pair of opposite pliers??? to hold things apart.

The male needs his hands to do the next part of his taxes. His pedipalps, which are like little short arms, are where he stores but does not produce his tax information. His hands are specially shaped to fit his species female's, uh, tax lodgement software.

If you look very closely, you can see the enlarged transluscent bulb containing this information and pumping it through a tube into her double-doored tax collector. As you can see, this activity is all done on tightrope with an overabundance of legs going every which way.

Consider this the next time you are doing your taxes because as complicated as human taxes are, it could be much, much worse.
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Long-jawed Spiders (Tetragnatha sp.). Charters Towers, QLD.

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