Do spiders enjoy a dip?
QUESTION Can tarantulas swim?
Several tarantula species have been shown to be able to swim in the wild and captivity. But this is almost always because it has been chased or has fallen into water accidentally.
Those most prone to such accidents are arboreal tarantulas living in trees overhanging lakes or rivers, and burrowing tarantulas that live on flood plains or have been flushed out by a flash flood.
These spiders do not have sophisticated swimming mechanisms, like those of habitually swimming spiders, such as the species of water spiders, Argyronetidae, or those that hunt on the water’s surface such as the fishing spiders, Dolomedes.
Their swimming ability appears to be a secondary evolutionary adaptation.
Spiders’ bodies have excellent waterproofing, with a waxy outermost layer.
In swimming tarantulas, this is combined with a layer of air trapped by the dense coat of hairs ( setae) on the legs, which enables the spiders to skitter over surfaces.
Most tarantulas probably never need to swim, but it is clear that if they must, they have the behavioural ability to do so. That said, a couple of species are known to be excellent swimmers. The giant baboon spider, Hysterocrates
gigas, is a member of the tarantula family ( Theraphosidae) found in Cameroon. They can trap air and submerge for up to two hours and have been documented catching and eating small fish.
In 2006, a cluster of 25,000 tarantulas were found near the small town of Maningrida in the Northern Territory of australia. Their precise species name has yet to be determined.
These burrow- dwelling spiders are known locally as diving tarantulas because they create enveloping air bubbles to survive when the plain is underwater during the wet season.
Dr Ian Smith, Cambridge.
QUESTION Why do the names of so many shapes, such as decagon, hexagon, octagon and pentagon, end with ‘. . . gon’?
TheSe examples of two- dimensional shapes are known generically as polygons. The term is derived from the Greek words
(many) and (corners or angles). The corners and angles give an indication of the number of sides, which is generally used when describing the structure of polygons.
The nomenclature usually follows the pattern of a Greek prefix, followed by the suffix term gon.
The simplest polygons are the triangle (three sides) and quadrilateral (four sides), though other terms for these are trigon and tetragon respectively.
The nomenclature ruling is generally used from the five- sided polygon, the pentagon, onwards.
But as the number of sides increases, it is not uncommon to use the number of sides as a prefix (eg 23-gon is a polygon with 23 sides).
The most extreme example is the apeirogon, which is a polygon with an infinite number of sides. Alan Goldsmith, Connahs Quay, Flintshire.
QUESTION What is the story of the Parsley Massacre in the Dominican Republic?
The legacy of the Parsley Massacre remains a source of tension between haiti and the Dominican republic, the two countries on the island of hispaniola between the atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea.
Its roots go back to 1492 when Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ the island. The native people were decimated as a wave of european colonisation ensued and many enslaved africans were imported to toil in sugar plantations.
By 1777, the island had become divided between a Spanish-controlled east and a French- controlled West. a mass slave revolt won haiti its independence from France in 1804, becoming the world’s first black republic. The Dominican republic became independent after overthrowing haitian rule of eastern hispaniola and later Spanish and american colonialism.
Despite the nations’ long, shared and collaborative history, many Dominican elites saw haiti as a racial threat that imperilled political and commercial relations with white Western nations.
In the years following World War I, the U.S. occupied both parts of hispaniola in order to secure power in the Western hemisphere by destroying local opposition and installing U.S.-friendly governments. The brutal and racist occupation influenced later events.
In 1930, liberal Dominican President horacio vasquez was overthrown by the chief of his army, rafael Trujillo.
Despite being a quarter haitian himself, Trujillo saw the presence of a bicultural haitian and Dominican borderland as a threat to his power.
In 1937, claiming to be protecting Dominican farmers from theft and incursion, he announced the killing of 300 haitians along the border and promised this ‘remedy’ would continue.
Thousands were murdered under Trujillo’s orders within a few weeks. The Dominican military were told to target black haitians, though because many Dominicans were also dark-skinned, some accounts say that to distinguish the residents of one country from the other, soldiers forced their victims to say the Spanish word for ‘parsley’.
Dominicans pronounced it ‘ perejil’, with a trilled Spanish ‘r’. The primary haitian language, however, was Kreyol, which doesn’t use a trilled ‘r’. So if people struggled to say ‘ perejil’ they were judged to be haitian and immediately killed. recent scholarship suggests tests such as this were not the sole factor used to determine who would be murdered as many border residents were bilingual.
Bodies were thrown in ravines, dumped in rivers or burned to dispose of the evidence and — because of this — no one knows exactly how many were killed.
The extent of the carnage was clear, and noted by the U.S. ambassador to the Dominican republic at the time.
Trujillo was condemned internationally, but neither he nor anyone in his government was ever punished.
The Parsley Massacre remains a chilling reminder of how power-hungry leaders can manipulate people into turning against their lifelong neighbours.
Emilie Lamplough, Trowbridge, Wilts.