Most steam-punk phrase I've heard in a good while.
Arachnophobia (even the mild variety) is not universal. I know some people who think spiders are cute. It takes all kinds, I guess.
It would be hard for a spider of medically significant size to suck down their exoskeleton like that.
They're not insectlike, but in some weird uncanny valley between insect and mammal.
And they can JUMP onto you.
Nope nope nope.
I have an ex who became a vet (kind of a surprise in that when we were dating she was an artist) and she has a house call practice with a lot of her work being euthanasia. I don’t know how she can manage that emotionally, but I’d like to believe she’s not a psycho even if she was the one who ended the relationship.
Doing all the work. Microbes get no respect.
But also, can we attach these to natural methane producers? (Eg decomposing stuff or cows)
I think you're unfairly dismissing the massive amount of nanotech R&D and energy it takes to develop and operate the bazillion-unit cooperative mobile megafortress those bacteria are happily renting.
Some symbiosis
Float away from the methane and die, or if lucky attach to a predator that lives in the methane that will harvest you for consumption but not before you reproduce
I don't of anyone in history that had chicken eggs growing on their skin.
bookofjoe•2d ago
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2501422122