Creatures we fear!

[00:00:00] What are you afraid of? Is there something that you are afraid of? [00:00:06] Today we are gonna learn about things that we might be afraid of. And you know what? It is okay to be afraid of things sometimes. And today, I'm gonna share a little story about how discovering something new might give us the information and remove the fear from things that we don't understand. Welcome to planet CPR. Conserve, protect, restore. A place to discover our planet, near and far and in our backyard. I am your host, Fledge Fiamingo. And as a safari ranger from South Africa, I love to discover new things about the planet and the creatures that live around us and then share it with others. Even though we might not understand everything, like spiders, snakes and sharks, they are still important to the health of our planet. And discovering something new leads to understanding, and understanding leads to respect. And respect leads to conserving, protecting and restoring the planet we all share. So grab your thirst for knowledge and discover how we can make a difference today to conserve, protect, and restore what we have left. Spiders, scorpions, snakes, these are creatures that so many times people just absolutely fear and are afraid of, and rightly so, because they look like they are slithery and they've got all these legs and all these scales, never mind all the venom and all the bites that they have. So, yeah, people are often afraid of these creatures. And today I want to talk a little bit about spiders, and you're probably going, ooh, I don't like spiders. I mean, do you like spiders? What do you think of when I say the word spider? Most people, when they hear the word spider, they think of eight legs and hairy and just massively dangerous that are going to jump out and just bite you. But oftentimes this is not even true about spiders. And so today we're going to learn a little bit about spiders, which is going to lead me to a story I want to share with you about being fearful of things that we don't understand. Are you ready to discover some fun facts with pledge? Here we go. Fun facts to learn about the creatures that we share this world with. Shout out. I am ready. In three, two, one. To get started, let's try and maybe categorize them in two very basic my idea of putting spiders into two groups. One group makes webs and they live in webs and they catch flying insects. And the other group are the hunters, and they will run around the ground and catch their food. But I would like to talk about the ones that make their webs, which is amazing in itself. Humans cannot make webs like spiders. Have you ever seen a spider in a web when walking around your yard, or maybe when you are at school or even in the park? What is quite fascinating is anytime you see a spider sitting in a web, it is a female. Yes. Only females actually make webs. And if you do take time to look at a web, you'll find the female. She is sometimes very large. And on the web, there are other little spiders that often we mistake for babies, but those are actually the males. They are tiny compared to the female, who's actually made the web. So males, they don't even build webs. The females do. There are some spiders that will make webs that will just stay out all day and all night. And there are spiders that make webs where they will only come out at night, create the web, and then collect the web in the morning to go sleep during the day, and then come back out at night to build their web again. And these spiders will start their web by using a thread from a tree to a tree or maybe a building to a tree. And we call this the bridge line. The bridge line is usually the top line that goes from one end to the other. It is sometimes the strongest line. It is the line that all spiders will use to begin their web. And even those spiders that collect their web in the morning and then rebuild at night, they leave the bridge line out so that they have something to work on the next day. Another incredible feature about the spider web, and I really don't know how the spider actually figures this out, because for years we have tried to figure out how spiders actually spin an endless supply of web. But the bridge line and all the other lines that come off the web that are not the circular part of inside the web, all those other strands are not sticky. The only sticky part of the web is actually the circular part that is inside the web. And this is the sticky part that catches the insects when they make contact with it. Isn't that quite mind blowing? Isn't that just amazing, to know that the spider can figure out whether she needs to spin a web that's sticky and spin a web that's not sticky? And here is another mind blowing feature for the spiders. Remember I said that we have spiders that build webs, and then we have the other ground dwelling spiders that are the hunters? Well, the foot structure on these two types of spiders are different as well. Spiders that build webs have got three claws at the end of their legs, so they can grab hold of the threads. And the spiders that walk along the ground have only got two claws. So it's quite incredible to think that the ground dwelling spiders don't even have the foot structure to walk on webs. And these are just a few facts about the incredible spider. And there are so many other facts that we could share together. But for today, it's going to lead me to a story that I want to share with you, and it's a story about how knowledge can make a huge difference. Over the years, I've had the absolute honor of being invited to speak at summer camps for middle school and high school students. And the camp would usually start on a Sunday, and the kids would stay there all week, and I would spend that entire week with them. And it is really, really wonderful to be outdoors with these kids, and especially when they arrive on Sunday, and they leave on Friday morning to see them arrive on Sunday to see how they interact with each other. You've got some old friends that haven't seen each other for a while and all the high fives and all the hugs and all the excitement of being away at camp for a week. It was wonderful, wonderful to see. And then me, as a safari ranger, I would usually spend the week telling them stories and sharing all these wonderful creatures from Africa. But the story I want to tell you today happened on day one, Adam middle school camp, when in between all the laughter and hugs, a terrifying scream caught my attention. And I looked over. There was a group of kids that had come together and had suddenly split apart and were jumping around and bouncing around and screaming as if maybe a Tyrannosaurus rex had come running out of the forest towards them. And so I went over and asked, hey, what's happening over here? They had this terrified look on their face. And the one girl looked down and said, there was a spider on the grass, and it terrified us. So we squished it. And I saw this terrifying ordeal as a magnificent opportunity to share some knowledge. So I looked over at the group of young ladies, and I said to them, oh, no, a spider. Do you know what spider it was or what kind of spider it was? And they kind of looked at me and they said, no, it was just on the grass. And it was near my foot. And so I looked down into the grass and found the squished remains of the spider. And I said to them, oh, guess what? It's just a little grass spider, totally harmless. It's one of those hunting spiders that doesn't make webs. And I shared a little bit more information with them, and it opened up the opportunity for me to plant a seed. That was quite amazing to see how it blossomed over the next five days. And the seed that I planted was, I shared this knowledge with them. They stood around, they looked at the remains of the spider, and they were kind of sad that they had just squished this non venomous, non dangerous little creature, that they had learned something new. They had gained a little bit of knowledge. Would you like to hear the idea that I shared with them? All righty. Here we go. Oftentimes we fear or we are afraid of things that we do not understand. And the success of this story went through the entire week because, believe it or not, that wasn't the first time that I heard screams and yells, except the next time that I heard them, they were not screams of fear and screams of being afraid. They were shouts of, hey, fledge, look what we just found. And I would go running over and they had found a caterpillar or they had found a frog, or they've even found a spider. And they were calling me over to say, hey, can you identify this and tell us some things about it? And the entire week, that's what I was doing. It was wonderful. And what's so wonderful to see is that these kids began to no longer be afraid of things they don't understand, but they learned about them, that they were no longer just squishing things or destroying webs, because now they wanted to know more about the creatures around them. The success of that week was not only for me or for the kids, but it was also for the creatures that we share this planet with. And what made the difference was knowledge. Not being afraid of things that we don't understand. You too, can make a small difference today. That's going to have a huge impact tomorrow. And as you venture out into your world, we have technology at our fingertips. We have information, we have knowledge. We are no longer bound by things that we don't understand. We just have to take the time to get to know more about it. And as you continue to discover the world around you, when you see your next spider web, when you see your next creature, learn about it first. Don't just squish it or destroy it because you don't understand it. And you, yes, you could make a small difference today that would make a huge impact tomorrow. I hope that we have helped you discover something new here on planet CPR to help us all conserve, protect and restore the planet we all share until our next adventure together. This is Safari ranger fledge fiamingo signing off.