Question about giant fantasy spiders

[crantz]

Hello, I'm just going to put this behind a cut because googling this has made me wish I could put my research behind a cut in my own brain.



In this fantasy world, spiders can be the size of horses and you can harvest the ones you kill for food. I tried searching what the inside of a tarantula's leg looks like and... it wasn't really working.

So my question is: what would the 'meat' of a spider look like? Would it be crablike? Does anyone know what a tarantula looks like on the inside?

Thank you for your time.

I need to know this for a comic I'm drawing.

Comments

[melannen]

Spiders don't have leg muscles like crabs do! They use hydraulics and stuff instead, which is really cool. So a spider leg is basically a hollow tube with some pulleys and a lot of hemolymph in it.

(Okay, looking into research on larger spiders specifically I guess they do have a limited about of muscles but not really the way you'd think of a vertebrate or even a crab or lobster, it's mostly hydraulic.)

However the hydraulic method in an arthropod has serious weight limitations, giant tarantulas are already more or less at the physical limit, so giant spiders couldn't use that method anyway, if we're worrying about biological logic. Giant spiders without lots of handwavium probably would have to end up working more like crabs (and might even actually be some other kind of spiderlike arthropod rather than technically arachnids) (although all arthropods have size limits due to basic biomechanical physics so you'll be using some handwavium anyway.)

Anyway, I'd say giant spider legs are either basically king crab legs or they're full of delicious nutritious hemolymph that you can either suck up liquid with a straw or coagulate into jelly, with a few small muscles you can scrape out of the interior.

I found some accounts of eating tarantulas in Cambodia, and for the rest of the body, it sounds like the head/thorax area is pretty much like crab or lobster meat, and the abdomen is full of squishy, fairly bland viscera and possibly eggs, and often not eaten. So I'd imagine the cephalothorax would be butchered for meat, and the abdomen you'd check for caviar and then either feed the rest to the dogs or, if you were close to home, drag the whole abdomen back and use it the way you'd use a mammal's organ meats.

If you google image search "Tarantula dissection" you will probably get some OK art reference? There's a bunch of tarantula dissections on youtube too it looks like.

[redsixwing]

*chinhands* I did not know tarantulas were eaten anywhere. Fascinating, thanks!

[melannen]

I have found it's generally a safe bet that *everything* is eaten somewhere! :D (and that an anglosphere food blogger will have written about it by now.)

Also if you want an actually useful fact: basically all arthropods are safely edible without special preparation except for a few butterflies and moths and their caterpillars, so if you're ever in a starvation situation, catch some bugs.

[redsixwing]

*snort* Well, that's true! xD

I've eaten some of the common (more common?) insects - namely crickets, which are okay, and mealworms, which are delicious. I aspire to try silkworms some day. May have to add tarantulas to the list. :)

In grasshopper season, it would be hard to starve around here. (Yeah they're fast and they fly. They're also big and not particularly perceptive or smart, and they easily get caught in the fabric I use to shade my garden. I can only imagine how many I could catch with a net and some patience.)

And now I'm thinking about a hemolymph-based jelly dish for a fictional culture...

Thanks!

[melannen]

I'd be careful about *actually* eating grasshoppers from your lawn because they apparently can concentrate pesticides used on plants, but in theory they are supposed to be delicious and meaty.

Unfortunately I enjoy entomophagy mainly in theory because I can't digest crab/shrimp/lobster, and while insects are *probably* okay I have only tried them in very small quantities. (Mealworms are delicious though it's true.)

[redsixwing]

A good caution to observe, thanks - I don't use pesticides myself, but I live near people who probably do, and grasshoppers move around.

And that's another good consideration: allergy to arthropods of one type may mean sensitivity to others.

If I use hemolymph as an ingredient in some fantasy cuisine, that's to think about there too.

[melannen]

I don't actually know if a crustacean allergy makes you that much more likely to be allergic to eating insects or arachnids - it doesn't come up on a lot of medical guidelines, for some reason! - but in a country where avoiding them isn't a hardship it seems safest.

[tabaqui]

I could not help myself.
"As Dr. Zachary Rubin, pediatric allergist, wrote to me, "The majority of people allergic to shellfish are allergic to a protein called tropomyosin, which is also found in many insects, so it's not usually a good idea to consume insect-containing foods if you have a shellfish allergy." "

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/health-and-nutrition/edible-insect-revolution-not-those-shellfish-allergies

[adafrog]

That's really interesting. Thanks.

[tabaqui]

Welcome! Really not something I would have considered.

[full_metal_ox]

I've eaten some of the common (more common?) insects - namely crickets, which are okay, and mealworms, which are delicious. I aspire to try silkworms some day. May have to add tarantulas to the list. :)

I’ve had silkworms, which I bought frozen and then stewed; the texture was disappointing, having the sponginess of freeze-dried tofu. I suspect I would’ve done better to deep-fry them like shrimp.

My bucket list includes mopane worms, a fat caterpillar considered a delicacy in Zimbabwe. (They were the subject of an old Food Network promo that I’ve been unable to find online, possibly because of its potential to offend: a white American couple on safari are apprehensively sampling mopane worms in a stereotypical African hunter-gatherer straw hut village; the husband’s reaction is: “Call me crazy, but this tastes like honey barbecue chicken!” Flash forward to the African couple, still garbed in bones and leopard skins, attending a white American backyard barbecue; the husband’s reaction is: “Call me crazy, but this tastes like mopane worms!”)

I’ve tried salt-and-vinegar ants marketed by a novelty food distributor—which strikes me as an absurd gilding of the lily. Ants have a sharp inherent tartness that comes from formic acid (probably contraindicating them for people with bee sting allergies); in fact, an effective way to introduce them as food might be to grind them up as a sour seasoning, like sumac or Mexican lime salt.

(Why, yes—I was that weird kid who ate bugs on a dare, long before that turned into a whole reality show genre.)

[redsixwing]

the texture was disappointing, having the sponginess of freeze-dried tofu.

Aww! Well, that's good to know.
I read about them being served wok-fried in a magazine some time ago. Frying may indeed be worth a shot!

Your story made me snicker, and also: yum. That sounds good too.

I wasn't so likely to eat bugs as a kid, but when they became available as novelty sweets, I was one of the few who ate the chocolate-covered assorted critters without being dared into it.

[full_metal_ox]

By contrast: part of how (at least Ohio-area) fireflies survive broadcasting their presence to every nocturnal predator out there may come from the fact that they’re the bitterest shit imaginable. Had I been the size of a bat or a whippoorwill, enough for the dose to be significant, I suspect I would’ve regretted my actions even harder.

[redsixwing]

Sorry, but this made me laugh SO hard. xD

[full_metal_ox]

mekannen:

Also if you want an actually useful fact: basically all arthropods are safely edible without special preparation except for a few butterflies and moths and their caterpillars, so if you're ever in a starvation situation, catch some bugs.

Source for this generalization? If an arthropod is brightly colored, particularly regardless of sex, there’s likely to be a reason.

redsixwing:

In grasshopper season, it would be hard to starve around here. (Yeah they're fast and they fly. They're also big and not particularly perceptive or smart, and they easily get caught in the fabric I use to shade my garden. I can only imagine how many I could catch with a net and some patience.)

Although they’re huge—they can attain the size of a man’s thumb—and flightless, you might not want to eat (U.S.) Southeastern Lubber Grasshoppers (associated particularly with Florida, because of course.) Reports of their toxicity vary wildly; it may depend on their local food plants.



(Image: a brilliant orange-and-yellow grasshopper with pink-touched vestigial wings, seated in profile on a weathered wooden plank.)

Now, the similarly humongous olive-drab Differential Grasshopper? Them’s good eatin’:



(Image: an olive-green grasshopper with muted yellow-and-black-striped hind legs, lying at 3/4 angle upon bright green serrated-edged leaves.)

[redsixwing]

I have never seen a grasshopper like that Lubber! Very pretty, but I'll keep it out of my mouth.

This CulinaryLore article suggests that drab grasshoppers are safer to eat, in which case the grey-to-dun ones should be fine.

That said, I'm not sure I'd call the lovely chevron markings on that Differential Grasshopper drab, so it's good to look it up.

Aha. The locals seem to be Differential Grasshoppers and a few species of Bird Grasshopper. And apparently two species of locust?

Today I learned. I'll have to go grasshopper-catching and see if I can identify some. Harmlessly. ;)

[full_metal_ox]

“Olive drab” is a color term for subdued Army greens.

And there’s at least one whole website devoted to entomophagy (also touching upon other arthropods such as spiders—the original topic of this post—scorpions, centipedes, and millipedes):

https://www.smallstockfoods.com/

[dr_zook]

Wow! I love this comm. XD

Thank you for sharing these things I never thought I'd ever be thinking about. ♥

[antimonyschnuck]

Seconding this!

[eve_n_furter]

Thanks, this was super interesting. And as someone who has dissected a giant prickly stick insect, I agree on your conclusions.

[sabotabby]

I don't know when this will ever be relevant in my life but I am somehow better off knowing this information.

[crantz]

Excellent, thank you!

I think I made the exact face the orc child is going to make at the leg jelly thing.

[tabaqui]

An interesting tit-bit - if you're allergic to shellfish, bugs are not a good idea.

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/health-and-nutrition/edible-insect-revolution-not-those-shellfish-allergies

[crantz]

That IS interesting.

[(Anonymous)]

I've never personally eaten a tarantula, but there are quite a few videos on the subject that I've watched due to interest in exotic foods. Tarantulas are usually deep-fried in oil, but can also be battered or pan-fried. The leg meat and general meat appears white/pale yellow from the glimpses I've caught in the videos. The exoskeleton is not removed, but some sources suggest removing the hair with a blow-torch, while others don't seem to bother. The flavor of the meat is said to resemble soft-shell crab or a mild chicken in flavor, while the abdomen contains a bitter, sour brown paste of organs, excrement, and sometimes eggs. Many people avoid eating the abdomen entirely, while some people consider this the best part. Listening to people eat the tarantulas, they appear quite crunchy.