Christian Meesters on Nostr: It's dark outside, foggy and ... #Halloween. Time for #ScaryScience! The University ...
It's dark outside, foggy and ... #Halloween. Time for #ScaryScience!
The University of Mainz used to be a barracks. During the Nazi era, there was an anti-aircraft gun on the roof.
There’s a small building on the edge of the site. These days, it houses the university’s post office. It’s where the former Institute of Biophysics kept its pets: 100–200 tarantulas.
It was everyone's duty to feed and water them. And we used to stab them in their hearts to extract their blood.
No joke - arthropods have their hearts on their backs, and that’s the only place where you can get a reasonable amount. And fear not, all those spiders lived happily for years under this post office.
To get there, you had to go down a flight of stairs. And then you found yourself in a filthy room with a deep hole - a cistern without a lid. Behind this room, were the spiders. Each in a plastic box with a lid (!) and a clay flowerpot with a piece knocked out of it - that hole served as a door.
One day, one of the tarantulas had got stuck in the small drainage hole of its flowerpot. There was no way in and no way out. My milking partner and I carefully removed the pot, held it at a distance with a pair of tweezers, and smashed it.
The spider? Was it grateful? In any case, it didn’t attack us, but let us put it back without a fuss.
Published at
2026-10-31 19:10:32 UTCEvent JSON
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