Spider and I sit watching the sky

Dear Roger Corman,
I do not care about the DRAMATIC SCENE where the Good Scientist realises that the money behind the project comes from the Army, who have their own sinister porpoises purposes and can only see the military applications of Frankensquitos. I do not care about the scene where the Ambivalent Scientist -- concerned about the mysterious laboratory accident that killed Good Scientist -- tries to contact the press. This is still the worst idea for a horror movie EVAH:

Scientists make “frankensquitos”

In unrelated news, the East African jumping spider Evarcha culicivora evidently likes the taste of mammalian blood. And who doesn't?*

As a Valentine's Day gift for the Frau Doktorin,
produced surprisingly negative response

Things will get exciting when it dawns on the spiders that the red stuff ultimately comes from those big thin-skinned slow-moving things, just standing there on the side of the lake. At the moment, though, they obtain it indirectly, by catching Anopheles mosquitos.

Hence the mix-and-match experiments, assembling composite mosquitos from different heads and abdomens. This study was 99% reanimation-serum-free.* The results indicate that despite having bitty little eyes and bitty little spiderbrains, the subjects could distinguish female Anopheles (who are the ones who drink blood), and ones with a red swollen freshly-filled abdomen:**

"The spiders preferred an intact blood-engorged female corpse over anything else..."

"To look in the mirror before casting nasturtiums at others, Soft One!"

At Riddled Research Laboratory we are not ones to let the grass grow under our feet -- our new Riddled herbicidally-soaked jandals are available in Ye Gift Shoppe even now! -- and you can imagine our excitement at the possible applications of the mosquito blood-administration route for spider-web drug testing of blood.***

We are NOT AT ALL motivated by the thought of fame and profits to be won by testing the blood of Olympic athletes for performance-enhancing drugs. Just saying, if a sample from a long-jumper results in spiders leaping 50 times their own length, there is something going on.

* The authors are also the world authorities in arachnid counting abilities.

** This is why the Frau Doktorin does not accept my "special chocolates" at Valentine's Day either:

"It's what's inside the prey that makes the spider more attractive," Cross said. "It might be like if we all gave off an odor after eating chocolates. It would only be the people who ate the chocolates with particular centers who smelled particularly attractive. Weird."

** There is the minor biathlon shotput hurdle that E. culicivora -- whether under the influence of human blood contents, or not -- does not weave webs, but that is why we have the Evolvamat.