Follow Fiona Cross ( 3 Followers )

When people meet me, they often want to know what I do and so I tell them that I’m a Zoologist, researching animal behaviour.

“That must be really interesting,” they often say in reply. And then they ask me, inevitably, “is there a particular animal you study?”

I usually lower my voice at this point and say “Spiders” as quickly as I can.

I’m often greeted with stunned disbelief. I think people must take one look at me and decide that I study something cute like kittens or rabbits.

I happen to like spiders a lot, but you’d be amazed at how such a small animal could make a person so busy. This includes long, long hours of observations in the lab, writing up findings and then submitting work for publication. It includes working day and night on grant applications. It includes travelling long distances to present findings at conferences. And it includes spending half of my time in Kenya.

I’m originally from New Zealand and I’ve been going to Kenya since 2006 to work on African jumping spiders, along with a few other people from the research group I’m part of. I rent a flat in a small town right next to Lake Victoria. By car, it takes about eight hours to reach this town from Nairobi, provided that the roads are good and that the car doesn’t die. The nearest supermarket is about a 2½ hour drive to Kisumu and we go grocery shopping there once a month. Lake Victoria is stunning; when I go down to the lakefront to watch the sun set, the sky often appears as if it’s on fire. Sometimes, I even hear the hippos grunting at night.

When I’m in Kenya, I don’t just work with spiders. I also live with them. I’m not the sort of person who knocks down spider webs or feels worried when spiders run across the wall. I’ve been working with spiders for over 12 years and I’ve never been bitten, or even been concerned that I might ever get bitten.

I think that jumping spiders are fascinating creatures. They have eight eyes, but two of these eyes, the ‘principal eyes’, are particularly interesting. To put it simply, these are large, forward-facing eyes that actually enable the spider to see remarkably well for an animal of its size. This includes an ability to see objects, and we can learn all sorts of things by investigating what a spider sees and pays attention to. One spider from Kenya, Evarcha culicivora, expresses a strong preference for mosquitoes that are carrying blood. From experiments, we know that this spider can look at mosquitoes and tell the difference between male and female mosquitoes, between different mosquito genera, and between female mosquitoes that are carrying blood and female mosquitoes that are not. This spider also has a remarkable sense of smell and it’s attracted to the odour of blood-carrying mosquitoes. Even potential mates that have eaten a blood-carrying mosquito smell more attractive to this spider.

Out of all mosquitoes, Evarcha culicivora expresses the strongest preference for mosquitoes from the genus Anopheles. This is fascinating when you consider that these particular mosquitoes are the ones that can transmit malaria. We’re certainly not saying that Evarcha culicivora is the answer for malaria. There is no single magic bullet for tackling this complicated disease. However, it is interesting to learn more about the biology of this spider and how it relates to the biology of its preferred prey.

Anopheles gambiae is the mosquito that is most notorious as a vector for specifically human malaria and this mosquito is known to be attracted to human odour. A simple and quick way of testing for this attraction is by presenting mosquitoes with the odour of socks that a person has worn for 12 hours. Anopheles gambiae can show that it likes this odour by flying towards it more often than the odour of socks that have never been worn.

It was of interest to consider whether Evarcha culicivora, a predator of Anopheles gambiae, might also be interested in human odour. This spider is often found around people’s houses. Prof. Robert Jackson and I got the same person who wore the socks in the mosquito study to wear a pair of socks for the spiders. We presented the spiders with the odour of socks that had been worn for 12 hours and with the odour of socks that had never been worn. We wanted to know whether the spiders spent more time near one odour than the other. Lo and behold, the spiders went for the previously-worn socks.

This was a simple experiment, but we didn’t struggle to publish it in Biology Letters, a Royal Society journal. We were excited about this but, at the same time, we weren’t prepared for how the media went berserk the day our article was published online in 2011. The BBC, alone, phoned us in Kenya for six radio interviews in one day. I also gave radio interviews for CBC in Canada and ABC in Australia. These radio interviews all depended on luck, since the phone line wasn’t always clear and since the line sometimes completely cut out midway during the interview. But even now, people remember about the spiders and the “smelly socks”. It’s one of those unusual stories that tends to stick in people’s minds.

It felt very glamorous to be in Kenya and to take all of these phone calls from the media. When I returned to New Zealand, some people even told me that they wanted my life. I realise that spiders aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but over the years I’ve heard a number of people say how jealous they are of all the travelling that I do. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and there is one thing I want to ask you. Please be careful what you wish for.

I think that people forget about the harsh realities of living so far away from home for months at a time – away from your family and many of your friends. I am often reminded of this by some of the locals who like to express their sexist attitudes and by the majority of children who yell at me, whenever they see me, simply because I’m white. I know that I look very different from many of the people there, but I start to wonder whether they actually realise that I am a human being too, and that I’m not there for their entertainment. Life in Kenya is raw; I’m often hearing news about people suddenly becoming very sick and dying, regardless of how old they are.

When life gets tough, one thing I do is look at photos of my spiders and they remind me why I began doing this work in the first place. I can’t deny the fascination I’ve always had for animals. This fascination is what drove me to apply for grant funding so that I could continue the spider research and then to apply again when I didn’t succeed, even when I wasn’t earning a single dollar for an entire year. When you really care about something, you just do what you have to do. I’m happy to say that I did succeed the second time around.

Over the years, I’ve learned to take joy in the little things. Of course, spiders are one of those joys, but I now also have a greater appreciation for things that many people often take for granted. It’s always a delight to return to New Zealand and to have access again to a washing machine, a supermarket down the street and drinking water that I don’t have to boil in advance. Yes, my life can be exciting at times. I think, however, that what is even more important is to find happiness in what you’ve already got.

[Photo credit to Fiona Cross]

Like what you read? “Heart” this story above, comment below, or consider submitting your own story!