How to read a poem to a spider

When she set about to explore the world of fables, writer Kaori Nagai found an unusual ally in a research biologist at the University of Cincinnati.

Nagai, a senior lecturer at Kent University in England, said she decided to pursue fables specifically about spiders, creatures that have haunted our imaginations — and occasionally nightmares — across cultures.

She turned to UC biologist Nathan Morehouse, whose passion for spiders has taken him around the world to study their incredible and varied perceptual abilities. She invited him to serve as an expert on a new creative project she called “Rethinking Fables in the Age of the Global Environmental Crisis.”

Now Nagai is sharing the results of her collaborative two-year project. Contributors included writers, artists, anthropologists and zoologists. She hosted workshops that led to the creation of original poetry and artwork.

“We covered all kinds, from traditional fables to AI nonhuman fables, but species fables were at the heart of the project,” she said.

“Not long ago, fables were unpopular in animal studies as they were seen to anthropomorphise animals and use them as mouthpieces for human ideas,” she said. “Recently, however, many scholars have started reassessing the genre as one that is fundamental to considering our relationship with nonhumans.”

Fables have been passed down by people around the world for millennia. Popularized by the Greek storyteller Aesop, they often depict a conflict resolved with an underlying moral or lesson.

Morehouse, an associate professor in UC’s College of Arts and Sciences, recalls growing up on stories of Br’er Rabbit outsmarting the fox.

“Versions of Br’er Rabbit were something my father read to me and my siblings, often in the summer,” Morehouse said. “They have great humor. But there is also a fable-like quality exploring themes of trickery and hubris. Someone gets fooled and a lesson is learned.”

Many beloved children’s books cover similar ground.

Morehouse said many popular fables in the United States originated in African oral traditions. But every culture has its own fables, writer Nagai said.

“A fable is typically a short story in which nonhuman characters speak and act like humans. I am drawn to this aspect of the genre, as it creates a space where nonhumans take center stage, inviting us to listen to them,” she said. “At the same time, in a fable, we see nonhumans become like us and we like them.”

Because of their connection to the natural world, fables can do more than instruct about right and wrong or good and evil, she said.

“This should prompt us to think about our affinities and relationship with other creatures, and the ethics and politics of relating with them in this way,” she said.

As part of his collaboration, last year Morehouse gave a presentation to the group on jumping spiders, sharing the latest research on their extraordinary color vision and behaviors. He referenced the enormous Peruvian Nazca pictograph depicting a spider, the Native American spider trickster called Iktomi and Japan’s supernatural spirit spider called Tsuchigumo.

“You know, these animals are very curious. They’re intelligent. We know they can make plans for the future. They move in the world without building webs. They hunt,” he said. “Many trickster spiders move freely through the world in this way as well.”

Morehouse said scientists have learned that jumping spiders have rapid-eye-movement sleep that could include dreaming. When he was in Brazil, Morehouse said he observed jumping spiders that spend the night hanging from a long silken thread.

“They’re suspended like a Christmas ornament,” he said “They’re in this sleep-like state where they’re less reactive to the world. So there’s a suggestion that spiders dream.”

Morehouse is no stranger to collaborating with people outside biology. He is director of UC’s Institute for Research in Sensing, which brings together experts from varied perspectives for public discussions. In October, the institute will host a biennial conference examining the broad topic of sensing, perception, sensor technology and ethical innovations in sensing research.

Morehouse said it’s a mistake to think that science and humanities are mutually exclusive.

“The work my team and I do is fundamentally imaginative,” he said. “What we’re trying to do is see how far into the experience of a spider we can get even though we’re not spiders. To do that well, we have to set aside things that make obvious sense to us as humans and engage in the practice of imagination that allows the spider to tell us about itself.”

Inspired in part by Morehouse’s talk, fellow project collaborator and Australian writer Cass Lynch wrote the original verse, “How to read a poem to a spider.”

“How would they read a poem to a human?” the poem goes. “Spider poetry is the geometry of the orb web.”

Morehouse annotated the poem with scientific background for the project.

While jumping spiders don’t have ears, they can sense vibrations through their hairy legs which Morehouse said is equivalent to hearing. The spiders are acutely aware of sounds made by parasitic wasps, which are known to paralyze and capture spiders as food for their babies.

And the buzzing of wasps is the frequency of human speech, he said.

“So if I were to read a poem to a spider, it could hear it,” Morehouse said.