Not.. if you don't say that...
And I'd wager that people who would read about the Portia, and would read Blindsight and Echopraxia are the type to think long and hard about such topics anyway.
In general, I love a good novel with a bibliography.
https://adlayasanimals.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/u2byv.jpg
Also, I got interested and tried to find some documentation on Portia Labiata after reading Watts' book, and there's very, very little, but what he says appears to be true. They do have telescopic eyes with vibrating retinas. They do spend ages painstakingly scanning a scene before moving. They are absurdly intelligent for insects. I don't know if Watts' suggestion that they timeshare pattern-matching areas of their brains is true, but it seems plausible.
Here's a good article: http://www.dichotomistic.com/mind_readings_spider%20minds.ht...
http://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uuuploads/jumpi...
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/ef/ca/4d/efca...
And a nice fluffy white one with very stubby legs: http://www.jumpingspiders.co.za/images/main/187.jpg
Via https://www.reddit.com/r/awwnverts/comments/5o7nmg/my_favori... and https://www.reddit.com/r/awwnverts/comments/5lar18/floof_spi...
http://imgur.com/gallery/WWoRX
Ugh, unfortunately that trick doesn't work for every ugly scary image.
This breaks down in Australia where the spiders are as big as your head or in Puerto Rico where the foot long centipedes eat bats. Those aren't bugs, those are nightmare fuel.
But the OP is right, of course. Spiders are not insects. Although I suspect that most people I'd talk to in the UK would call them such. I'll have to hand in my Pedant's Society card (which is actually made out of plastic)...
The American use of "critter" also bemuses
"terrestrial arthropods, such as centipedes, millipedes, scorpions, and spiders, are sometimes confused with insects"[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect#Phylogeny_and_evolution
In real life many people call spiders insects, either from ignorance or from not caring about the distinction.
To refer to both insects and spiders & similar in one term you could use the (rather less formal) terms "bugs" or "creepy crawlies". I can 't think of anything more formal off the top of my head.
You know what I'm going to say don't you.
Last I saw, was what looked like a video game based on Blindsight.
No news on it's status, alas.
I'm now more excited for this than winds of winter, wow.
Wow, this guy sure knows how to make a statement.
It can mimic the footsteps of other spiders by plucking the web of the spider it's going to kill.
Doesn't the name comes from Portia in the Merchant of Venice a devious character?
Jumping spiders are cool we have the stripy ones in my region. Spider give me the creeps but not jumping spiders I think it's due to the shorter legs and small size.
One of my favorite excerpts from [1]:
> Harland says Portia’s eyesight is the place to start. Jumping spiders already have excellent vision and Portia’s is ten times as good, making it sharper than most mammals. However being so small, there is a trade-off in that Portia can only focus its eyes on a tiny spot. It has to build up a picture of the world by scanning almost pixel by pixel across the visual scene. Whatever Portia ends up seeing, the information is accumulated slowly, as if peering through a keyhole, over many minutes. So there might be something a little like visual experience, but nothing like a full and “all at once” experience of a visual field.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portia_(spider) [1] - http://www.dichotomistic.com/mind_readings_spider%20minds.ht... [2] - http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/01/160121-jumping-sp...