Post by Stormrider on Jan 25, 2009 11:11:35 GMT -6
From: Algamesh_of_Arnor (Original Message) Sent: 3/15/2003 3:57 AM
While doing some research about Shelob, I came across a very interesting commentary concerning her possible "misclassification" as a spider. I'm going to reprint it here ...
Cool, eh?
While doing some research about Shelob, I came across a very interesting commentary concerning her possible "misclassification" as a spider. I'm going to reprint it here ...
The identity of Shelob
Invertebrata 4, Winter 1995
One of the more puzzling zoological curiosities of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth is Shelob, the guardian of Cirith Ungol in the Ephel Duath (Mountains of Shadow). Shelob is often described by non-zoologists as a giant spider, since the creature is predatory, venomous and web-spinning:
Across the width and height of the tunnel a vast web was spun, orderly as the web of some huge spider, but denser-woven and far greater, and each thread was as thick as a rope. (The Two Towers, chap. 9)
Even a casual review of the available anatomical evidence, however, does not support an assignment of Shelob to the Araneae. The head is said to carry 'great horns' and 'two great clusters of many-windowed eyes', and
behind her short stalk-like neck was her huge swollen body...swaying and sagging between her legs...Her legs were bent, with great knobbed joints high above her back, and hair that stuck out like steel spines, and at each leg's end there was a claw. (ibid.)
In all spiders the head and leg-bearing segments are fused into a cephalothorax, i.e. there is no neck. The eyes are occasionally arranged as paired clusters, but with never more than four eyes on a side. The legs typically terminate in three claws, sometimes two, never one.
If Shelob is not a spider, what is she? The body form, the 'great horns' of antennae, the ommatidial 'many-windowed' eyes and the single tarsal claw are all suggestive of the Hexapoda rather than the Arachnida. In the absence of a specimen, it is possible to speculate that Shelob can be referred to the Myrmeleontoidea within the Neuroptera. Larvae of modern-day myrmeleontids dig pitfall traps for their prey, which are injected with poison when captured. Myrmeleontid larvae have a short, stalk-like neck and a large body (thorax and abdomen joined together) with ommatidial eyes.
Web-spinning is unknown among the Neuroptera, but the pupal cocoon is woven from silk produced by the Malpighian tubules. Shelob could well belong to a neotenic neuropteran species in which cocoon-spinning ability has been directed towards prey capture.
Shelob is described as an ancient creature from the Dark Years, and fossil and phylogenetic evidence places the origin of the Neuroptera well back in the Paleozoic. We are further told that she is
such as once of old had lived in the Land of the Elves in the West that is now under the Sea...and so came to Luthien upon the green sward amid the hemlocks in the moonlight long ago. (ibid.)
In other words, the distribution of Shelob-like ancestral forms was formerly much wider, and following extinction in the West and transoceanic dispersal to Middle Earth, the Shelob lineage became restricted to the glens of the Ephel Duath in southern Mordor. Shelob is thus both a living fossil and a member of a relict species of considerable evolutionary significance in entomology. The ruler of Mordor, Sauron, is to be praised for preserving the Cirith Ungol habitat and allowing Shelob to capture his slaves:
If now and again Shelob caught them to stay her appetite, she was welcome; he could spare them (ibid.)
From a conservation viewpoint, the attempt by Samwise Gamgee to kill Shelob by stabbing was unfortunate, and one can only hope it failed. On this point Tolkien himself is uncertain:
Shelob was gone; and whether she lay long in her lair...and in slow years of darkness healed herself from within, rebuilding her clustered eyes...this tale does not tell. (The Two Towers, chap. 10)
The identification of Shelob as an archaic neuropteran is tentative, of course, and I would be interested to hear the opinions of other Invertebrata readers on this matter.
Bob Mesibov
Research Associate, QVMAG
Invertebrata 4, Winter 1995
One of the more puzzling zoological curiosities of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth is Shelob, the guardian of Cirith Ungol in the Ephel Duath (Mountains of Shadow). Shelob is often described by non-zoologists as a giant spider, since the creature is predatory, venomous and web-spinning:
Across the width and height of the tunnel a vast web was spun, orderly as the web of some huge spider, but denser-woven and far greater, and each thread was as thick as a rope. (The Two Towers, chap. 9)
Even a casual review of the available anatomical evidence, however, does not support an assignment of Shelob to the Araneae. The head is said to carry 'great horns' and 'two great clusters of many-windowed eyes', and
behind her short stalk-like neck was her huge swollen body...swaying and sagging between her legs...Her legs were bent, with great knobbed joints high above her back, and hair that stuck out like steel spines, and at each leg's end there was a claw. (ibid.)
In all spiders the head and leg-bearing segments are fused into a cephalothorax, i.e. there is no neck. The eyes are occasionally arranged as paired clusters, but with never more than four eyes on a side. The legs typically terminate in three claws, sometimes two, never one.
If Shelob is not a spider, what is she? The body form, the 'great horns' of antennae, the ommatidial 'many-windowed' eyes and the single tarsal claw are all suggestive of the Hexapoda rather than the Arachnida. In the absence of a specimen, it is possible to speculate that Shelob can be referred to the Myrmeleontoidea within the Neuroptera. Larvae of modern-day myrmeleontids dig pitfall traps for their prey, which are injected with poison when captured. Myrmeleontid larvae have a short, stalk-like neck and a large body (thorax and abdomen joined together) with ommatidial eyes.
Web-spinning is unknown among the Neuroptera, but the pupal cocoon is woven from silk produced by the Malpighian tubules. Shelob could well belong to a neotenic neuropteran species in which cocoon-spinning ability has been directed towards prey capture.
Shelob is described as an ancient creature from the Dark Years, and fossil and phylogenetic evidence places the origin of the Neuroptera well back in the Paleozoic. We are further told that she is
such as once of old had lived in the Land of the Elves in the West that is now under the Sea...and so came to Luthien upon the green sward amid the hemlocks in the moonlight long ago. (ibid.)
In other words, the distribution of Shelob-like ancestral forms was formerly much wider, and following extinction in the West and transoceanic dispersal to Middle Earth, the Shelob lineage became restricted to the glens of the Ephel Duath in southern Mordor. Shelob is thus both a living fossil and a member of a relict species of considerable evolutionary significance in entomology. The ruler of Mordor, Sauron, is to be praised for preserving the Cirith Ungol habitat and allowing Shelob to capture his slaves:
If now and again Shelob caught them to stay her appetite, she was welcome; he could spare them (ibid.)
From a conservation viewpoint, the attempt by Samwise Gamgee to kill Shelob by stabbing was unfortunate, and one can only hope it failed. On this point Tolkien himself is uncertain:
Shelob was gone; and whether she lay long in her lair...and in slow years of darkness healed herself from within, rebuilding her clustered eyes...this tale does not tell. (The Two Towers, chap. 10)
The identification of Shelob as an archaic neuropteran is tentative, of course, and I would be interested to hear the opinions of other Invertebrata readers on this matter.
Bob Mesibov
Research Associate, QVMAG
Cool, eh?