Yesterday morning I spent a happy few minutes playing with a tiny jumping spider, who was exploring my computer displays. At first I just watched him walking around, gathering himself for a mighty leap, then vanishing and instantly reappearing a few centimeters away. Occasionally he would pause, turn to face me directly, and stare at me for a while. I waved at him, wondering how I would react if he waved back. He eventually wandered onto the display surface of one screen, and I noticed that he seemed to be reacting to movement on the screen. I moved the mouse pointer towards him, and he reacted immediately, turning to face it. He tracked its every movement as long as it was within a few centimeters. Every once in a while, he attacked, springing forward to grasp the pointer, then pausing with his forward legs splayed out. Much like a cat playing with a laser pointer. At one point I led him to the part of the screen where my music app shows a series of bars representing frequency bands. He stopped moving and seemed transfixed by the hectic motion of the bars. “…jumping spiders have been shown by experiment to be capable of learning, recognizing, and remembering colors, and adapting their hunting behavior accordingly.” (from Wikipedia.)
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