Spider Man

Charlie Seiderman is a self-taught expert in the field of Entymology.  Mr. Seiderman has explored the world high and low in search of some of the rarest insects known to man, and along the way he has even managed to discover several previously unknown species.  Frank151 sent true legend and all around head cracker Cap One on a mission up to Mr. Seiderman’s Bronx home to view his private collection of insects from all around the globe, and learn more about how camouflage is found throughout nature.

Cap: What on earth got you interested in collecting spiders?
Seiderman: Well going to the museums, the old Hall of Insects and Dr. Gersh, who used to work there, and Alice Grey from the Museum of Natural History, but mostly my friend Arthur Bordus -- the original spider man. I went with him on the February ’76 expedition to southern Venezuela and northern Brazil, we covered over 4,000 miles and we rediscovered the Black Widow on the Brazilian border, Latrodectus Curocariensus. His dream was to find the giant spider Theraphosa Blondi, and I did one better than that, I found the largest and heaviest of that type plus a new species, Pseudotheraphosa Apophis.

Cap: Where have you traveled to?
Seiderman: I have been to 36 of the American states, the rain forest in Puerto Rico three times and Trinidad once and I’ve been on 15 expeditions to the Amazon – south Venezuela and northern Brazil.
 
Cap: There are a lot of colorful butterflies and beetles here, can you give me some insight as to the way some of these creatures camouflage themselves?
Seiderman: There are insects and arachnids that imitate plants and you have plants that imitate insects and arachnids, so it works both ways. Sometimes you get yourself in an area at night with a headlamp and you are looking around and it is hard to tell the plants from the spiders.

Cap: What is the name of that butterfly (pointing to a preserved butterfly)?

Seiderman: It is an Owl Eyed butterfly. It is a type of morpho. On the other side it has the blue luster, the iridescences. But when it feels threatened by a predator it turns to the other side and opens up and shows the two, what it looks like, owl’s eyes and they think it is a bigger animal than it is and they back up.

Cap: Can you tell us why each insect has such different colors?
Seiderman: You have to remember there are more insects than any other animal on earth and there are more beetles than any other insect. So the varieties are endless.The males have to attract the females and so they usually are more colorful. It also depends on the species and region. They have dead leaf butterflies that fall on the ground and show the other side of their wings and look like a dead leaf to avoid being eaten by a bird.

Cap: You want to talk about some of your beetles?
Seiderman: I have my long horn beetles from South America.  Big Goliath, Mega Soma, Atlas and Hercules beetles. All the ones from the new world I captured myself. This one in the middle is a Hercules Dynasties I caught myself and I caught all of these except these five and they are Goliath beetles from Africa. I had traded with my friend Charlie Miller who used to go on expeditions in Cameroon.

Cap: Can you tell us what the vision is like for a spider?
Seiderman: Actually spiders can only see about an inch or two. They have eight simple eyes. Two large posterior eyes and six smaller ones; they can only see a short distance. They have hairs all over their body that are very sensitive to wind. They can hear you long before you can see them.

Cap: I am interested in the Walking Sticks you have over there. I’d like to light that one up right now and smoke it. It looks like a joint to me (laughing).
Seiderman: These are from the Pasmid group and they look intimidating but they are really harmless, they are vegetarians, they are found on plants. You can see as far as camouflage they have spines all over their body and on the plants that they stay on they are virtually invisible unless they move.

Cap: Tell us about some of the most vicious insects.
Seiderman: The Pepsis Wasp, they call it the Tarantula Hawk and they actually go out and they sting a spider, drag it back into its borough and lay an egg on it and it actually eats it alive while it is paralyzed. I was stung by one and my hand blew up like a balloon, it was very hard, itchy, and painful.  I was talking to people in the Museum of Natural History and they said as far as pain intensity, the Pepsis Wasp is one of the highest.

The most feared thing in the jungle is not what the natives call el tigre. It is not a crocodile or piranha but the army ants. They come through in a column like a mile wide, maybe ten miles deep and they just come through. When the natives are in the ants’  path, they leave the villages and they let them come in and clean up the huts and eat everything. They can literally eat you alive. They can fly, they can sting and they can bite. If enough get you, they form an acid poisoning and they will literally eat you down to the bone.


Cap: Speak to me about the tribesmen in Venezuela and how they camouflage themselves before they go on hunts.
Seiderman: They mark their bodies and look like the jaguars down there and some of them actually tattoo their bodies permanently. Plus some put things in their lips coming out almost looking like cat whiskers.

Cap: Can you share your story about fishing with the natives?
Seiderman: I had told him that I didn’t bring any fishing poles or reels and indicated what I was doing down there with gestures. He knew what I meant. He says no you catch them with your hands and he showed me how you keep your hand very still and you put these things in your hands that would attract these fish. They will eat out of your hand and you can grab it from under the gills and throw it back onto land. They taught me how to fish with my hands; they also showed me how to extract a giant spider out of its borough with a stick.

Cap: What are your ambitions for the next expedition?
Seiderman: I’d like to go into the holes of Sarisariñama. It is on top of a plateau in a part of southern Venezuela. It consists of giant caverns that go into the Earth; it is a depression, 1000 feet wide at the mouth and 1000 feet deep. There have only been 12 people, as far as I know, who have set foot in this place and no one has stayed in the holes over night. I plan to stay there for seven days and check out the nocturnal life down there, you know the spiders, centipedes, and scorpions that come out at night. And whatever is on top of this plateau will be found no where else on earth and this is what I am planning on doing.
Cap: The only way I would go down there is if I had a space suit.

Sir Frank would like to wish Charlie Seiderman good luck on his future expeditions.