I have also seen stuff like rasberry farmers releasing hamsters into their field. They don't eat the brambly bushes or the raspberries but they will eat the weeds and insects. I think they're released after being nuetered or something, as they imply eventually they're eaten by the local wildlife themselves. That's just probably more of a niche solution than the spider thing.

CW: Arachnophobia!!!

Spiders kill more "pests" than all of our methods for killing pests combined. While this robot is specifically for weeding, it's important to note that we don't actually need a wild technological solution to pest control. Techniques and strategies already exist that will be a million times cheaper and effective than spending money and electricity on expensive robots and their targeting systems. Cranberry farming has already embraced this - they sew the field with iirc hunstman spiders (or another non webspinning kind), and the spiders eat the pests. They need people who are really seriously not afraid of spiders because the way they harvest cranberries is by flooding the field with water, which causes all the cranberries to rise to the top, along with thousands of spiders. When this happens, they like to climb to higher ground, which happens to be all over the workers (oh my god I could never).

Broad spectrum "pesticides" (as in, ones that aren't targeted to one organism or a group) don't just kill pests, they kill everything. In fact, the spiders are going to die first because, like tuna accumulating mercury, they build up higher amounts from their prey. Not only do pest species often become resistant to pesticide, but they end up with no predators at all. We don't need to make mechanical pest killing machines, we need to start utilizing the biological ones that already exist and are way more cost effective. People just don't like spiders, though, and the current system gives Monsanto a bunch of money, so they're not going to stop.

If screening was 100% accurate with no false negatives or positives, it'd be fine. In reality, if you test 100,000 people, maybe 1000 of those tests are probably wrong, one way or the other (depending on the test ofc). You also have no way to tell which ones are likely to be accurate because it's a random screening and not someone with an identified issue. Especially with diseases/conditions that are rare, this makes screening both innefective and overly expensive, as the false negatives and positives will require further involvement to correct.

They live in environments that change drastically throughout the day, like the droplets of water on moss. The moss will sometimes dry out, and to survive this they enter their tun state - think hibernation combined with freeze-drying yourself. They end up a shriveled little ball a fraction of their original size, and then expand and return to normal when the water comes back. They also can enter their tun state for things like temperature changes they'd otherwise die from. They don't seem to age much during this process and have lots of resistance to radiation in their tun state, which is a lot more useful when you're that small and radiation damaging a single cell could mean you lose an entire eye.

For all the dipshits worrying about the glass that protects exhibits being covered with soup, here's some real destruction of culture.