This week on Consider This, the fight over gerrymandering, spreading from Texas to other states.

Now some Democrats want to fight fire with fire. And a lot of us are searching the web differently,

letting AI do it for us, why the internet could change if you search but never click. This week

on Consider This, listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hey, shortwavers, Emily Kwong here. And today, we're going on a road trip.

To the Comanche National Grasslands of southeastern Colorado near La junta, where if you drive down a dusty road in early fall.

Usually right around sunrise or sunset, you'll start seeing these little shadows that look like rocks crossing the road.

More and more will appear.

And ecologist Dallas Hasselhund says pretty soon you realize these moving shadows are not rocks. They are tarantulas.

Slowly meandering their way across the asphalt as you're driving at highway speeds, trying your best, hopefully, to avoid them.

Tarantulas are a group of large hairy spiders that I think are quite cute up close.

But feel free to debate me on that.

These tarantulas in Colorado are on a mission.

Once a year from mid-September to mid-October, Colorado-Brown tarantulas leave their burrows in mass to find a mate.

These wanderers are sexually mature males crossing the road as the cars try to dodge them. When Dallas was a tarantula researcher

at Eastern Michigan University Shillington Arachnid Laboratory, they remember the first time they

saw these arachnids in the wild.

And I was like a kid in the candy shop.

The second I saw one, I pulled over immediately, and I jumped out, and I just ran straight to it.

Time stopped, like a slow motion love scene, with the tarantulas running to find a mate and Dallas running to find

them.

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