Hunting spiders are very smart animals, even the little jumping spiders. They all know very well what they are doing, because they have to make plans and strategics to catch their prey, something what the spiders with webs don’t need.
There is a very cool sci-fi novel called Children of Time in which jumping spiders are accidentally uplifted and evolve into an intelligent species.
The videos of it are cute too. The little frogs follow the spiders around and do a little squishy squishy underneath them where they’re safe and protected by their big strong spider pals.
Spider frog! spider frog! Does whatever a spider frog does!
If a frog had the proportional strength, speed and agility of a spider, would that be an upgrade or a downgrade?
I hope the teeny frogs give the spiders hell like cats do to us.
The spiders tell themselves that they’re keeping the tiny frogs around because they’re killing pests and also kind of cute but, really, there is a brain parasite in the frogs’ feces - tiny amounts of which are all over the floor of the spiders’ burrows - which makes the spiders believe this.
So it looks like the frogs mentioned in this meme are microhylids, and for some further info:
Crocraft & Hambler (1989) noted that the frog seemed to benefit from living in proximity to the spider by eating the small invertebrates that were attracted to prey remains left by the spider. The frog presumably also benefits by receiving protection: small frogs like this are preyed on by snakes and large arthropods, yet on this occasion we have a frog that receives a sort of ‘protection’ from a large, formidable spider bodyguard. Hunt (1980) suggested that the spider might gain benefit from the presence of the frog: microhylids specialise on eating ants, and ants are one of the major predators of spider eggs. By eating ants, the microhylids might help protect the spider’s eggs.
This is also super cute behaviour:
Young spiders have sometimes been observed to grab the frogs, examine them with their mouthparts, and then release them unharmed.
Apparently the spiders’ protectiveness can also be pretty overt:
Karunarathna & Amarasinghe (2009) reported how several Poecilotheria were seen attacking individuals of Hemidactylus depressus (a gecko) after the latter tried eating the eggs of the frogs the spiders were sharing their tree holes with.
And some ideas on why this might be an example of mutualistic behaviour rather than commensalism:
…the spider seems to benefit in that the frogs eat the ants that might ordinarily attack the spider’s eggs. Due to their small size, ants are presumably difficult for the spiders to deal with, and they might be effectively helpless against them.
But do they pet them?
From another comment: https://aussie.zone/comment/7627328
Young spiders have sometimes been observed to grab the frogs, examine them with their mouthparts, and then release them unharmed.