Independent Minnesota US Senate candidate Marisa Simonetti, 32, has been sentenced to three months in the Hennepin County workhouse after throwing a live tarantula onto the staircase leading to her tenant’s living space in Edina. She was convicted of gross misdemeanour harassment and misdemeanour domestic assault and will serve her 90-day sentence on school and work release. The court also ordered her to serve two years of probation and submit a written apology to the victim.
Simonetti’s sentence comes as she campaigns for a seat in the US Senate, hoping to replace Tina Smith in the November 2026 Minnesota election. Her candidacy has drawn further attention after a video she posted of herself confronting a Girl Scout and the child’s mother over selling cookies without a permit went viral, putting her own conduct under public scrutiny.
Really not fair to the tarantula, who asked for none of this.
Tarantula are wildly intelligent. Like, smart dog intelligent.
Hey I love tarantulas (we keep over 60 of them currently) and think they deserve our appreciation and respect. However there isn’t any evidence that they are particularly intelligent, and certainly no indication that they are “smart dog intelligent.”
One could make an argument for jumping spiders tho: https://youtu.be/_QF6kaOAuYg
This is a 100% lie and literally anyone here with a single minute to spare could fact check and learn they aren’t very intelligent at all. Nowhere remotely close to a dog or cat, and aren’t even known to be the smartest types of spiders. It’s kind of sad that 28 people straight just blindly up voted this comment without a single one of them knowing it wasn’t true and didn’t bother to check.
They’re super cool, but they’re still dumb.
Not as dumb as some dogs.
How the heck did you come up with that?
Yeah I’m gonna go ahead and call bullshit on that bullshit. There is zero chance of that being true.
Just because you find the spider to be yucky, that doesn’t mean it’s not smart
I don’t find tarantulas yucky and have had one as a pet.
They aren’t smart. They aren’t like dogs. You can’t teach them anything. The most you can get out of them is that they will learn you’re not gonna squish or eat them and be cool with you.
You can look this up “on the internet”. They aren’t even as smart as jumping spiders.
So yeah. He right on calling bullshit. Because it is bullshit.
Yeah, jumping spiders is where it’s at when it comes to intelligence in spiders, and even then only in highly specific ways (i.e., hunting, and calculating jumps), and a significant portion of their apparent intelligence is just them having very good eyesight for a spider; dogs, cats, birds, rats, and even probably bees are still much more intelligent than them.
Tarantulas on the other hand aren’t much smarter than your average politician or CEO.
I love tarantulas. My first-ever job was at a pet store and I used to let a large rose-hair chill with me at the register, crawling on my shoulder or head or whatever. Watching people coming in to buy dog food and shakily throwing their money in my direction was a bonus.
For this reason I still get uneasy feelings whenever I watch Home Alone and Kevin grabs the tarantula. There’s a scene after it’s on Joe Pesci where you can tell it got injured during the shoot because it’s limping.
I’ve only had one tarantula experience and it was at an “animal party” for kids. Snakes, lizards, etc were all there. The kids are all really calm, sitting cross legged in a circle and being really gentle with any animal they were offered.
Anyway it’s tarantula time and none of the kids are biting so I immediately raised my hand. Omg, what a beautiful creature and I got to hold it 😍
Oh God that’s awful. I’ll have to keep an eye for it.
Oh no poor baby :(
Never knew Tarantulas were that smart. Don’t suppose you could teach them tricks?
Like, “sit”, “stay”, and “fetch me a cigarette”?! I want video of this
They aren’t. They’re pretty dumb. Way dumber than a dog or cat. Learning you aren’t a threat to them is about as advanced as a tarantula can get. They aren’t even the smartest spiders.
I was wondering where the animal abuse charges were in all this.