Lucas the Spider: What You Need to Know About the Internet’s Latest Cute-Gross Obsession

There’s a good chance your feed was flooded over the weekend with cries of “adorbs” and embeds of a 20-second video titled “Lucas the Spider”.

If not, we’re assuming you’re logging onto the internet for the first time in three days. Welcome back. There’s a new Taylor Swift album now!

For those who are yet to hit play on “Lucas the Spider”, check it out below and see why everyone in your world is going wild for its many-eyed protagonist.

Here’s what you need to know:

Awww.

We know, right?

Who made this?

Animator Joshua Slice is responsible for the “design, modelling, rigging, animation, lighting and rendering,” according to YouTube. On IMDB, he is credited for also working on Zootopia, Big Hero 6 and Epic.

Okay, but why?

He didn’t share many details on YouTube, where the video was uploaded on November 5. All he says is it’s “an animation test of a character I’ve been working on.” Though it was probably just made for funsies, we wouldn’t hate it if Lucas suddenly showed up in Zootopia 2.

Where’d it get that voice?

Lucas was voiced by Joshua’s nephew, Lucas. How fitting!

Isn’t this very similar to “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On”?

How astute of you! Yes, “Lucas the Spider” definitely has the same temperament and feel of “Marcel the Shell”, which was an animated creature created by Jenny Slate and then-husband Dean Fleischer-Camp. (Slate also voiced Marcel.)

As of this writing, the first video featuring “Marcel” has more than 28 million views. So, “Lucas”, sitting on four million views, still has a way to go before overtaking Marcel as the web's preferred sweetly-voiced animated monster.

Are spiders cute now?

We would like to direct you to this story from March, in which it was found that spiders could literally eat everyone in the world in one year, if they felt like it. So, to answer your question: no.

Photo: YouTube.com/Joshua Slice