Web Weaving as a Dance

Have you ever spent a few minutes watching a spider in a garden or the woods weave a web? It can be compared to dancing solo, what with all of those precise moves and all. There are many types of spiders, though the typical webspinner in the garden is an orb weaver.

Their webs look like — well, orbs. The work is intricate, using different kinds of webbing for different purposes. Sure would be nice to have this artistry recorded. Well, it happened.

Hackled orb weaver, WikiComm / RudiSteenkamp (CC BY-SA 4.0), modified at PhotoFunia

Scientists took a notion to film the way the hackled orb weaver moves it legs, which is vital to its work. Realize that it has an extremely small brain.

While anyone can set up a camera, it won't get the detail that was wanted. Researchers had to program the video camera at a rapid frame rate so they could get the millions of changes. Clearly, this specified complexity is the product of the Master Engineer; evolutionary speculations fail.

They even customize their designs depending on which prey they are targeting—a tighter weave for flies, or a stronger, stickier construction to catch stronger insects, like crickets, that might thrash about to free themselves. Depending on the species, an orb weaver can possess up to seven different sorts of silk glands and up to six spinnerets. The spinnerets are conical or tubular organs, at the back of the spider’s abdomen, which stretch out and wind the silk proteins together before extruding the completed silk strand.

You can read it all by clicking on "Dance of the web-weavers."