Monday, September 20, 2010

The Best Engineers

So, being the weirdo that is fascinated by spiders that I am, I was watching one of my friends in the backyard last week as it moved from the center of its web up to the tree where it is attached at one point.  As I angled to see just how the web as setup and where exactly it went, I began to appreciate the instinctively intelligent design of it.  If you've ever watched an Orb-Weaver create its web, it really is something pretty cool, if you aren't freaked out by the spider. 

Typically, you have one master strand that is strung from two high places that is the main line used to create the rest of the web, from which they drop down one new strand for a third attachment point of the web, sometimes on or close to the ground.  Upon watching the spider crawl along the main strand back into the tree, where it hangs out when it's not in the middle of its web, I noticed that it had at least three other strands attached to that main strand, from the tree, to support it while the large spider (it's body is pretty close to the size of the fingernail on my pinky finger) crawls along it.  The main strand only sagged a little while crawled along it.  That's what got me to thinking about how smart these spiders are in terms of web design (and I'm not talking IT here).  And it's all instinct...no schooling needed!

1 comment:

Traci said...

I say, "Get rid of the sucker!!" EEWW gross! Ok, you can only appreciate how huge this thing is if you know how big your fingernail is. These things are huge, hairy and creepy. Gross!