from the memoirs of an inventor that lived long, long ago

I especially love when the spider webs shine with the sunrise. The little water beads on them make an extraordinary scene in the early morning. Talking about spiders, how they make their webs is also another beauty. It still blows my mind that they can make such long arches despite their tiny bodies. With the colorful designs on their bodies, spiders are the manifestation of beauty that penetrates even into the smallest holes of the earth. As I am talking about spiders, I would like to tell you a lovely memory of mine about how my admiration of them led me to the discovery of my life.

At the time, there was not much to do other than hunting and picking leaves and fruit. I wanted to do something else. For example, the skins that animals had on them were so fitting, flexible, and nice. We used to take them to put on ourselves; but they did not fit us. They did not cover our bodies totally, and they were stinky. I had a desire to come up with a new way of covering our bodies. I used to sit by the spiders and reflect on this idea a lot while watching them make their webs.

Unfortunately, not everyone was appreciative of the spiders and my interest in them. Whenever my father caught me watching the spiders, he used to mock me and reprimand me for being lazy. He always told me that we needed to get going to hunt something edible, in order not to sleep with empty bellies. You can imagine what torture it was for me to hunt. Killing something of beauty is not beautiful… I knew we had to eat to survive. But maybe I was not the right person to do the killing part. I could cook, I could pick fruit…

One day, when I was watching a spider, I saw a cocoon hanging down from the tree. That was it! The cocoon’s cover was what I was looking for: a large spider web woven densely enough to cover us up. You should have seen me when the idea first came. I couldn’t help but smile so broadly. It had been a long time since I had smiled such a joyous smile. I started running and climbed the hills. To get some rest, I watched the valleys below. Then, once again I took off, and soared down from the hill running; my arms wide open like a bird’s wings.

When I came home, empty-handed to be sure, my mother was not happy at all. “If you don’t want your dad to ruin your night, go and find something before he comes,” she said. Fortunately, I knew some trees that were in fruit just then. I rushed to gather from them to make everybody happy.

Later that night, I had a very scary dream. I was running, and then I suddenly fell into a pit where there was a long snake. The snake started to wind itself around me so that I was totally covered. Then I saw that there was a scorpion in the pit, but it could not approach me because of the snake. Frightened, I woke up screaming. My parents came in to check on me. After a second’s silence, my father said, “I told you not to watch those spiders too much.”

Although I was not really bothered, my parents were getting more and more concerned about me. I was growing to the age of marriage, and they wanted me to have sound spiritual health. The next day, we went to the respected man of God in the village for him to interpret my dream and to get some advice. He said, “The snake in your dream did not harm you. So, it is to be hoped that God will bless you with a cover that is going to protect you from worldly and heavenly harms.” This interpretation was definitely unexpected both by me and by my parents.

Soon after that dream, I talked about my inspiration to my mother, and she told me something invaluable. She said that our great great-grandparents had had beautiful things to wear before they came to this world. When they were sent down here, their beautiful clothes were ripped off. Now that I was thinking about making beautiful garments, maybe this was a heavenly message. Mom wanted me to keep this secret.

I did keep my hopes and inspirations secret, but I did not stop working on them. I was finally inspired by another creature: birds. They made their nests by weaving plants and branches together. That observation brought me to the brim of the discovery of my life, but I was not aware of it at the time.

One day, mom wanted to have a private conversation with me. She said that now I was not a girl anymore but a young woman it was time that I united my life with someone else’s. She said that the guests that had come a few days earlier had come to talk about that issue. They asked my parents for me. At first, I was perplexed to hear all this. I wanted to have some time to prepare myself for the idea. Not long after, the preparations for the wedding were underway, and I was very willing because of the person asking for me.

My groom was the man of God that had interpreted my dream. To suit his status, I wanted to wear something special on the day of the wedding, something never seen before. The days were running by too fast, and bothered by my inability to come up with that special thing, I started spending more time with the spider webs by myself. Mom thought that a gloomy state had befallen on me due to my prospective wedding. She tried to reassure me, calm me, but that was not the case at all. As my state persisted, my parents’ worries grew too. They did not want any trouble in this wedding.

Then one day, I received the first gift for my wedding, before the wedding actually happened. I was inspired to weave the leaves and stems of plants to cover myself just like the winding of that snake in my dream and the cocoon of the spider. With the joy of this heavenly gift, I quickly finished making my garment. This discovery was certainly a heavenly beauty that was sent to celebrate my wedding. With the new garment on me, I was so beautiful, and with the man of my life, I was so happy.

Seth Mette has a PhD in Aerospace Engineering and is currently working as a postdoctoral fellow at West Virginia University. He has a special interest in psychological fiction.

The spider’s web is woven from a special silk. This is a fibrous protein first secreted as a fluid and then stretched into strands which, because of their strength and elasticity, are extraordinarily resistant to breakage.

Garden spiders (Arena diedemata) make their webs from two different silks. The threads of the main structure are woven from a strong silk which can be stretched further (by as much as 20%) but then loses its strength. By contrast, the other kind of silk, used between the main threads, is lighter and stickier and can be expanded three times without losing its original characteristics. Under a microscope drops containing a reserve of silk can be seen at intervals on these thinner ‘hunting silks’.

After its web is complete the spider hides out of sight, somewhere on the outer strands of the web. When an insect flies into the web and struggles, the spider is alerted by the vibrations and runs out. It rapidly contains the victim’s struggle to escape by tying it up with the silk set aside for this purpose in the drops: the elasticity of the hunting silks is vital in this task. While tying it up, the spider injects the victim with the poison from behind its jaws which both paralyses the insect and acts as a digestive juice softening up the now helpless corpse. The spider then goes on injecting and sucking back fluids until the soft parts of the corpse have been digested – any skeletal parts left over are simply discarded.

Spiders put their weaving skills to a number of different uses. As well as making the insect traps we call spider webs, they weave draglines’ that help them to locate themselves and to break their fall if they should slip. Small spiders spin a sort of ‘parachute’ thread that allows them to be carried on the wind.

Some species of spider make active traps. Menneus spins an elastic net between its legs and sweeps it through the air to catch passing insects. Cledomelea dangles from one leg a blob of sticky silk at the end of a long thread and swings it out to attach its prey. Trapdoor spiders (Ctenizidae) dig a burrow closed by a silken door; when an insect ventures near, the spider darts out to capture the imprudent victim.

Spider webs are beautiful, intricate constructions: threads which serve as scaffolding during the construction process are removed once the web, a mesh of sticky and non-sticky lines, has been completed. The skill of producing webs is clearly instinctive, but the irregularity and variety of web forms shows that the skill is adapted by individual species to serve different functions and suit different circumstances – some webs hang in the air to catch insects as they fly, others are laid across the ground, both at angles calculated (presumably by experience) to lure and intercept prey.

Recent research has shown that some A. Glomosus spiders use ultraviolet rays to attract their prey. In one experiment fruit flies (Drosophila) were set free between two webs lit up by a white beam. One web was that of a A. Glomosus spider and radiated ultraviolet rays; the other was not: the flies were attracted to the former

Another remarkable species are the Dolmedes spiders which have long legs (8-10 cm) and striped, brown bodies. They live near water ponds where they have learnt, despite having very poor sight, to catch fish. Their hunting-gathering technique is of awe-inspiring dexterity and patience, rivaling that of any human fisherman. First the spider walks around on the bank to pick a site suitable for laying a web. Once that is done, it waits patiently, standing partly on water and partly on land. A special sticky secretion helps secure its hold on the surface of the water. While waiting, it prepares its poison in its mouth. When a small fish happens by, the spider plunges forward to seize it, releasing its poison into the water as it does so. As the poison begins to work, the spider turns over making its own body a sort of float for the struggling fish, carries it to land and there consumes it.

Some species of spiders do not make webs to ensnare their prey. Instead, they actively pursue their prey or lie in ambush for it. They are endowed with specially keen sight or touch sense, used respectively for hunting in daylight or in the dark. The ambushing varieties are remarkably well camouflaged – the colour and shape of their bodies making them almost invisible against the immediate background of leaves or bark or stones and sand.

One of the night-hunting spiders of the Amazon jungle spends the day hiding in crevices or in holes in trees, emerging into the jungle at night to stalk its food. Its legs spread the width of a human hand and move with utmost stealth until, when near enough, the spider makes a sudden, final dash, seizing small mammals (humming-birds, for example), stunning them with its poison, then dragging and shaking them to death. The detestation and horror this species arouses in human beings is hardly justified – its poison is not more troubling to a human than a bee sting.

Reputation and significance

Spiders have a very negative image among human beings. Perhaps the number of legs, the grotesque facial expression, the hairiness of some species, the fact that they carry a poison, but most of all, the fact that they hide in corners and come out unexpectedly – have contributed to the spiders’ bad reputation. The poison of spiders, with just two exceptions (the ‘black widow’ and the ‘brown recluse’), is relatively harmless to humans.

Spider silk cannot economically be converted into silk cloth for human use. However, it has been used for the cross-hairs of optical instruments. More recently, the silk of the tropical species Nephila has been employed in the manufacture of bullet-proof jackets. The Nephila spin huge webs strung across trees, as long as 2 metres or more, and of a silk so strong and elastic that the local peoples make very effective fishing nets from it.

On balance, it is high time human beings overcame their irrational detestation of spiders. We should be grateful to them for all the good they do for us in preserving our persons and properties, especially our crops, against devastation by insects. One authority calculated the spider population of England and Wales as of the order of 2.5 billions at any one time. This means that if (at a most conservative estimate) each spider eats 100 insects a year, then the total number of insects consumed by spiders is 250 billions annually.

REFERENCES

‘Spiders’ Microsoft (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1994 Microsoft Corporation. Copyright (c) 1994 Funk & Wagnall’s Corporation.

Buton, M. & Buton, R. (1975) Enevlopedia of Insects and Arachnids, BPC Publishing Ltd, London.

Gerald, L. & Wood, F.Z.S. (1982) The Guinness Book of Animal Facts and Feats, Guinness Superlative Ltd, London.

Waterson, AR. (ed.) (t975), Collins Enevlopedia of Animals, William Collins Sons & Co Ltd, London and Glasgow.

SPIDERS IN GUINESS BOOK OF RECORDS

The largest and the heaviest spider: The Guyanan ‘bird-eating’ spider (Theraphosa

blondi) of South America has long been credited with the ‘largest spider’ title. A male specimen with a leg-span of 254mm (10 in) and a body length of 89mm (3.5 in) weighed just under 57g (2 oz).

The smallest spiders are the midget spiders (Symphytognathidae), the tiniest of which is the pale yellow Patu marplesi of Western Samoa, S.W. Pacific. A male specimen found in moss at an altitude of 610m (2000 if) measured 0.43mm (0.07 in), which means it is half the size of a full-stop on this page!

The largest spider webs are the aerial ones spun by the tropical orb weavers of the genus Nephila. Several examples found in the Karrakpur Hills near Monghyr, central Bihar, India measured 1.5m (5ft) in diameter (about 4.79m (1 5ft 9in) in circumference) and had long supporting guy-lines up to 6.1 m (2Oft) in length.

The smallest webs in the world are the aerial ones spun by midget spiders. That of the orb weaver Chasmoeephaion armaturn of New Zealand measures about 9-10mm (O.35-0.39in.) in diameter which means it is half the size of a small postage stamp.

The highest speed recorded for a spider on a level surface is 53cm/s (1 .73ft/s) (= 1.90km/h; 1.18 miles/h) for a female house spider, Tegenaria atrica. This may not seem very fast, but the spider covers a distance equivalent to 330 times its own body length in ten seconds.