What a tangled web we weave
What do you think might be the most productive way for a NASA scientist to spend his or her time? If you guessed “giving acid to spiders,” you guessed right. In a series of experiments conducted during the 1970s researchers fed spiders flies stuffed with psychotropic drugs to see what would happen to their webs. The idea was that the more toxic the substance, the more deformed the web. Spiders could be used to test how dangerous a new substance was before starting test trials with rodents or humans.
A quick glance below may be a bit disconcerting for all-nighter pulling students hepped up on coffee-caffeine webs consistently come out the most distorted.
Spiders on marijuana apparently start spinning their webs in a relatively normal fashion, but give up halfway through. Arachnids on Benzedrine, or “speed” (not shown), on the other hand spin their webs very quickly but without any clear plan, leaving large holes.
Drugs aren’t the only thing that can mess up a spider’s web. In one of evolution’s most astonishing inventions, parasites can also warp the circuits of a spiders mind, resulting in strange new webs that are beneficial to the parasite. Some species of wasps raise their young by stinging other insects and laying their eggs inside of them. The egg grows inside the helpless beetle, spider, or other variety of victim, feeding on the insect’s insides until it is ready to hatch.
Two days before a larva inside of a spider is ready to emerge, the spider will spin a new web (right), one that looks completely different to their normal one. When the larva hatches (killing the spider in the process) it makes a cocoon for itself inside of the bizarre construction. The web acts like a cradle, protecting the cocoon from birds and other insects.
