THE SPIDER AND HER WEB.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20290, 24 December 1927, Page 12

THE SPIDER AND HER WEB.

The web of the common spider is one of the most familiar sights: a fact which i is apt to blind us to the beauty of it's | construction, and also to its miqueness.

The only thing which can compare with it in any way is the net with which the caddis worms of fresh water ponds and streams catch their food. It is the female spider (writes “Zoologist” in T.P.’s Weekly) which makes the web and tends it, removing fragments which olow into it, and bearing away the flies which become entangled in it. The threads which form the web are manufactured in a series of little glands known as spinnerets, which open near the hind end of the body of the female. They consist of a gummy material, which, when drawn out, forms an extremely fine thread which sets hard in the air. The first essential in the formation of the web is to draw the outline. To do this the female shoots out a thread on to a sup-

port which she carried on her hind feet. She then takes the thread, till fresh and sticky, to some convenient ieaf or stick, where she securely fastens ,t. drawing it tight with her claws. She then releases her hold and drops straight down, the thread streams out behind her, and so forms the first vertical side ox tut web.

The next thing she does .s to construct a diagonal thread from corner to comer, to draw this tight, and then to proce.ad to the centre of it, from which she makes the radial threads which form the firm foundation of the web. When all the spokes of the wheel are finished, she returns again to the centre, and. gradual working outwards, makes a loose, temporary spiral, which serves to hold the web together while she forms the permanent encircling threads. Ihese are nade of the second type of siiK, which is much more sticky than the first, or it is they which entangle the nrey. Last of all, the temporary scaffolding is cut away and the web is completed the whole process having taken no longer than half an hour. The spider now moves to one side, but her whole attention remains focussed on the web, on the edge of ' which her feet rest, and by means of which she feels every vibration—for, m spite of the possession of eight eyes, she is very shortsighted—taking appropriate action according to the nature of the vibration. As soon as a fly is caught in the web the waiting spider runs toward it and envelopes it in her third,

and stickiest, kind of silk by running round and round it. The prey is then killed by the ppison which she injects into it, and then the spider sucks out the soft flesh and blood from within. Finally she casts out the empty skin and cleajn up the vveb for the next victim.

Bones of prehistoric men, discovered in East Africa, covered 41 different types, but none of them was of what is known now as the negro type.