From BBC Earth, watch a garden orb web spider construct its web. Starting with a strong bridge line, anchor points, and frame threads that help it establish a web center, it weaves out, around, and around. The mix of time-lapse and up-close shots show off its skills with silk. Via wikipedia:
All spiders produce silks, and a single spider can produce up to seven different types of silk for different uses… Spider silks may be used in many different ecological ways, each with properties to match the silk’s function. As spiders have evolved, so has their silks’ complexity and diverse uses, for example from primitive tube webs 300–400 million years ago to complex orb webs 110 million years ago.
The uses include prey capture, prey immobilization, reproduction, dispersal for ballooning or kiting, a food source, nest lining and nest construction, guidelines, drop lines and anchor lines, alarm lines, and pheromonal trails.
Related listening: Vermont Public Radio’s But Why? podcast for curious kids: Why Do Spiders Have Eight Legs?
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