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It can be a little alarming to look out over a meadow at morning and see all the spider webs, made visible by droplets of dew. Right now, hardly a bush nor clump of wild grass isn't crowned by the bizarre, double layered web of the Bowl-and-Doily Spider (an insect is knocked out of the air by the tangle of webs above, then falls into the bowl below, where the tiny spider is waiting). When the dew evaporates, the webs disappear -- you'd never even know they're there!
Credit: Michael Schramm/USFWS
During the process of making an orb web, the spider will use its own body for measurements.
Many webs span gaps between objects which the spider could not cross by crawling. This is done by first producing a fine adhesive thread to drift on a faint breeze across a gap. When it sticks to a surface at the far end, the spider feels the change in the vibration. The spider reels in and tightens the first strand, then carefully walks along it and strengthens it with a second thread. This process is repeated until the thread is strong enough to support the rest of the web.
After strengthening the first thread, the spider continues to make a Y-shaped netting. The first three radials of the web are now constructed. More radials are added, making sure that the distance between each radial and the next is small enough to cross. This means that the number of radials in a web directly depends on the size of the spider plus the size of the web. It is common for a web to be about 20 times the size of the spider building it.
After the radials are complete, the spider fortifies the center of the web with about five circular threads. It makes a spiral of non-sticky, widely spaced threads to enable it to move easily around its own web during construction, working from the inside, outward. Then, beginning from the outside and moving inward, the spider methodically replaces this spiral with a more closely spaced one made of adhesive threads. It uses the initial radiating lines as well as the non-sticky spirals as guide lines. The spaces between each spiral and the next are directly proportional to the distance from the tip of its back legs to its spinners. This is one way the spider uses its own body as a measuring/spacing device. While the sticky spirals are formed, the non-adhesive spirals are removed as there is no need for them any more.
After the spider has completed its web, it chews off the initial three center spiral threads then sits and waits. If the web is broken without any structural damage during the construction, the spider does not make any initial attempts to rectify the problem.
The spider, after spinning its web, then waits on or near the web for a prey animal to become trapped. The spider senses the impact and struggle of a prey animal by vibrations transmitted through the web. A spider positioned in the middle of the web makes for a highly visible prey for birds and other predators, even without web decorations; many day-hunting orb-web spinners reduce this risk by hiding at the edge of the web with one foot on a signal line from the hub or by appearing to be inedible or unappetizing.
Spiders do not usually adhere to their own webs, because they are able to spin both sticky and non-sticky types of silk, and are careful to travel across only non-sticky portions of the web. However, they are not immune to their own glue. Some of the strands of the web are sticky, and others are not. For example, if a spider has chosen to wait along the outer edges of its web, it may spin a non-sticky prey or signal line to the web hub to monitor web movement.
What is social networking?
Our level of interconnection has become highly efficient. Due to the world wide web, and to sites like the one we all love and use every day, sociality is now something hardly recognizable with our old analogic parameters. Distant people get in touch so easily, make friends, sometimes fall in love with the simplicity of a couple of clicks.
But it's only apparently something light-weighted. So often those friendships get more important and firm than physical ones, so often those loves are so powerful and overwhelming to decide destinies.
Why this boring preamble? Yesterday my distant friend Vanesa has decided to left Flickr. Not a major concern, 'cause we talk every day since we met, outside of Flickr; but this fact brought me to realize how these modern-day-weapons of communications and sharing rules our lives, and condition - in good and bad - our daily behaviour patterns.
Maybe you're true, Vanesa. And I'm still using the source of all pain.
I cross this bridge every morning on my way to work in Keynsham from Bristol. I have often stopped and tried to take a few pics, but this was teh first time I thought they were interesting enough to post.
الملكة رانيا خلال مشاركتها في قمة "الويب" 2022
لشبونة، البرتغال / 2 تشرين الثاني 2022
Queen Rania at the Web Summit
Lisbon, Portugal / 2 November 2022
© Royal Hashemite Court
billowing morning spider web well above my head
lucky to have found you my dear or your web I'd have to shed
This spider web was on my deck this morning I was trying to get the light reflecting off of this toward the camera as the sun was behind me.
I think this is quite interesting because off the water reflecting the light as white.
Carnaval Tongeren (Limburg)
The article on the blog
Video 1: On Clapper / on Instagram.
Video 2: On Clapper / on Instagram.
©Apoorwa Nanayakkara - Atom™
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