Skip to main content

Orb Weaver


This morning my sister noticed a tiny little spider, only a few millimeters wide, sitting in its web. It was a type of orb weaver. It had built its web, which was only about the size of my palm, between a couple of bars of a railing. The spider was sitting in the center of the web, waiting for something small to come along and get caught.

One of my friends suggested throwing an ant into the web; he wanted to see the spider at work. We looked around, but couldn't find the slightest trace of an ant. I didn't really care - I had already seen plenty of spiders catch their food  - but my friend was not satisfied. He stuck the tip of his pocket knife gently into the web and jiggled it around. His efforts proved futile; the spider could tell it wasn't an insect and did not budge from his position at the center. My friend succeeded only in messing up the web.

The upper-left corner is where my friend put his pocketknife.
The entire web is only the size of my palm.
Soon my sister found a few ants. We were able to get one into the web, and this time we saw the spider act. It ran over to the ant, and tried to grab it and wrap it in web. The ant was struggling, however, and being as large as the spider, was a difficult prey. The spider kept running forward, backing away, and running forward while the ant kicked and struggled. Finally it managed to bundle up the ant, using sticky threads pulled from the web.

At this point, I was able to take a few photos of the spider. The top photo is a closeup of the spider from behind as it works on bundling the ant more securely. The next photo is of the web itself, with the spider ¼ of the way down; my camera didn't focus very well, so if you view the photo full-size the web looks a little blurry.

After that, another ant somehow got into the web. I don't know which of us put it in, but one of us must have; I don't think it got there itself. The spider bundled up that one, too. After that, it looked like it started eating the ants, but I'm not sure; the spider was rather small and hard to see.

I enjoyed my experience with the spider. I can't say it taught me anything, because I had already closely observed other spiders' - especially orb weavers' - behaviors; however it was very interesting to observe it again. I'll end with a question inspired by my friend: what if a spider were a vegetarian?
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Flipping Quarters

Here's an interesting puzzle involving chance: A man in a park asks you to play a game with him. It's a form of gambling. To play, you must pay the man $5, then flip a coin repeatedly until you get heads. As soon as you get heads, you stop flipping. If you only flipped the quarter once, he'll give you $1. If you flipped it twice, you get $2. Three times, $4. Four times, $8. Each extra flip gets you twice as much money, so the longer it takes before you get tails, the more money you get. Should you play, if you have a lot of time and the man will play as many games as you want? How much money, on average, would you gain (subtracting the $5 fee)? I will give the solution in a later post .
1 comment
Read more

Pluto No Longer on the Horizon

This morning, New Horizons became the first spacecraft to make a flyby observation of the Pluto system. During the mission, the spacecraft captured the most detailed photographs of Pluto's surface we've ever had, and possibly ever will have. It also found many new properties including size, mass, atmosphere, and surface composition. In a period of a few hours, we discovered more about Pluto than we've found in the 85 years since Clyde Tombaugh captured its first photograph. Before After  (images credit: NASA) To complete this mission, the spacecraft flew for more than 9 years through the emptiness of space. This may sound like a long time, but it's actually amazingly quick. In fact, New Horizons set the record for the fastest speed at launch, and during the flyby, the spacecraft was moving at a rate of over 30,000 mph, or roughly 50 times the speed of sound. Picture an object twice as heavy as a grand piano moving 25 times faster than a bullet from a gun. Yikes. The man...
2 comments
Read more

Should Tau Replace Pi?

The digits of π, organized in a very new way Happy π-day! And happy π-month! Today's month and day - that is, March 14 or 3.14 - includes the first 3 digits of π. And today's month and year - March 2014 or 3.14 - also includes the first 3 digits of π. We won't have another double-day for π for the next 100 years, so enjoy this one! For the special occasion, I'm posting two π-related posts - one for π-month, and the other for π-day. In both posts, I'm setting the font size to approximately π * π + π + π. This is the first post, for π-month; to see the second, go to http://greatmst.blogspot.com/2014/03/pi-month-pi-day-post-2-5-common-pi-myths.html . In this post, I am including an essay I wrote about whether π or τ is the more superior constant. This was written for people who know very little about math, so the basic idea should be easy to understand even for people who are not mathematically inclined. Should Tau Replace Pi? A constant is any number or value that ne...
Post a Comment
Read more