Beatles, Make Way for "The Spiders"!

While My Guitar Gently Warns

Looks to me like this spider needs to tune his web!  (Photo by Don Comis)

I've been seeing this spider and some of his colleagues every night I check for moths.  (Photo by Don Comis)

I just heard an interesting report on BBC radio about a research study showing that spiders tune their webs to transmit a wide range of tones or notes.  It sounds like if they made a silk string guitar, it would also have a wider range of tones.  Spiders tune the web for different pitches depending on conditions, such as wet days versus dry days!

Searching on the Internet, I found more information about the discovery at http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2014-06-03-spiders-know-meaning-web-music.  In that report, Beth Mortimer of the Oxford Silk Group at Oxford University, who led the research, says that “The sound of silk can tell them what type of meal is entangled in their net and about the intentions and quality of a prospective mate. By plucking the silk like a guitar string and listening to the ‘echoes’ the spider can also assess the condition of its web.”  This site has a video.


I also found a nice video at http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Spider.  I watched one called “Stupendous Silk” that reminded me that spiders evolved 350 million years ago, making them around long before roaches.  There are more videos at this site.


The full scientific paper on the study is available free online at:   http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.201401027/full.