Two Shocking Discovery About Spiders

In 2008 NASA had an intriguing question how do spiders assemble their webs in zero gravity?

In order to find the answers they sent two spiders to the International Space Station the first spider was the main participant while the second served as a backup in case the first one didn't survive however things didn't go according to plan the backup spider managed to escape from its chamber and visited its companion resulting in a bit of a mess they built tangled webs that interfered with each other as if that wasn't enough the flies that were supposed to be food for the spiders started reproducing faster than anticipated their larvae escaped from their container and covered the front window of the chamber over time the spiders were completely hidden behind the larvae although this initial experiment didn't go well one of the researchers involved in planning the spider experiment was still curious in 2011.

But she got another opportunity to repeat the same experiment this time she sought assistance from other researchers they decided to send a different species of spider into space and prepared four spiders two for the ISS and two for Earth allowing for result comparison the goal was to expose the spiders to varying gravity conditions and observe their behavior however another twist appeared in the story initially they believed they had four female spiders but it turned out that two of them were actually males determining the sex of young spiders can be tricky but fortunately one male had already been sent to space while the other remained on Earth enabling valuable data collection the second experiment proved successful.

The spiders were active they built and dismantled webs and even without the assistance of gravity they spun new ones three cameras captured thousands of pictures showcasing their hard work on the webs interestingly it seemed that spiders created significantly more symmetrical webs in space than on Earth the center of the webs was closer to the middle and surprisingly the spiders didn't always position their heads downward as they typically do on Earth however one significant factor made all the difference light when the spiders on the ISS had a source of light they weaved asymmetrical webs similar to those found on our home planet light played a crucial role in orienting the spiders in Space the chamber's lamps were attached at the Top If the lights had been positioned differently for example on the side it would have been challenging to observe the effect on light on the symmetry of webs in zero gravity when the lights were turned off the spiders rested in random orientations within their webs yet with the lights on they would Orient themselves away from the light source which meant downward hence in the absence of gravity light assisted them in orientation this discovery was unexpected because spiders can typically build their webs in the dark and capture prey effectively even without light.

Here Are Some Amazing Facts About Spiders:

1 : Spiders have been around longer than we have, acting over 400 million years ago throughout what's referred to as the Devonian period, so it’s not clearly fair that we sometime treat them so poorly. we should be respecting our elders!

2: They live on each continent. the best location in which spiders have not been discovered is the ice cap of Antarctica.

3: Exceptionally, not all spiders build webs. a few will hunt their prey instead of build a entice, but all of them produce and use silk for a Diffusion of functions.

4: A few spiders can mimic other creatures, pretending to be ants, distasteful bugs, or even droppings on a leaf, either to shield in opposition to predation or as a form of attack.

5: Many spiders will consume an expansion of creatures, even as a few have very specific diets for instance, the tropical bolas spider will simplest eat the male of a unmarried species of moth it lures its prey by way of pretending to be the female moth.