Madame Arachnid in the Moonlight

Spiders reweaving the web of life

May 09, 2021

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IT WAS THE SILVERED NET that first caught my attention when I stepped outside at night to look at the moon. Stretched across my entrance stairs, anchored between the lemon tree and the porch, was a large, geometric-spoked spider web jiggling in the breeze. Clinging to the web like a sailor riding a boat on high seas was a large spider over an inch long.

She—was it a she?—held on to the micro-thin web deftly, waiting for night-flying bugs to get ensnared. Tonight brought a full moon, which shed a silver glow on the spider web. It was outlined against the night sky, displaying an even, round shape with ever-widening rectangles fanning from the center. Such perfect patterns, how did she build it so geometrically?

The following morning, there was no sign of the spider, and her web became almost invisible in the bright sunlight. Later, around 10 PM, when the moon was riding high in the sky, I stepped outside again to look. One side of the round web had been torn away, maybe by an insect tangling or falling branch.

But there she was— hard at work— with a complex maneuver of dropping a new web line while also anchoring to one side of the web. She was rebuilding, spinning the web from her own body. I admired her resilience and the patterned geometry of the large circular web. For five nights she dangled over my front porch, silhouetted against a waning moon before the web disappeared.

Spiders don’t get much notice from people, and we are naturally inclined to fear them due to their appearance and reputation, but understanding them can help remove that fear.

The vast majority of spiders are harmless and serve a critical purpose: controlling insect populations that could devastate crops.
National Geographic, Spiders, facts and information.

Spiders are joint-legged invertebrates from a group of animals called “arachnids” and are not insects. Spiders are predators that have four pairs of legs, with eight total. Insects have three pairs of legs, with six total, and often have wings.

Around 45,000 species of spiders have been identified so far. How long have spiders been in the world? Their fossils have been found in chunks of amber, dating back 300 million years.

Spider-Woman and her dream catchers

Spiders often work while we sleep. Maybe that’s why Native Americans created dream-catchers. They’re a hoop with woven string or sinew in a spider’s web pattern, used as a charm to “catch harm” during sleep. In Ojibwa legend, the protective charms of a spider web started with Asibikaashi (Spider-Woman), who takes care of the children. As the tribal people were dispersed or spread far from their native lands, Spider-Woman could not be everywhere, so the mothers and grandmothers wove dream-catcher webs for the children.

Have you ever wondered what innate sense has spiders spinning unique-shaped webs? There is the irregular sticky cobweb of the black widow, the fine cloth-like tube of the funnel-web spider, and the symmetrical orb-weaver net of my porch visitor. Are the webs fashioned for the insects they plan to catch? Spider, web, and prey size must surely have a connection.

A web is a serious business for a spider. Without a web, there is no way to trap prey and eat. There are some spiders, such as Jumping spiders (Salticidae) and Wolf spiders, who need no webs to catch prey, but many spiders use and need a web for survival.

It takes a lot of life force to make a web, and when it’s destroyed, the spider may eat it for the protein— a form of recycling for the silk threads.

Spiders use different kinds of silk for different parts of their web. The rigid silk that makes up the frame of the orb-weaver is different from the radiating silk that ensnares prey or the silk that protectively wraps spider eggs.

Plucking the strands like a musician

Spiders may catch prey that is many times larger than themselves. They have very sensitive touch sensors that gather information about the size and location of the prey landing on the web.

They appear to rely on vibrations from the silk strands to locate prey and find deformities in the web. As a spider plucks and pulls on the web, sending out ripples in every direction, it can sense the vibrations in each of its eight legs.” National Geographic “Spiders Listen to Their Webs”

Pause for a Zen moment. Watch a spider spinning and plucking its silk strands with care and precision.

The role of spiders in the world

How do spiders help the world? Some scientists say our agricultural system would fail if spiders weren’t around. Besides helping us avoid famine by eating crop pests, spiders keep diseases at bay by consuming mosquitos.

They are beneficial predators and serve a useful role in eating insect pests around the home as well as in agricultural fields. In addition, spiders are an important food source for birds, some reptiles, and even small mammals.

Spiders and all life forms show remarkable abilities to use their environment to the best advantage, even incorporating human homes into their planning. Spiders moved from the forest nearby to build their webs outside my windows so they could catch the insects drawn to the light leaking around the blinds at night.

They are clever survivors, and I leave their fresh webs untouched on my porch. Maybe it looks a little like Halloween, but it reminds me that life is all around and spiders are finding food. In a time when insects are declining, I like to leave spiders their carefully crafted hunting nets.

Spiders that fly over the ocean

Some spiders even take to the air. A National Geographic article mentions that “Charles Darwin was fascinated by the spiders which landed [from the air] on the HMS Beagle ship nearly two centuries ago” as he was 60 miles away from land.

How do spiders fly? As they catch a breeze, they release a fine web that creates a fanlike parachute up to 30 feet long that acts as a sail to keep them airborne. They also use spider-sensing intelligence to “ride” the magnetic field of the earth, something other species do too.

Why fly? It helps disperse the young and find new food sources. Just like people, spiders look for new opportunities and fresh landscapes. Many spiders may not survive a trip over water. But some will get lucky and land on new territories, like the ghost spiders of Robinson Crusoe Island. They left mainland China two million years ago, landed on an island, and now have evolved into a new spider type.

These flying spiders take a big risk, like astronauts heading into space, but life is creative and seeks opportunities to thrive.

One of the strongest fibers on earth?

Spider silk, made from chains of amino acid proteins, is reputed to be stronger than steel when it comes to tensile strength. It outperforms the synthetic Kevlar in fracture toughness.

It continues to fascinate scientists and inspire biomimicry designers. Watch for future inventions such as silk tissue engineering or medical devices made from spider silk. Or admire the biomaterial clothing such as this ski jacket made from spider silk grown by bacteria.

The web of life

The word “web” is woven into our modern-day language: website, webinar, webfoot, cobweb. Web’s definition: “a network of fine threads constructed by a spider from fluid secreted by its spinnerets, to catch its prey.”

There is also an alternate meaning, a meta-level definition of web— “A complex system of interconnected elements.” This is the use in “The web of life,” and World Wide Web.

Interconnected elements— that is the key, the secret that makes life flow smoothly on earth. Everything is connected. Think of nature as a giant spider web of relationships. Break one strand and the rest is affected too.

We are just beginning to identify the genome connections for many life forms on Earth with the recent Open Tree of Life project. It turns out we humans even share some genomes with spiders.

Next time you take a walk, notice how often you see spider webs. See if you can find two or three different shapes of webs. Look on three-dimensional tree bark, in low shrubs, or in open spaces between trees where the sun highlights the floating strands.

Spiders teach us about resilience and creativity. Their webs, their creations that are each uniquely different, are often destroyed by weather, by prey, by birds and other animals, and of course, by the industrious homeowner cleaning up. Yet, those same spiders rebuild and repair constantly or move around as needed to find better hunting.

Can we draw inspiration from their constant rebuilding, their patient resilience, their leap of faith into the air? The 19th-century American poet Walt Whitman did with this poem:

A Noiseless, Patient Spider
A noiseless patient spider
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

Walt Whitman

Maybe spiders can inspire us to reweave our web of life, learning how to find deeper kinship and connections with each other and the myriad species around us.

Mother E