As the morning sun streaked through to my patio, I noticed that it illuminated a single strand of spider web. The thin bridge was attached to a chair and extended for four feet to the porch post — perfectly horizontal!

As you view such a constructional feat by a spider often so small you can hardly see it, a sense of wonder wells up at such ability from a mere arachnid-being able to spin strong silky lines straight across an abyss that would tax our most accomplished human engineers!

How do they do it? Spider Man movies may have captured imaginations with far-flung webs, but the idea certainly came from web-producing spiders, although the fictional hero doesn't spin from the anus region I don't believe! The only way the patio spider could have made that straight single strand to bridge the gap was to catch a breeze, which they do, spinning web as the wind carries the dangling strand for a random attachment. If it doesn't connect, they regain the web by eating it! If the web attaches, they do a high-wire act without a safety net!

The first line — like the first line in an art painting — is of utmost importance for anchoring the project. For the aerial spider, that single strand will be used for the orbs or sheets of insect-snaring web woven in the flight path of flies and other suck-sized creatures.


The spiders around my house are the cobweb type that spin a jumbled bunch of lines together, and I let them live even though I brush aside some of their excessive work. Between the spiders, bats that clear the night air before returning to their attic hideaway, and numerous birds, I have no mosquitoes. Their antics are interesting too.

Sometimes an orb weaver appears in the garden, and the circular web is a thing of beauty. If you can see one of those black and yellow Argiopes building a masterpiece between tomato plants, you can be entertained for an hour. Another small wonder is the way they can bounce around on the web without getting stuck as they repair breaks caused by weather and wandering animals or attend to wrapping a victim. The web is very flexible, and able to stretch a quarter of its length, some being stronger than steel per size.

Once I was prowling the Everglades, and bounced off a very strong web, made by the golden spinner. Their orbs can hold a bat.

Orb weavers contend with wind that blows things like thistle seeds into the web, revealing the location of the trap to insects, and often the spider has to start a new snare, but never seem to run out of the sticky liquid that hardens instantly when expelled. An orb web with sparkling dew drops is a thing of beauty ... at least to the human observer, although it beads the maker out of business.

All of the 30,000 known species of spiders can produce web although it's not obvious with some hunting species. Signs of spiders abound as you walk along the brown summer fields where funnel-web spiders plaster their sticky platforms on the ground. The back-lighted embankment near the Feather River Nature Center is a good place to look. All spiders have some degree of venom, but only a few are dangerous to mankind.

Just as there is a high interest in poisonous mushrooms, so is there an interest in venomous spiders, snakes, and creepy crawlers. The designed use, however, is for securing food, with defense as a secondary reason to use for survival.

Each of those 30,000 spider species has a different method of functioning, so just as in studying insects, there is a never-ending fountain of intrigue in investigating the lifestyles of the living and the patterns of nature.

"The difference between utility and utility plus beauty is the difference between telephone wires and spider web."

— Edwin Way Teale