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Spiders Tune In To Web's Music To Size Up Meals And Mates : NPR

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But here's something more amazing: A spider will sometimes tighten or loosen those silk strands to alter the way each string resonates. "It can actually very finely tune how the silks are vibrating," Mortimer says. Her team used lasers to detect the tiniest vibrations in the web — and observed spiders doing this sort of tuning. The scientists describe their work in an online report in the journal Advanced Materials.

And sometimes the spider will even "play" the web to create vibrations and interpret the results. "The spider can actually pluck or bounce the silk strings," says Mortimer, "and it can monitor the echoes that come back so it can locate objects."

So they make actual music?

Do spiders have ears?

There are two concentrations of ganglia in the prosoma (head-breast part or cephalothorax) which forms the brain. A number of nerves extends from the brain to the legs, eyes and the rest of the body. The brain takes up a volume of 20 - 30% of the prosoma.

Spiders have several sensory organs to get an impression of the surrounding in which they live.

A spider does not have ears. Mammals hear with help of hairs that are located in the ear where pressure waves in the air are converted to electric signals. These signals are then sent to the brain and interpreted as sound. A spider hears with very tiny hairs on her legs (thrichobotria). She is very capable of localizing the origin of a sound by interpreting the movement of the air produced by that sound.


So they can make sound, at least.

That is wild. Can you imagine hearing with your legs??

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