“The spider skilfully grasps with its hands, and it is in kings’ palaces” (Proverbs 30:28). The point the writer seeks to make is that spiders are not very large or powerful, but they are still very successful at what they do because they act wisely and use their talents well. The spider weaves a beautiful and highly complex web using chemicals from its own body. Then it uses its tiny “hands” to grasp the unsuspecting prey that gets caught in the web. While the spider itself may not be very big, seem very smart, or look very powerful, its appearance is deceiving. In fact, it even lives in kings’ palaces, where, apparently, it has the run of the place. It prevails and succeeds, in spite of its tiny size and unimpressive looks.

We know that spiders are “engineers,” making webs, those wonders of architecture and engineering. They are also killing machines, preparing mechanical traps, capable of building nests under water, hunting their prey with lassoes from their webs, capable of giving off chemical poisons, holding on to a thread and jumping from hundreds of times their own height, creating threads stronger than steel within their own bodies, and camouflaging themselves for hunting. We come across further miracles when we examine the structure of their bodies, alongside the properties they possess.

Here’s an easy recipe: take food, metabolically convert it into sticky glue. Then, allow air to contact it while rapidly stretching it into an impossibly narrow, nimble thread as strong as steel. There you have it—spider silk. One silk gland produces thread for cocoons and another for encapsulation of prey. The two seem to be the same, but they require different especially designed silk. Other glands make the walking thread so the spider doesn’t encumber herself, while another makes the sticky material that captures prey. We are unable to see some of the finer threads unless the light is reflected just right. Spider silk is also robust with a tensile strength fives times that of steel and elasticity, able to stop a lumbering bumblebee at full speed.

The spider is a master engineer, and doesn’t even know it. Can you think of any structures where we use similar construction techniques to the spider? Suspension bridges. Humans use all the engineering principles you see in a spider’s web and apply them to bridges. You have load-bearing lines – which take the weight. And just like the web, they’re anchored to the ground. Attached to the lines are thinner cables, which are flexible – like the cross-members in the web – that support the road or rail platform. So the engineering principles used by us are borrowed from the spider. We’re even building bridges made from the same material as webs – polymers with different physical properties, so they flex and move with various weather conditions. The difference of course is that the spider can build her web in just two hours. For humans – well, it takes a little longer!

Categories: Animals