The amazing web weaving technique of a spider called Uloborus plumipes could put Spiderman to shame! This garden spider found commonly in Great Britain weaves its webs using threads which are only a few nanometers thick. Not only are the webs of this feather-legged lave weaver remarkably thin, they also possess an electric charge.
Scientists at Oxford University in England used microscopic video technology to study how the aforementioned spider weaves such fine webs. When the threads of most spiders’ webs have been found to be a few micrometers thick, those of this spider are many times thinner.
The scientists first confirmed that the garden center spider uses one the world’s smallest silk spigots to deposit such narrow threads.
“Uloborus has unique cribellar glands, amongst the smallest silk glands of any spider, and it’s these that yield the ultra-fine ‘catching wool’ of its prey capture thread,” explained study author Katrin Kronenberger, a researcher in Oxford’s Department of Zoology.
But that did not explain the bigger riddle- what gives these webs an electric charge? As the silk is deposited onto the web’s catch thread, it’s combed out by a special tuft of hairs on the spider’s hind legs.
“The technique is not unlike the so-called hackling of flax stems over a metal brush in order to soften and prepare them for thread-spinning,” explained Science Magazine’s Monique Brouillette.
The researchers found out that the silk coming out of the spider’s body is in liquid form and solidifies to take the shape of solid thread as the creature begins to pull on it.
“The raw material, silk dope, is funnelled through exceptionally narrow and long ducts into tiny spinning nozzles or spigots. Importantly, the silk seems to form only just before it emerges at the uniquely-shaped spigots of this spider,” says Kronenberger from the University of Oxfords’ Department of Zoology.
He tells that a special combing action made by the spider as it pulls the threads violently produces an electrostatic charge, which when coupled with the thinness of the filaments that emerge from the spigots, provides adhesion and thus create a very sticky silk for prey capture.
Together these features- the fineness of the thread, their stickiness and the electric charge possessed by them make it impossible for the prey to escape.