Have the ‘legs’ to succeed and Bob’s your uncle
IWAS sitting on my stoep enjoying a quiet glass of refreshment when a spider dropped down from the pergola above me like a miniature bungee jumper and stopped about 20cm above the ground. It hung there for a moment, then began to climb back up the thin thread. I was reminded of the legend of Robert The Bruce, the Scottish warrior who hid in a cave after losing a battle but was inspired by a spider that kept trying to climb up and reach its web. After several tries, the spider reached the web and Robert was inspired to go back and try again. He won the next battle, of course, because that’s what happens in inspirational stories.
What interested me was how the spider climbed back up its web. Did it simply haul itself up hand over hand over hand over hand (spiders have hands to spare), or did it actually reel that thread back into its body? If it reeled the web in, what happened to it once it was inside the spider’s body? Could it be re-used? How did the spider gather it into itself ? Was there a tiny reel inside?
I hurried back to my all-knowing computer and looked up spiders in Wikipedia. I found screen after screen of intriguing facts about arachnids.
Being mere humans, we tend to generalise about spiders, but it seems there are hundreds of different spider species, each with its own web-spinning technique. Some spiders have as many as six spinnerets, each programmed to produce a different sort of web.
To us a web is just a web, but to a spider it’s a complex product. Spiders can spin different kinds of web – sticky ones to trap insects and non-sticky ones for climbing and using as building scaffolds. (I wouldn’t be surprised to learn they can even spin tiny guitar strings for use at rock-spider concerts.)
I never did discover how my particular spider managed to climb back up its web, but I learnt that web-spinning is a labour-intensive business and uses up so much energy that some spiders eat their webs once they’ve finished with them, simply to replace all that depleted energy. That sound a bit disgusting to me. Rather like eating the dirty dishes after a meal.
But it’s a damn clever idea, nonetheless. You go fishing and at the end of the day you eat the fish you’ve caught, then swallow your fishing reel and rod together with all the line, sinkers and hooks and saunter home with your hands in your pockets.
We can learn a lot from spiders, as Robert the Bruce discovered in that cave.
Last Laugh
Two Karoo farmers were standing at the bar of the local hotel and Jim asked Piet what sort of year he was having.
Piet though for a moment, took a sip of his brandy and Coke and then said: “Medium.” “What do you mean by medium?” asked Jim. “Well, worse than last year, but not as bad as next year,” Piet replied.