Thereby hangs the Spider@web.

Mrs. or Mr. Spider cannot just walk in to a restaurant, order a meal of insects, settle the bill with tips and go home.

He or she has to find the food all by own efforts. Robert Bruce can vouch for this as he had spent considerable time watching spiders, while he was, in retreat , planning a counter attack.

The spider hail from Arachnids lineage and belong to Araneae clan. This clan has further genetic lines (tribes) such as Tarantula, Raft spider, Orb spider, Huntsman and house spider – a colourful lot!

This tribe has certain special traits. They are octopedes and walk on eight legs; feel with a pair of antennae like sensory organ called “pedipalp”.

Have normal eyes unlike, the compound lenses of, flies which they might catch for a meal. For grappling the prey, they have pincer like appendages called chelicerae.

To carry on with their trade of spinning, nature has endowed them with certain special devices, attitudes and skills. The creator has given them a never say attitude and they keep on trying till goals are achieved. A web to trap & catch insects!

The spider has a gland to secrete a polymerisable material and pair spinnerets to produce the silk threads. Polymer engineering and   textile technology, working in perfect harmony!

The spider is a craftsman par excellence in producing the finest of fibres! It employs tailspin and yoga techniques (sirsasana and padaasan), because the spinnerets are located at the tail end of the body.

They exhibit a hang glider’s skill and a trapeze artist’s timings to anchor the foundation pylons for the “web”. How and why they select the site for the construction is known best only to them.

Armed with natural instincts and working with single minded devotion, the Spider starts to weave the web. If the Spider has to approach for a building permit, any “..UDA” (Urban Development Authority) in the land will be amazed and pleased to grant it without batting an eyelid. Here is why?  The floor space index is high, very high!

Mostly the web constructed resembles an irregular polygonal structure- inset with webbed circles/involutes, filled with empty spaces – like a chicken mesh or fishing net. At the centre of the web, a royal seat is also provisioned. An exhibition of the finest art, of spin drying.

Then the spider ascends the throne, surveys, broods and patiently waits for the food coming in uninvited. The arrival of an insect sends vibrations through the web - bush or web telegraph! The spider rushes in from some corner of the web, cuttings short its contemplation or meditation.

This is his or her arena and we the spectators can take the seats in the Greek amphitheatre. In this arena the condemned is the unwary insect and the role of the lion, out to kill, is that of the spider.

The trapped insect tries to wriggle out unsuccessfully, causing more and more vibration on the web. Probably the spider likes to gobble up an insect with a fighting spirit!.

Ever slowly, the spider approaches the victim, quarters it and grapples it. The insect puts up renewed struggles which only serve to get the death screws tightened. The throes diminish and stop. An insect has breathed its last and a spider has had its meal.

The satiated spider wire-walks to another favourite corner to wait or engage in web repairing which gives it a chance to view the world doing sirsasana. A healthy practice indeed!

The female spider keeps the social order in check. Any male spider, advancing too close for comfort, is dealt with promptly – with a dose of poison, a la kangaroo court.

Watching them in some of their actions, we can’t brush away this dilemma - whether to pity the mauled insect or to marvel at the spider?

One of the species of Spider – the Tarantula enjoys a stellar honour. It has a nebula named after it. If it comes to know of this, it might feel on top of its web. But for a brief time only, as Crab, Cat, Ant, Swan and Horse also compete with the spider for this heavenly honour.

For all this stellar recognition, it suffers natural calamities due to rain and storm. Even when being rendered homeless, it tenaciously hangs on to the last thread of the web with hope of survival. If unsuccessful, starts rebuilding again, hoping that the departed soul of Robert Bruce will be near by to give company!

Is there any competition for the Spider?

Yes, the weaver bird and the honey Bee. The former gathers natural material and the later secrets the wax biologically.

Spider Web. -75-

The Spider manufactures its own fibrous filaments to weave its web! Dress is genetically engineered and during every moulting gets the next size, automatically, though the texture and design remain unchanged. May be the spider is not fashion conscious.

It has a different way of looking at life – food and shelter are inter-related. It is happy if it could manage the food and shelter, even if it is exposed to the elements. One with out the other is not possible in its chosen life style.

The Spider web is almost a 2D shelter without a portico or a roof.  It is adequate – for stay and to gather food. Coming to food, it feasts on what ever insect that comes in to its parlour.  Its philosophy is simple: “yearn for what you can get and earn it for keeps”.

These were not the observations of Robert Bruce. He was preoccupied with a more weighty matter of avenging his defeat and had little time to wonder about the life style of a Spider.

By hindsight, we may probably rue his preoccupation and missing out the honour of being the first person to have chronicled   a Spider’s attempt to build its web.

What all we, the non-arachnophobian's can do now is to hire a time machine and visit the same cave, with out disturbing Robert Bruce’s solitude. Since we may not be as observant, we may have to borrow his visual impressions, on web building.

We must have a lot of patience and plenty of time to take turns and compile notes. We may have to use the time machine to come back to the present now and then – mainly to enrich our notes with relevant modern scientific information on the Spider species. A perfect understanding of the natural instinct of a spider and the techniques of web making may need all this exercise.

Any two planes, separated by a distance of about 10 to 50 Spider strides is a prime locality for the web. May be, the Spider selects such spots either by accident or guided by the scripted DNA information. Extraneous factors such as direction of wind draft and clear approach for insects are probably given equal importance.

The architectural plan is in its mind and readily alters it to suit any prevailing situation, on self approval basis. To bridge the gap between the two planes, it starts weaving a quadrangle (mostly irregular but occasionally includes square, rectangle or trapezoid) shaped stay filaments, for anchoring the web structure that will be completed at a later time.

Initial travel is by a Spider walk, up to the 1st point of the stay line. Here it hangs upside down from the first plane, secreting the chemical for the filament through the spinnerets.

This one journey is beset with many ifs and buts – a gust of wind blowing it off target, failing to apply brake at the right moment or insufficient supply of silky thread through the spinnerets etc;

Doing the free fall, like a sky diver, it prays for a favourable draft or absence of it to reach the end of fall to contact & connect with the second plane. Then travel back, in Army tank fashion, using its own spun dried filament to reach the starting point of the intended irregular, four sided web anchor.

If successful, the Spider starts its acrobatics one more time from a farther distance to play out the second stay wire from the 1st plane to the second. Now two sides for a rough four sided geometrical figure has been drawn with the silky filament.

It is matter of time before the remaining sides are completed. – involves connecting, horizontally, the four anchor points of the two vertical filaments already finished.

By this time the Spider would have spent its day’s energy reserve after making repeated attempts. It might lay-off for the day and go in search of food to replenish its depleted energy.

On paper or in our minds this task looks pretty easy .For the spider it is not so.

It starts the next difficult phase in web building with renewed vigour. Now the Spider’s focus is on connecting the rough geometry with diagonal filaments. Swaying with the wind, aided by gravity, biological secretion and squeeze braking, the Spider painstakingly completes the diagonals one by one. Later from the intersecting point of these diagonals, it builds radial lines with its fiber.  

Many false starts and aborted attempts later, the Spider heaves a sigh of relief after a day’s work of reeling out the thread, with its head and spinnerets spinning, literally.

Imagine for a moment our plight in drawing 2 or 3 dozen diagonals on a paper – where actually we can see the start and end points. Hats off to you spider- for accomplishing this task, almost as planned, without a paper and pencil!

The Spider is now ready to start the most difficult phase of web building. It has to connect the radial/diagonal lines with, ever increasing or decreasing, involute weaving with a single silky thread.

Why this confusion at this stage? Is the Spider getting lost in building web? No. It is only a test for the IQ of the Spider. Some might do it from the top – so the ever decreasing involute is achieved. Some might decide to start from the centre – so the ever increasing involute.

It is like wire-rope walking over Niagara Falls from US side to Canadian side, buffeted by strong winds. No doubt the silky thread is stronger than steel and can support 50 to 60 times its own weight.

But how the poor Spider will know all these scientific facts? We will understand the ordeal if only we would get on to a rope strung between two poles of 6-7 meter height and 15-20 meters apart and go for a walk on it!

We wonder how the hell the Spider is able to draw these involutes without a compass or a scriber. Closer watch reveals the modus operandi - it uses the front legs and hind legs to get on with the work. How enterprising!

The construction starts with discrete arc lengths. It swivels its hind legs in a bigger arc while simultaneously moving its front legs (reference point) in a smaller arc. Thus it completes the first involute. Travelling along the perimeter of this, the Spider completes the second involute and so on till the web is completed.

For decreasing or increasing radii of the involute curve, the procedure followed is the same.  It has to carry out all these activities with out any scaffolding, safety belt or a helmet.

The amount of maneuvering the Spider has to carry out, to complete all the involute curves, is mind boggling and fraught with dangers.

Nature has endowed the Spider with an ocean of patience and it goes about its tasks, whatever may be the impediment. This attitude of it must have struck the right cord in Robert Bruce, who shared the same cave space with the spider. Its perseverance lifted his sagging spirits to score a win over his enemies and established peace in Scotland.

We have now become weary and mentally drained to constantly monitor and update our web-log. We pray that the web master should hasten up and finish the job quickly. For the Spider time has no meaning but it understands only hunger.

Having stayed with the Spider during its construction activity and still left with some curiosity and energy, you may count the diagonal lines (30 to 48) and the number of irregular squares, rectangles, trapezoids and triangles, running into hundreds, it has used to spin its web.

The pity, from the Spider’s point of view, is that it cannot even admire its web from a distance where as you and I can.

At the end, we are as confused as the spider was in the beginning – on a mere technicality. The criss-crossing lines connecting the sides of the irregular quadrilateral – whether they are to be considered as diagonals (decreasing involutes) or radials (increasing involutes)?

We can leave the doubt unresolved as the spider has completed its job.

It is now time for us to come back to the present and settle the hire charges for the time machine. Back home we might pay more attention and try to understand the way of life and survival instincts of   these Spiders.

A Spider must be a frequent re-locator, as we don’t find it in the same location for a long time due to web getting destroyed by natural calamity or internecine wars.

The laziest builder is the house Spider. The web looks like a carelessly thrown net, over a fishing boat. May be it is reminding the way, a majority of us lead our lives – trapped in a maze.

Now, with a Spider’s  mindset, if we look around we will find their webs on garden shrubs, between tree branches, between power lines under a street lamp, the nook and corners of houses and even spanning the walls of a drainage gutter!

If Mr. Sherlock Holms is asked to solve the mystery of the web under power lines or between gutter walls he will draw deeply from his pipe and exhale smoke slowly a few times and then exclaim loudly, “Ahaa.. it is elementary my dear Watson. What an ingenious way to welcome an uninvited insect in to its parlour!”

An Ornithologist studies bird. I, a self styled Arachnologist‎ spent some time observing Spiders. Mixing this amateur study with a bit of history, sci-fi and a lot of confused imagination what did I get?

What I got was what you just finished reading!