Amazing Spider Webs Defy Evolution

Know the joke that says walking into a spider web instantly makes you a karate expert? Rather amusing. Anyway, we have two articles that illustrate how our Creator has given spiders web-building skills. That is marvelous in and of itself, but we will focus on studies of two spider types.

Spider webs are surprisingly intricate, even down to their strength and how they can change when needed. Humans are studying them for our own purposes (biomimetics), but giving credit to evolution.

RGBStock / Gesine Kuhlmann

An algorithm has nothing to do with Bill Clinton's Vice President playing bongo drums. Rather, it is essentially a method of doing repeated tasks efficiently. They are essential in computer programming. (The concept makes me think of macros in some word-processing programs.) A tiny spider called the hackled orb weaver spins its web at night, working by touch. Scrutinizing six of them, researchers saw what can be called an algorithm in each of them to uniformly produce the webs.

One of the many mysteries of biology is how a creature like a web-weaving spider with a tiny brain is able to systematically construct an elaborate web with amazing elegance, complexity, and exacting geometric precision. And to make the spidery task even more amazing, the creature does it blindly only using the sense of touch—an exceedingly complex mechanosensory-based application. A newly released study shows that this remarkable skill is due to a highly sophisticated built-in algorithm.

To read the rest of this short but interesting article, spin your way over to "Spiders Have Built-In Algorithm to Construct Webs." Don't forget to come back for the next article.

In mysteries and spy shows, we see someone using a saucer-shaped device to listen give their hearing a boost to listen to far-away conversations. The bridge spider is famous for playing cards, but it builds a web that gives its hearing a boost. This is remarkable enough, but it also makes people wonder about hairs. Those hairy spider legs are giving them sense organs, and bridge spiders can make adjustments as needed. Biomimetics for sound is being considered.

Is your spider-sense tingling? Mine is... there it is: The research wouldn't be sciency enough without invoking Darwin for its imprimatur. The word evolution was utilized — and assumed — many times. Now that won't cut it, Cletus. Y'all can't keep saying "It evolved", but that's a statement of faith. (In this case, repeated statements of faith.) Such vacuous non-science chanting may be satisfactory to fundamentalist evolutionists, but some of us won't let it slide. To make that claim, cowboy up to your own rules and show us, scientifically, how it evolved. You savvy that?

Spider Uses its Web Like a Giant Engineered Ear (The Scientist). Report Dan Robitzki likens this finding to how SETI researchers build big antennas to capture faint signals from stars. His subject, though is a spider called a bridge spider or gray cross spider. “Bridge spiders ‘outsource’ their hearing by building webs that double as acoustic arrays,” he says, “allowing them to perceive sounds from great distances.” The investigation into this feat was published as a preprint by Jian Zhou and six others in bioRxiv on Oct 18, 2021, “Outsourced hearing in spiders by using their webs as auditory sensors.” Even though this “engineered” capability has only been observed in one type of spider so far, the idea is a game changer, Robitzki says.

You can stick to it and read the rest (including a generous serving of satire) at "Spider Webs Are Big Ears."