Tuesday 10 July 2007

A Spider Observation

Ever wondered how a spider spins a web?
Well, I was watching one the other day. I'm reasonably sure it was a garden spider.

1) It began with a Y shape.
2) Then it scampered from the centre of the web to the outside, and then back again.
3) Each time it returned to the centre, it added a section of spiral.
4) After some five minutes, it had all the spokes in place and a central spiral.
5) It then made a very neat spiral from the centre to the outside.
6) Finally, it worked back-and-forth, clockwise then anti-clockwise, filling in little portions of the web.
And the finished thing, created in 15-20 minutes, looked like this:

It reminded me of the golden ratio.

1 comment:

esruel said...

I went to the cashpoint at night, recently, and a sudden movement caught my eye. A moth had strayed too close to a light on the wall and was caught in a web. The spider was still at home and I've never seen anything move so fast! In seconds flat the moth was knocked out, trusssed up and dragged off. I got out of there fast!