Cave spiders use their webs in a way that hasn't been seen before

 

A cave orb spider Image courtesy of blickwinkel/Alamy

Joel Kontinen

Cave-dwelling orb spiders have adapted their webs so they act as tripwires for prey that crawl on the walls of the caves.

Can spiders make orbs in the dark? This must be inspired by intelligent design,  

Spiders known for elaborate circular webs have altered their spinning style in dark spaces to create apparent tripwires for walking prey.

Those that make circular webs are known as orb-weavers, and most of them trap mosquitoes, beetles and other flying insects in sticky spiral frame webs sparsely attached to outdoor structures, like tree branches. But European cave orb spiders (Meta menardi) anchor their webs to cave walls using twice as many silk strands, which appear to vibrate when tripped by unsuspecting crawlers, says Thomas Hesselberg at the University of Oxford.

Source:

Christa Lesté-Lasserre 2025 Cave spiders use their webs in a way that hasn't been seen before | New Scientist 31 March 

Why Did Human Ancestors Kill A Bird One Million Years Ago?

Image courtesy of Ruth Blasco, fair use doctrine.




Joel Kontinen

In a new Science story,"in a cave in present-day Israel, a human ancestor removed the feathers from the wing of a swan—and researchers still don’t know why. A team of archaeologists examined bird bones found in Qesem Cave, a paleolithic site about 10 kilometers from Tel Aviv, Israel."

It appears that the bird was not needed for food - but just for decorative purposes. but the researchers claimed that archaic hominins made it.

However, the Israel daily Haaretz, that initially published the story, said, “New evidence found at Qesem Cave, a Paleolithic site occupied on and off from about 420,000 years to 200,000 years ago, indicates that the hominins living there were going to some effort to remove the feathers from their prey.”

So, there is a time lapse of over a half million years. But Darwinians with their millions of years cannot be that precise.

Source:

Frederick, Eva. 2019.WWy did a 1-million-year-old human ancestor collect feathers in Israel? Science (25 September).

Goodbye, Textbook Explanations: Microbes Can Create Dripstones

Caves can be interesting places. Image courtesy of Dave Bunnell, Wikipedia.





Joel Kontinen

Recently, Science Daily published a report on dripstones that challenges previous views:

“Scientists have found that microscopic organisms can create dripstones in caves. The research illustrates how biological life can influence the formation of Earth's geology.”

The article reported on a group of researchers from Denmark, Sweden and Spain who investigated dripstone formation in a Swedish cave and found out that microbes played an active role in their formation.

Obviously, the previous view was too simplistic:

“According to traditional textbooks, dripstones are created by geological or geochemical processes with no influence from living organisms. But now scientists report that formation of dripstones can be a lot more complex than that: Sometimes microbes are responsible for the formation of these geological features.”

The textbook explanation features a slow process that takes thousands, if not millions of years. We now know that at least in some caves this is not true but stalagmites and stalactites get help from micro organisms. As yet, they are not sure whether this speeds up the process.

It has been known for some decades that dripstones can form much faster than generally expected. For instance, Emil Silvestru, a karstologist or cave expert with a PhD in geology, has criticised the conventional belief in millions of years for cave formation, as it is based on assumptions that cannot be verified.

Source:

Microbes can create dripstones in caves. Science Daily, August 18, 2014.