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 

Spiders can run just as fast after two of their legs drop off

 
 Image courtesy of Didier Descouens - CC BY-SA 3.0.

Joel Kontinen

When spiders self-amputate two of their legs, they quickly adjust their running gait so they can return to full speed

Spiders can run as fast after two of their legs are cut off.

“Spiders can reach their top running speeds again soon after self-amputating a limb – a trick that could inspire robots that can move more effectively when they are damaged.

When threatened by a predator, spiders can detach their legs in a process called autotomy – up to 40 per cent of wild spiders have missing legs as a result. Their legs fully grow back when they moult, which can be e within one to two months for juveniles.“

This is a way of making the spiders regrow their limbs, brought about intelligent design.  

Source:

James Woodford 2025 Spiders can run just as fast after two of their legs drop off | New Scientist 4 February 

 

Jumping spiders seem to recognise each other if they have met before

 

Image courtesy of FLPA/Alamy.

Joel Kontinren

Regal jumpers, a type of jumping spider, appear to be less interested in each other if they have met before, suggesting that the arachnids recognise individuals within their species

Some evolutionists believe that Jumping spiders seem to be able to tell each other apart, putting them among just a few other invertebrates that are thought to have this kill.

“Recognising individuals within your species is important for social animals, such as primates, but just a handful of invertebrates have been observed to have this recognition, for example Northern paper wasps (Polistes fuscatus). This is thought to help with social cohesion within the insects’ colonies.!!”

Source:

Chen Ly 2023. Jumping spiders seem to recognise each other if they've met before | New Scientist

8 December.

Spiders Cared for Their Young

 

Image courtesy of Xiangbo Guo, Paul Selden and Dong Ren; Proceedings of the Royal Society B . 

Joel Kontinen

Spiders cared for their young, even when by evolutionists they were 99 million years old.

This timing is a hazard, as the world is not that old.  

The spiders were trapped in amber. A female Lagonomegopidae spider family guards her egg sac in a tree cavity-

They were mined in Myanmar. as an article in Science says they are 99 million years old, as that is the ony date for supposed amber fossils in Myanmar.,  They lived in in the Northern Hemisphere during the Creatacous period (145 million to 66 million years ago).

Source:

Geggel, Laura. 2021.  99 million-year-old spider mummies reveal moms cared for teeny spiderlings Live Science  14 September,.  

Spider legs build webs without the brain’s help – providing a model for future robot limbs

 

Image courtesy of Didier Descouens - CC BY-SA 3.0.

Joel Kontinen

Emeritos Professor Fritz Vollrath of the University Of Oxford has shown that in a study with his collegue Thiemo Krink, spider legs build webs without the brain’s help, which would be a model for future robots.

"Arachnophobes often cite spiders’ unpredictable movement as the basis of their fear, pointing out how each spindly leg seems to lift, flex and probe with a menacing degree of autonomy.

Perhaps unsettlingly, my colleague Thiemo Krink and I have conducted research that reveals that each one of a spider’s legs does indeed enjoy a certain independence from the brain – especially in the complex task of web-building.

Our study has shown that spider legs have “minds of their own”, constructing webs without the oversight of the spider’s brain. This has important implications for the field of robotics, which may take inspiration from this example of decentralised intelligence to build similarly autonomous robot limbs."

 In their study Krink and Vollrath  “observed the common garden spider Araneus diadematus, a creature familiar to us all – both suspended in our back yards.”

 The Roboticists call this tactic  morphological computing. According to vollrath, the common garden spider has been using this for over a hundred million years.

Source: 

 Vollrath, Fritz. 2021. Spider legs build webs without the brain’s help – providing a model for future robot limbs.  spider legs build webs without the brain’s help – providing a model for future robot limbs . The Conversation 10 February.

 

Spider Fossils Still Have Silvery, Shimmering Eyes

Image courtesy of Paul Selden.




Joel Kontinen

In South Korea, paleontologists have found spider fossils with their eyes still shimmering.

“Their bodies are so soft that they typically decay entirely soon after death, leaving no trace unless they happen to end up trapped in amber. But 11 spiders from the Cretaceous period have turned up preserved in shale on the Korean Peninsula. And two of the fossils included the still-shiny traces of sparkling eyes.”

“Those glittering bits are mirror structures in the eyes called tapetums that bounce light from the back of the eye back through the retina.”

Study co-author Paul Selden, director of the Paleontological Institute at The University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum, said: “the eyes called tapetums that bounce light from the back of the eye back through the retina.”

He went on the say: “the canoe-like shape of the 110- to 113-million-year-old tapetums will help researchers place the rare spider fossils on the evolutionary tree.”

They were also covered with the remains of little crustaceans and fish, which suggest a watery environment, obviously the Flood of Noah’s days.

The work was published in the Journal of Systematic Paleontology,

Spiders are living fossils. Their forefathers looked just like today’s spiders.

Source:

Letzter, Rafi, 2019. These Ancient Spider Fossils Still Have Silvery, Shimmering Eyes Live Science (13 February).

Spiders Defy Darwinian Expectations

Image courtesy of Little Grove Farms, Creative Commons (CC BY 3.0).




Joel Kontinen

Spiders keep on amazing us with their skills, Some can glide for over 20 metres, some gather water with their webs.

As David Attenborough puts it, we have yet to invent a material that would be as strong, light and elastic as spider’s silk.

Using their webs, spiderlings can climb hundreds of metres into the air, and with a little help from strong winds, practically fly for thousands of kilometres.

There’s more:

• Bagheera kiplingi is a Central American spider that mostly eats vegetables.
• Peacock spiders are astoundingly beautiful.

Spiders have remained practically unchanged for aeons. A ”49 million years” old specimen trapped in amber looks very much like today’s spiders, as does an older one dated at ”165 million years”.

They remind us of the wonders of creation as well as the consequences of the Fall.

Source:

BBC Earth. 2017. When Baby Spiders Leave the Nest, They Take to the Air. (1 April).

How Has the Spider Changed In ”165 Million” Years? – Hardly At All

The spider recently found in Inner Mongolia might have spun a web like this. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.



Joel Kontinen

Recently, researchers found the fossil of a spider in Inner Mongolia. Dubbed Nephila jurassica to remind us that it lived at the time of the dinosaurs, it was discovered in a layer of volcanic ash assumed to be ”165 million” years old.

The most interesting feature in the spider is its size: its body is exactly as long as that of the largest modern spiders or 2.5 centimetres (1 inch). As usual, there is no evidence of Darwinian evolution.

Earlier this year, researchers found another spider in China hailing from the time of the dinosaurs. Called Eoplectreurys gertschi, it also resembles modern-day spiders in every way.

Source:

Choi, Charles Q. 2011. Largest Fossil Spider Found in Volcanic Ash. Yahoo! News (20 April).

What did an ancient spider trapped in amber look like? Like a spider, of course

Spiders have hardly bothered to change. Image courtesy of Pdphoto.org.





Joel Kontinen

Insects trapped in amber do not support Darwinian evolution. Usually the fossils, which are assumed to be tens of millions of years old, are practically copies of the same animals we see today.

Recently, Physorg.com published an article on David Penney, an expert on fossilised spiders at the University of Manchester, who travels around the world examining fossilised insects.

Insects trapped in amber show what animals used to look like aeons ago. Doctor Penney’s specimens would hardly have caused Charles Darwin to leap for joy. On the contrary, they might have caused him to pull out his hair in agony since fossilised insects do not support his theory at all.

However, they support the Genesis model nicely.


Source:

Your chance to live forever in spider form. Physorg.com 21 July 2010.

Spiders gather water with their webs

A new study looks at how spiders use their webs to collect moisture from the air. Image courtesy of PD photo.org.




Joel Kontinen

A bright autumn morning will make spiders’ webs glisten in the sunlight. This has to do with water droplets that cling to them. In other words, spiders do not have to trudge down to a stream to drink some water but they get it from the moisture in the air.

Recently, a team of Chinese researchers published a paper in the journal Nature on how spiders use their webs to collect moisture. Zheng Yongmei and colleagues examined the webs of Uloborus walckenaerius spiders with an electron microscope and reported on their observations.

The researchers noticed that the structure of the web makes water droplets cling to the silk. They hope to copy the technology spiders already make use of and have constructed a man-made web for collecting moisture from the air.

Time and again scientists notice signs of truly amazing design in nature (You can read more here and here ). Three millennia ago, King Solomon wrote: ”He [i.e. God] has made everything beautiful in its time.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

The water-collecting function of a spider’s web also suggests that in the very good world of Genesis 1 and 2 before the Fall, they could have been used for solely non-predatory purposes.



Sources:

Helmer, Magdalena. 2010. Dew catchers. Nature 463: 7281, 681.

Zheng, Yongmei & al. 2010. Directional water collection on wetted spider silk. Nature 463: 7281, 640-643.

”165 million”-year-old spider looks just like today’s spiders

The spider recently found in China might have spun a web like this. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.



Joel Kontinen

Researchers have found a spider fossil assumed to be 165 million years old in northern China. Named Eoplectreurys gertschi, it is “120 million” years older than the oldest known spider.

Paul Selden, a palaeontologist at the University of Kansas, and colleagues published the discovery in the journal Naturwissenschaften on February 6. In addition to the exceptionally well preserved spider fossil, they also found salamanders, small mammals, crustaceans and insects.

Selden was astonished at how little spiders have changed since the days of the Eoplectreurys. “Looking at modern ones, you think, well, it’s just a dead ringer,” he said.

Darwinists often define evolution as change but for instance dragonflies, squid, Coelacanths, horseshoe crabs and tuataras have hardly remembered to change, although they have had more time at their disposal than the early mammals who supposedly turned into men.

Once again, we notice how reluctant animals are to evolve. Not even the assumed millions of years have been able to bring about change from one kind to another.


Sources

Ghose, Tia. 2010. Stunningly Preserved 165-Million-Year-Old Spider Fossil Found. Wired Science. (9 February)
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/spider-fossil/

Selden, Paul A. and Diying Huang 2010.The oldest haplogyne spider (Araneae: Plectreuridae), from the Middle Jurassic of China. Naturwissenschaften (6 February) http://www.springerlink.com/content/v4r927t13446q311/?p=be8737ef790947d5a19d3faa934227da&pi=0

What Was an Ancient Spider Spinning? Answer: A Web, of Course

Spiders have followed their traditional ways for a surprisingly long time. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

Recently, BBC News reported on spider webs encased in amber. Found in East Sussex, GB, they are assumed to be 140 million years old. Professor Martin Brasier, a paleobiologist at the University of Oxford, published a study of the discovery in the Journal of the Geological Society.

According to professor Brasier, the discovery is the oldest known spider web. He says that the creature that spun it is related to modern garden spiders.

Evolution is often defined as change. However, it seems that spiders have hardly changed their habits in 140 million years.

According to the Darwinian story, dinosaurs became birds and the early four-footed mammals became humans in roughly the same time, but squid have remained squid, Coelacanths have remained Coelacanths, horseshoe crabs have remained horseshoe crabs and tuataras have remained tuataras throughout this time.

After its kind seems to be a principle that is still not outdated. We should keep in mind, however, that the Genesis concept ’kind’ (baramin) has a wider meaning than the term ’species’ used in modern biology.


Source:

Spider web confirmed as 'oldest' . BBC News 31 October. 2009.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/sussex/8335719.stm

The Spider That Eats Vegetables

Bagheera kiplingi. Image courtesy of Maximilian Paradiz, Creative Commons(CC BY 2.0).




Joel Kontinen

The diet of the Bagheera kiplingi does not match our assumptions of the culinary habits of spiders. We would expect it to use its web to capture insects. However, its favourite food consists of the tips of acacia leaflets.

The spider has got its name from the panther called Bagheera that Rudyard Kipling wrote about in his Jungle Book.

In 2007 Eric Olson and Christopher Meehan studied the Bagheera kiplingi in Mexico. To their surprise, they noticed that the spiders did not capture ants living in symbiosis with the acacias but they ate the nutritious Beltian bodies found at the tips of acacia leaflets.

For evolutionists, this was weird. However, seen from a creation aspect this is not at all surprising. The Book of Genesis states that in the beginning all animals were herbivorous, i.e., vegetarian, before the Fall brought death and suffering into the world.

Moreover, B. kiplingi is not the only ”weird” animal. At least one cat and two lions are known to have been vegetarians. This suggests that even animals that we would regard as predators do not necessarily need meat to survive.

Olson, Meehan and colleagues recently published their findings in the journal Current Biology. Scientific American, a popular magazine, also reported on the discovery.

Both publications were a bit late. In September, Dr. David Catchpoole, an Australian plant physiologist, already wrote an article in Creation magazine about the eating habits of B. kiplingi.


Sources:

Catchpoole, David. 2009. Vegetarian Spider. Creation 31 (4): 46.

Harmon, Katherine. 2009. Unusual Spider Species Passes Up Live Prey for Plants. Scientific American. (12 October).