Spiders Gather Water With Their Webs

 

 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 to a stream to get 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 the water droplets cling to the web. They hope to make use of the technology spiders use and have constructed  a man-made web for collecting moisture.

Time and again scientists notice signs of truly amazing design in nature.  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.

Joel Kontinen

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.