Word: araneae
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Temperamental Artist. Not all spiders make prey-catching webs. Of the web-makers, the genus Aranea is the master weaver and engineer. Aranea spins the familiar but complicated "orb web" a large number of segmented rings on a framework of 25 to 35 spokes. Although the typical orb web may have 13,000 or more tie-lines, the spider makes a new web every day, and, like a temperamental artist, never deigns to do repair work. She* puts glue on the silk to make it sticky. To prevent quick drying (or for some other reason), the glue is concentrated...
...Aranea manages this was, for a long time, a puzzle to observers. Then says Author Crompton, "the secret came out." The spider simply twangs the glued tieline, as a bass fiddle player twangs the strings of his instruments. The glue is thus shaken into exactly equidistant droplets...
While building her web, Aranea puts up "scaffolding" (later discarded) to gain a foothold. But, if necessary, she can walk on the glued strands: she has oil on her feet which keeps them from sticking...
When the web is completed, Aranea runs a silken "telephone line" to her nearby lair, and waits for prey. The slightest vibration of the web brings her out on the run. If the victim is a fly or some other small and harmless insect, she drinks its blood on the spot, or paralyzes it with poison from her fangs and takes it to her lair to be kept in storage. If the catch is a big, vigorous, dangerous intruder (a honeybee or a grasshopper), the spider turns her back and squirts out silk in a broad band from...
Frightened Cardinal. Not many kinds of spider kill as elegantly as Aranea. One called Agelena makes a heavy sheet web that she spreads out on a bush or hedge, where it looks like a flimsy, dirty handkerchief. Agelena has no glue, and she must subdue her victim before he breaks loose. This involves violent battles and considerable risk every time she tackles something that can fight. But Agelena is a big spider (her body is three-quarters of an inch long), and she has an advantage which one arachnologist has neatly compared to that of a man on skis chasing...
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