Duane Leakei age 8, West Henrietta
What does a spider use to make her web?
Your body uses food, air and water to keep going. It uses its own magic recipes to make all kinds of different materials. It makes hair, finger nail skin, blood, flesh and bones. Each different material is made in the right amount in the proper place to do its own special job. Yogi are so used to this that it does not surprise you ‑ you take it for granted.
A spider's little body, however, is very different from yours. Its wonderful ways sometimes surprise you. Yet that small body makes the things it needs just as your body makes the things it needs. The spider is a spinner of beautiful webs. Her little body knows how to make the silken material for the different kinds of rope and cable.
The spider is a meat eater. Some of her digested food is sent to special cells in her soft, fat stomach. These are the silk‑making gland. They use their own secret recipe to turn the food into fine, lice. id silk, Tiny tubes are there to lead the liquid silk to the surface as the busy spider needs it for spinning.
A hundred or more of these little tubes group to form a spinneret. The spider may have six spinnerets and a few tube openings called spigots; She may also have a wider spinning outlet for weaving broad bands of silk. All her spinnerets and silk openings are close together at the tail end, under her abdomen.
The spider pulls out the silken threads as she needs them. The liquid silk soon hardens into firm thread in the air. She uses her back feet to get the spinning started. The end of thread may be stuck to a twig, leaf, doorway or other firm object. Once it is firmly stuck, the spider just walks away from it and the silken thread unravels behind her.
Each spider has her own favorite design for spinning. Some use a threw to drop themselves safely from a high place. Some build ground nets. Some let the wind catch the filmy threads and waft them aloft on little parachutes
Andy admires the beautiful round orb web best of all. If the orb spider were your size, her web would be half a mile wide. Imagine all the work in those long cables and the care needed to fill in the threads that go around and around.
Most spiders can spin several different kinds of silk, The foundation cables that cross the orb web are made of strong, dry thread. The round filling is made of finer, sticky thread. This is the sticky part of the cob web that catches the flies. But it does not trap Mrs. Spider. She runs to and fro across her web without catching one of her eight feet, She knows which threads are the sticky ones and which are dry. And the smart spinner is always careful to step only on the safe, dry threads. Otherwise she would become stuck in her own web.