If you get up bright and early, you may get a chance to watch a spider spin her silken web. A likely place is a garden or shrubbery where you have seen the round nets made by the orb web spider. She is a pretty orange colored lady and if you are very still, she will let you watch her work. If you have a magnifying glass, you can watch the work more closely. This little creature usually builds a whole new web every day and you will be amazed to see how well she does it and how much work goes into it.

The silkworm spins a silken thread to make a soft cocoon. The spider spins a silken thread to make her web. We use the silk of the silkworm to make cloth. But a thread of this silk is like heavy string compared with the fine silken thread of the spider. We would need a whole army of busy spiders to weave a scarf, but it would be the softest and the finest silk in the world.

The stuff for making the fine web is formed inside the spider’s body near the tail end of her fat, round tummy. It is a gooy liquid made by a number of silk glands. It flows out through little faucets called spinnerets and the spider can make thick threads or thin threads as she wishes. The cross threads which tie the round web to the twigs are made of the strongest silk. The threads which run around and around the web are made of the thinnest and finest silk.

If you watch closely, you will see the spider drawing her silk from the spinnerets as she runs about her business. The liquid material hardens into silken thread as soon as it reaches the air. First she makes her scaffolding of strong threads. Then she rushes to the center and starts winding a new thread around and around.

This fine silk is dotted with the tiniest beads of glue. It is meant to trap a fly when he zooms into the net.

When the sticky wheel is finished, the spider takes out her scaffolding:; and spins new cross threads, pulling them very tight. These threads do not have the beady globs of glue. The finished web is a mixture of firm, dry threads and finer, sticky threads. Mr. Fly does not knew which is which, but the spider never forgets. When the little victim buzzes into the trap, he starts to struggle and the more he struggles the more he gets stuck. The spider is hiding in her corner and waiting for just this moment. Out she scurries over the web on her eight feet. She steps only on the dry, safe threads and never once does she put a foot onto a sticky thread.

There are some 40,000 different spiders in the world and most of them are spinners of silk. Some spin raggle taggle webs and some spin webs like funnels. Some spin a long thread for the sole purpose of swinging from twig to twig. One spider spins a web like a gauzy dome and one spins a web like a hammock. Somewhere near each silken trap, a spider waits. At the right moment, out sire trips, carefully putting each foot on the non sticky threads.