How does each individual spider innately know what the architecture of their web should be without that knowledge being taught to them?

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Is that kind of information passed down genetically and if so, how does that work exactly? It seems easier to explain instinctive behaviors in other animals but weaving a perfectly geometric web seems so advanced it’s hard to fathom how that level of knowledge can simply be inherited genetically. Is there something science is missing?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Friend and I were talking about this once. Neither of us are experts so let me just start with that. But apparently spiders will build the frame of their webs, testing the strength of the architecture, before filling it in with webs. This is extremely advanced and abstract frontal-cortex thinking, if we saw an ape or another mammal do this we’d be highly impressed, but because spiders are so small and unhuman-like we don’t give it much thought

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