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?
In: 1829
There are a few interesting comments on here about spiders on drugs messing up their webs in interesting ways, but you don’t need anything that dramatic to see what’s going on.
Just find a spider at night while it’s spinning the web and mess it up with a stick. One of two things will happen;
If you do it gently enough so the spider doesn’t run away, then it will just keep plugging along, doing the steps in order, and end up with half a web, probably all misshapen because half of their reference points got destroyed.
Or, if it does run away and comes back later, then it will start all over again from the beginning. They can’t pick up where they left off, even if they only had 1 or 2 lines left to install, because they don’t know how. To them it’s just “make web.” So when they come back, that’s what they do. “Make web.”
The spider isn’t “thinking” about what it’s doing. It can’t problem-solve on the fly or improvise a creative solution to a new problem. It doesn’t have a list of 1000 individual steps memorized that it can adjust to the situation or pick up walkway through. It’s just “make web.”
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